Penn Boot Camps

I had some previous programming experience, though not in web technlogies and experience working with web & app Developers in the past.  I enrolled specifically to fill in gaps in my knowledge and learn modern web developement.

The course exceded my expectations and I learned more than I expected. I learned the listed technologies (CSS, React, JQuery, etc) and a few more along the way. Importantly, I learned how to approach other APIs and tools not covered in the 6-Month Bootcamp.  After enough practice reading documentation, following along with tutorials and reviewing new code I felt confident I can take on most development challenges. It's a wild world out there of technologies and I appreciate the focus on Javascript and Node. I know some bootcamps focus on Laravel/Drupal/PHP, but I'm happy I went with the Node environment. 

The support team, TAs, and instructors we very professional. I was also impressed with the other students in the program. I felt there was a sense of community and willingness to help one another learn.  

Expect to spend a good amount of time outside of class learning, doing homework, and projects as well.

I completed the University of Pennsylvania LPS Full Stack Web Development boot camp through Trilogy Learning Services during the summer of 2021 (Late May to Mid August.) This was the full time (12 week) option. 

Let me preface this review by saying first that I think doing the boot camp was a great decision, and secondly that at the time I enrolled in the UPenn program I was a working professional with a full time job and over a decade in the service industry. I had a BA in Music, but at that time I had zero background with coding or web development.

The person I spoke to during my enrollment process let me know that the full time option would be about 25 hours a week of class, plus 15-20 hours outside of class completing mandatory homework projects.  The actual time I spent working towards the certificate ended up being closer to 30 hours a week of actually being on Zoom, between class time, office hours, and tutoring, plus an additional 25-30 hours of project time both individually and in three group projects. In addition to class, I was working 20-25 hours over the weekends at a service industry job. It was only a week or two into the course when I realized that I was the only person in my class who was still working a job on top of the bootcamp.  Had I had the option to not work, I would have probably put in an additional 15-20 hours of project and/or study-time over the weekends in order to increase my competency with the material.  For what the course costs, you’ll only get your money’s worth if you put in as much time as possible.

The boot camp was A LOT of work, and at times extremely stressful.  Long periods of frustration are punctuated with the brief highs of actually getting your code to work. The staff offer excellent support, and again, for what the course costs, you need to take advantage of every single resource offered to you.  My biggest piece of advice is to sign up for a tutor immediately.  Full-time students get two one-hour tutoring sessions per week.  I did not sign up for a tutor until I was a month in, and that was a mistake.  My class instructor was awesome. He was incredibly knowledgeable, had a thorough mastery of JavaScript, a great teaching style, was open to any and all questions, even the dumb ones, and clearly had many years of real world coding experience.  In addition to your instructor and tutor, you have access to live help 24/7 through Slack chat, to point you in the right direction when your code isn’t working.  There are TA’s who get involved at different stages in the program, and a Student Success manager who is there to talk you off the ledge when you need it. 

The career services team coach you through building your portfolio, resume, and LinkedIn throughout the course, and then offer you coaching sessions for several months after you graduate. They offer a wealth of resources if you’re willing to put in the work.

At the time, the course cost about $12,500, which broke down to a $1,000 deposit, and then upon approval for zero interest financing, roughly $479 per month for 24 months. I spent $1,500 on equipment, including a desk, chair, laptop, second monitor, cables, monitor stand, web cam, and a decent pair of wireless headphones.  

I applied for 350 jobs over an 8 month period, got 15 initial interviews, 5 follow up interviews, and eventually landed a 6-month full-time, fully-remote contract as a web developer.

Overall, this program is what I expected going into it. It is definitely fast-paced but doable. The lessons are meant to be challenging but feel rewarding as you learn. My class was grateful enough to have a really awesome instructor who really knew the material well. Him along with the TAs were really supportive. The only downside to this program was the career services support side. We were told we would have meetings with them and they would be reviewing our career-related submissions. That really hasn't happened for me or my classmates. 

I learned a lot in a very fast amount of time despite being afraid that I might not be able to. The instructors I had were super helpful, knowledgeable, and friendly. You really get a good overview of a bunch of different technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, APIs, React, Mongo, etc.) & also you ‘learn how to learn’ when it comes to tech so if you need to ever learn something else on your own, it will be a lot easier. The people you meet are fun & great to work with. Also, you have a lot of freedom with the assignments as far as the themes and topics, which makes them very satisfying to complete. As long as you pay attention in class & always ask when you need help + take the work seriously, I think it’s a great choice.