Elevation

My overall experience was okay at best. I came into the bootcamp with background knowledge of a few programming languages and a good foundation in computer science concepts. 

On day one they told us that the basic structure of the day would be as follows: Lecture 1 starts promptly at 9am (10am on Sundays), if we are late then we would miss important information and if we are consistently late we may be asked not to come back because it's a sign of not being commited to the course. Then we would be given some kind of task/project based on the concepts in the lecture and would have time to go through the lecture in-depth on their learning application as to reinforce the lesson and give us practice actually coding it. Next was an hour break for lunch. After lunch, there would be another lecture and we would be given another task/project and time to go through the lesson. That was the basic structure of the day. On Thursday, we would have time to catch up on anything we weren't able to finish or things we wanted to add finishing touches to or just brush up on. 

A few comments:

1) The lateness rule wasn't really a rule. In theory, it would've worked well and transformed the classroom into a productive work environment that encouraged promptness/professionalism and would've weeded out the people who didn't really want to be there thus making it full of people who were "code-centric" and dedicated to getting the most out of the course. In reality, the instructors were too lazy or didn't want to have to repeat themselves or give a little extra private to students who were late and missed part of the lecture. Since they didn't feel it was important to stick to it from the beginning, they created a cycle that was impossible to break and we consistently started late, which was extremely inconsiderate for those who made the course important to them and showed up on time. On top of that, they made the course feel unimportant...so why would students make lectures important if the instructors didn't?

2) The learning application which is where they posted the lessons that we would learn self-paced was a very good curriculum...until a point. The person who created most of the lessons was there for earlier cohorts but hasn't been there for a few cohorts already, so the material that has been updated/added to meet the industries new technologies must-knows wasn't written as well and more difficult to understand, making the end of course really annoying. You don't really want the most confusing lessons at the end because you walk out of the bootcamp with less confidence about being able to find a job or making it in the industry. 

3) Out of the three instructors, only one had legitimate teaching skills. He was awesome. His name was Brandon. Unfortunately, he was the only one that students would want assistance from so he was spread thin and students didn't have enough time to get their questions answered in a timely manner. One of the other instructors was okay, he was just new to teaching so I'm sure he is much better at answering student questions now, but I can't say for sure. He was very nice and very skilled but he is also native hebrew speaker so as a native english speaker sometimes things definately got lost in translation and again, his teaching skills were not up to par for the price of this bootcamp. There was a third instructor - in my opinion, she shouldn't be an instructor. She is extrodinarily talented in programming, as she has 12 years of experience but the amount of mental energy I spent trying to build myself up after she crushed my confidence in actually learning difficult concepts (again, I came in with a pretty solid foundation) should've been spent honing the skills I already had and pushing me further in understanding them. Her social interactions and communication with students were difficult at best. 

The delivery of the formal lectures before we studied from the learning application were alternated among the 3 instructors. You can guess which formal lectures were actually impactful and helpful for students versus ones that students were just waiting for it be over so they can learn it on their own. (much like confusing/boring lectures in universtiy that you know you will just understand better if you do it on your own).

4) Overall understanding of the administration: Don't try getting help from the admin, because they won't help you. Again, maybe they are just new to managing a bootcamp so they might be better now, but from the experience I had, they will say what you want to hear so that you don't complain anymore and they don't try very hard to work with you on something that you are not satisfied with. And if they did try to fix it, it wasn't readily noticable nor was there follow up to make sure that things were getting better.

There were some staff members who were somewhat helpful and pleasant to interact/communicate/work with but for the main purpose making sure the classroom was as productive and supportive as it could be, the administration was not helpful.

--I wrote the points with a negative connotation on purpose so that readers will understands what they are getting when they pay for this course. If the price were in check with the expectations of the students, I would've framed the review differently. Of course, you come out of the course knowing a ton more than you did before you went in but the manner in which you acquire the knowledge isn't seemless and I think require more effort on the students part than other bootcamps. It is quite expensive to pay for 33% of good instructors, 80% of well written lessons, 50% supportive administration and an uncaring environment. For this price, if you ask me, you should at the very least be getting 100% good instructors and 100% well written lessons, 100% supportive administration and environment that fosters care. 

 

I am not pushing to not go to the bootcamp but I am pushing to question whether the value of this bootcamp is better than others and do your due diligence before commiting to this one. Are the problems portrayed in this review still present? Will I have a supportive environment for me to gain conceptual coding knowledge and push me want to keep going? Is it important that I feel that Elevation and me have a working relationship so I can get the most out of the bootcamp? How important is your learning to you?  

I'm a graduate of elevation academy bootcamp (finished December 2017, cohort number 6).

Our instructors were Hadas, Brandon, and Omer. Still unemploye at this point.   I feel that it's my duty to warn or at least share some insights about the bootcamp for people who are interested to spend $6000 (exactly 100$ per learning day, do the math) and 3 precious months of their life without an option to work during this time.   Before I'll start, I must say: By the time that you read this, you might see many newer and generally positive reviews. That's probably because cohort 7 will be fully assembled by students who got scholarships from the Israeli governmental institute. Please have that in mind. It's different when you don't need to pay for it.   Also, try to disregard old reviews. Prior to our cohort, Aaron was still there. Who's Aaron? Aaron is the soul behind the bootcamp. He created and developt the program and the main learning platform (a reading software, that we used to learn from, after each lecture). He also built elevation academy bootcamp's good reputation. Unfortunately, Aaron is not there anymore, and so does his energy and motivation to produce new developers.   Hadas - At least 60% of the lessons were passed by Hadas. Hadas is an amazing programmer, but have 0 tutoring skills. She told us that she has been coding since she was 17. From the way she teaches, it's obvious that she forgot what is like to be ignorant of programming.  She frequently got upset and had very little patience to analyze the person in front of her, to figure out his studying needs, and continually failed to find the best path to approach us as students.   Also, she was obsessed with her phone. obsessed with checking her Facebook account / whats-app messages, ALL THE TIME. Even when a student called her, even when a student presented something to the entire class, and even during the Hackathon presentation! she constantly lingered to finish her things and actually do her freaking job, that she gets paid for. Many times it felt like a complete joke. Unlike many of the students, at the beginning of the boot-camp I still believed that although she is practically useless as a teacher, she is very nice, at least as a person. But as time passed by, I realized how disrespectful she was for our time, effort and money that we paid. the same money that paid her salary.    Omer - again, Omer is a great programmer but lacks tutoring skills. Omer actually replaced another instructor that we had for 3 weeks, Steven. Steven was great because he really cared! After he left, Omer never really blended in, probably because of this reason and because he never was a teacher before.    Brandon - Brandon is the exception of the entire boot-camp atmosphere. Brandon actually cared, had so much patience, and did everything in his power that we will finish it with the sharpest programming skills possible. unfortunately, Brandon was only 1 out of 3 instructors. Also, he wasn't there every Tuesday, so we actually got 1 less instructor than promised. With all my love to Brandon, and I truly do love him, he doesn't worth 100$ per day when his attention is divided among so many students.    Adi - She is the manager of Elevation Academy. I personally tried to talk to her about these issues above, and others, since Day 1. She seemed so kind and caring when she sat with me and my fellow students, time after time. She promised to have a word with the instructors and even to come and sit in our class to see for herself what's going on and many other promises.  N-O-T-H-I-N-G, and I repeat, nothing changed!!!!!! I personally believe she has amazing acting skills, as we repeatedly honestly believed, after each talk, that something will change.      To conclude: this boot-camp worth is around 6000 shekels, not dollars. A third of what we paid, and not a shekel more. oh and help with job placement or connections to workplaces? forget about it. I strongly advise you to consider other places before committing to them.  

I came to elevation having some programming and theoretical computer science knowledge and little to no practical knowledge- how do apps work? how do all the pieces connect?

Having previous programming experience, the course difficulty wasn't hard for me, but the volume of it was challenging- every day you would learn something new, with lessons, and hands on individual work. Now I can build apps on my own

The hackathons also taught me alot- forcing you to learn much in little time to make a product,  they were a good challenge and on the other side of it all I am amazed by the path I've been through.

Also met some incredible people along the way, and everyone I know that have searched for a job after the bootcamp was hired.

Devoting three months of your life to learn code every day isnt easy- but if your'e up for it, it is worth it!

Our cohort was the first. When we started, I had some knowledge in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and we kind of started slow I thought if we will go at this pace how can we finish the curriculum in time. But in a few days we jump so quickly that by the end of the first week I could make a landing page by myself or using bootstrap including JavaScript if I chose to use it. We started to move faster that by the end, I could write some web application from scratch and I understood what I did :-). I learned how to learn, I knew that I'm just beginning my journey and I have much more to learn until I'll be good at it. We learned how to use new technologies that we wasn't familiar with them and much more.

The curriculum is organized well. The learning platform is good.

Overall, this course is good for self-learners who just need directions

Disadvantages 

1. They promised us that all over the course we will have one instructor and two instructor assistant. Instead, most of the course we had just one instructor assistant helping us, and no instructor at all!

2. At the moment, the school's building is still on construction, there was a lot of noise throughout the course and I believe this will be the situation with the upcoming course

3. There is no job assistance, they sent us jobs from posts they take from facebook jobs lists, without even verifying that it is still relevant and without trying to help us beyond sending these posts.

Overall, although I learned a lot in this course, it felt like once we paid the money they stop care for us.

I received a scholarship to attend the boot camp, but sadly still feel it was not worth my time. The instructors were not at all helpful and seemed bothered by questions. Even though most of us had no coding background they expected us to know everything on our own or with the help of stack overflow. I can understand that for more advanced students, or after a month of learning the basics, but this began from day one. There was minimal teaching and each lesson was basically a powerpoint presentation followed by us left on our own to do assignments. I could have done the same thing in the comfort of my own home with online resources. In the end the job assistance was meaningless and I ended up working in my previous field. If you have a background in coding, enjoy being "thrown into the deep end" to the extreme, or have an endless amount of time and money then sure, give it a try, but I would look at other bootcamps before this one.