Northwestern Boot Camps

When I first signed up for the Northwestern Coding Bootcamp I did not really know what to expect. I was really nervous but that all died down after a week or so. The intructor and TAs were all really helpful and were very patient teaching us and all my classmates where all very friendly. Although it was not as much work as I expected you still needed to keep up everyday in order to fully comprehend what you were learning. It was more about what else you can do with your project or if you can learn a new method on your own time. Each project was different then the next and the level of difficulty grew pretty rapidly. If you kept with your work and tried to challenge yourself throughout the course I believe this course can be very beneficial. Although, their Career services are a bit slow and it is hard to keep up with all the homework and the projects along side with it. Overall, I enjoyed my time with the class and the course. not only leanred a lot but learned how to use my skills with a group/dev enviornment. 

When I was looking for a full-time coding boot camp to join and saw that northwestern offered one for web development, I was pretty sure that was the route that I wanted to go, but of course I had my doubts. The program seemed pretty new, and the reviews, while generally positive, were sparse. The recruiter I spoke to on the phone alleviated my concerns and I went ahead with it.

Fortunately, it exceeded my expectations in almost every way. First off, let me say that my instructors were absolutely fantastic. Shout outs to CJ, Leah, Sabah, and Esdras for making the experience educational, engaging, challenging, and, somehow, fun. If you put in the time and effort to understand the concepts, they would always be willing to help you out and make sure you were not quagmired in some simple issue and were able to move forward.

The content was very relevant. I feel that the coursework was changing as we went, which, in my mind, is a very good thing. There was a constant desire to make sure that the content being taught was as valuable as possible to the students, and that we would be released into the world with some very useful tools in our belts, and not with technology that may be falling out of favor.

In addition to the technologies and coursework taught, relevant career skills were engrained in us. From day one or two, we were taught how to use GitHub to commit changes and collaborate with others. Group projects forced us to work as a team and practice agile methodologies while managing common industry issues on a smaller scale, like writing thorough requirements and managing scope creep.

The one area that felt inconsistent was the career services aspect. To be fair, I believe that our cohort was caught in the middle of an employee transition, but the initial offerings were a bit glitchy and were missing the polish that the rest of the program offered. I am still working with the career team, and things have significantly improved since. The recruiter also mentioned that big-name companies frequently stop in to view group projects, and I never saw any of that, so that felt a bit misleading. Regardless, any rough patches here do not affect my overall opinion of the program.

To echo what some others have said, this program gives you what you are willing to put into it. They estimate that you need 40 hours of outside-class time per week to really do well in this class, and that felt pretty accurate for the time I needed to set aside to get things done. So, you might have to clear your social calendar for 3 months, but, If you work hard, and have cool projects to show when you graduate, your portfolio will speak for itself when it comes time to job hunt. If you are like me, and thrive when given educated direction, deadlines, insightful reasoning for the "why" behind things, and the power to make cool stuff that you can share with the world, then I highly recommend this program to you.

As an April 2018 graduate of Northwestern’s Full-Stack Web Development Bootcamp, I can happily say that the 12-week, full-time course was one of my most challenging yet rewarding educational experiences.

The course-work is definitely presented in “bootcamp” style: There is a vast amount of  challenging material covered in a very short period of time. For someone with no prior coding experience, the pre-work was essential in preparing me for those first few days of class, enabling me to build the confidence necessary to grind through the majority of the course-work.

The knowledge and dedication of the instructional staff was exceptional. The Instructor and the TA’s all had extensive subject-matter experience and were able to clearly demonstrate the various technologies. They were available before and after class to assist in answering questions and, most importantly, help us learn how to find the answers for ourselves.  During the more difficult material, they provided weekend reviews when requested.

Success in this course required devoting considerable time outside of class to understanding the material. The workload easily demanded 20+ additional hours per week. Some of that time was devoted to homework or project assignments, but a good bit involved independent research and review.

Finally, there is a career services component to the program. During the course, the interaction with career services seemed formulaic and one-size fits all. As an older “non-traditional” student, I was hoping for individualized advice specific to my situation. Now that the program is complete and I am working one-on-one with a career services counselor, I am expecting that to change.

All in, I found this course to be worth the expense and would recommend it to anyone looking to gain an understanding of full-stack web development to either alter or enhance their career path. Even as an individual with no prior coding experience, I feel that I am suitably prepared to pursue a career in the web development field.

A few months ago (Jan 2018), I enrolled in the Northwestern's Coding Bootcamp and went for the full-time program. I have a technology background, and I had a goal of updating my skills toolkit to reflect the prevalent skill set that is in wide use today. I prefer learning in a structured environment, and this program appeared to be a good fit. 

I'm coming from a background in legacy systems, and enterprise system development.  I felt this was helpful for me to pick up concepts fast, but I'd like to also note that within the cohort, other students who were less exposed to technology than myself, done very well and had some awesome projects and HW assignments. If you don't have a technology background, that should not deter you.  What will get you through this course is a passion for learning new things, and a bit of grit and self-determination!

The shining star for me was the teaching staff - the instructor (CJ), and the TAs (Leah, Estras, and Sabah) were outstanding!  They worked hard to teach us to tools, languages and development concepts in lecture.  I was highly engaged every day, through interactive lectures, homework, and projects.

The pace was fast throughout the 12 weeks - but the instructor and TAs checked in regularly with us, and tutor services were available to those who needed additional support. 

The career services support was helpful as well.  It was good to have some insight into what employers are looking for, and interview strategies to help us be as successful as possible, to land that first job out of the boot camp. 

Final thought - You get out of it, what you put into it. It's a demanding course, but worth it!

For anyone who is interested in transitioning to a web development career, I would recommend this course.  It also helps that this is one of the less expensive boot camp courses out there, compared to others from what I've seen.  

I throughly enjoyed the Northwestern University Full-Stack Web Development Bootcamp, I attended the full-time session in the winter of 2018. I found the material to be relevant and the pass to be at a good clip. The instructional staff was amazing. I've been out of the program for just under a month now, I'm still waiting for career services to really kick-in. I'm what you'd call an "untraditional candidate" and I feel that some of the career advice during the program was a little too templated, so I'm looking forward to the one-on-one sessions provided post-graduation for the full-time cohort. 

I decided to take the bootcamp because I'm also working on getting my master's in computer science from DePaul; however, that program does not really teach programming skills, more fundamental and advanced concepts, but unfortunately, a lot of the assignments with that program involve coding and this bootcamp was a nice compliment to that. 

I definitely would reccomend this program to first time programmers, or those looking to further thier skills and become a full-stack developer. I think the time and money for this program are well spent given the level of academic rigor and instruction that is provided. Finally, I'd say that this program definitely attracks some of the nicest people to its program, our entire cohort still meet up and have been supporting each other throughout the post-grad job hunt. And less than a month out I already have interviews and one freelance gig lined up. 

If you are someone who craves opportunities for creative problem solving, then this course will be a perfect fit for you. You also need to have discipline and be self motivated to learn the materials if you wish to truly excell during the program. The instructotional staff is awesome, and will help you a long the way, but you will need to spend a lot of time outside the class really nailing down the material if you want to stand out. I came into the program with little knowledge of web development and by the end was able to build full stack web apps that I could truly be proud of. Wether you are looking to start a career in web development, or just looking to pick up some new skills, I highly recommend the full stack web development bootcamp at Northwestern!

In order to succeed in bootcamp, you need to do what that instructor in legwarmers said in that episode of Fame. This is Debbie Allen telling her students hoping for Broadway fame, that if they really want it, they will have to PAY in sweat. And a lot more sweat than they realize.

Essentially, every week in bootcamp, you should probably spend about 17 hours of studying, working, learning to code. This is not including class time, or time getting to class or even even about half of your time in office hours, which are available to help you with coding outside of class time. Some of those office hours are going to be spent fixing installations on your computer so you can DO the homework and understand what is happening in class. So really, you need to factor in a good 2 to 3 hours of outside work, every day. In my experience many people say they will do that. In practice, many people only start putting in this time far too late in the course, like in the past two or three months, after the second group project. By that point, you are already not getting your moneys worth.

Because of the intensity of pace, it is not uncommon to find students attempting to fake it until they make it. That can succeed or fail depending on several arbitrary factors, (only some of which you have any control over, just as in in the real world.) Literally in class there will be times when the instructor JUST slacked out the instructions and a TA is already breathing down your neck, watching you code like a hawk, seeing whether you know anything. This can be intimidating and many people under that pressure pretend they know what is going on. Other students ask the TAs to literally do each and every next step for them or complain out of frustration, or get bored and leave class early.

Ideally you should try and find a spot in between those two extremes: knowing when to balance getting outside help and when you can count on yourself alone to catch up is a huge determinant in your success in this program. Knowing when to be present and just soak in what you can even if you are behind, and knowing when that isn't worth it as you have too much work to catch up on.

In boot camp, you do have a lot of resources available to you, online resouces, an hour of online tutoring or live coding assistance per week, class hours with TAs before and after class to assist you, plenty of potential messages from class mates and career guidance. But most of these resources are spread out over the course in allocations. You miss a week of tutoring you can't make it up. Once that week is over, if you didn't use that weeks hour, it is already removed from your reserve. Very rarely exceptions are made due to extreme life situations. So in reality, you need to start plugging away from the very beginning. The more you slack off, the less likely you will succeed.

This is essentially a double-whammy with career services. All the work you do on resume building, keeping on track with career milestones and keeping your resume marketable and applying for jobs, all of that is supposed to happen ON TOP of the 14-17 hours a week coding, and going to class. As a result, many students do not take full advantage of the career building stuff until later in the course, and sometimes only after graduation. By that time, in many cases it is too late.

Most of the students are working full time in another job and are in "part-time" in the program. This is kind of a misnomer. There actually is a full-time version of the course, but that is really for people who are willing to learn to code LITERALLY EVERY MINUTE OF THEIR LIFE.  You would have to be able to code while you are literally on the toilet or driving to class somehow. I have no idea how they do it. Part time students go to class three days a week, usually 2 workweek days in the evening and one weekend during the day. They also spend 2 hours a day coding, but the crucial thing is how they spend that time.

Over six months you will be expected to complete: a) 16-18 assignments, about one per week, some of which are much harder to accomplish than they seem at the get go b) 8 career milestones, really guided tours of how to do job searches and prepare for trying to enter the industry as well as c) 3 difficult group projects. How to balance turning in a few assignments late, skipping class, or knowing when to stay on track with course work or which networking or job fair events are crucial to you and which aren't as central? A lot of that comes with knowing who to ask what questions and most crucially when.

Some of the course material is starting to seem out of date, but many of the basics are still going to be the same, and many tasks require learning to walk before you can run. The students and instructors are great, many people are really kind and insightful, but really your success in this program is based on you. How much time are you willing to take? You say you want to learn to code. Do you really mean it? It can be a hard question to know the answer to. Just make sure if you DO spend the money, you also give yourself a big block of time and that you have the structure in place to keep yourself on track.

The full-stack web development bootcamp I took at Northwestern was an amazing program and I took away so much out of it. But there were a couple things that I believe could ultimately improve how to teach coding. 

The reason why I love coding so much, is that there are hundreds or thousands of ways to complete a task. How you accomplish that task is completely unique and up to you and tests the limits of your creativity. Obviously the more knowledgable you are at coding, the more tools you have at your disposal, which expands the boundaries of your creativity. 

What I think that this bootcamp, or any bootcamp of that matter, can do to truly help students to learn how to code in their own way, is to give them a lot of freedom of what projects they want to accomplish. That means, getting rid of group projects. I do believe that group projects are very important in learning to collaborate with others, because great websites, softwares, app, etc.) are made possible thanks to the culmination of hundreds of people working together. But I think learning to be creative and making your own projects, that are your idea, and yours alone, takes precedence over learning how to collaborate. When I would work on group projects, we would all have to brainstorm ideas that we all had to compromise on. That means you would be working on some idea that you're not really excited about which can kill your excitement, leading to half-assed work.

Also, trying to accomplish tasks together on your colloborated idea can diminish the effect of truly learning how to code, essentially. The best way I personally learn is knowing what I'm trying to accomplish, and creatively making my own steps towards reaching that goal. That means you put to test your creativity/knowledge, on what ways work and what doesn't, which ultimately sculpts how you view the way coding works and you can change your approach on a future project.

Coding is a totally creative process and is what makes it so beautiful. Bootcamps should be focusing on taking each students' own creativity, and helping to shape it into a way that translates well into code in their own unique way.