Bloc

Pros - Price, decent curriculum, able to go at your own pace, good mentors, fun projects, great careers coach, resources for when you are stuck.

Cons - Not as good mentors, always assumes everyone is taking 8 months, slow response time to assignment reviews, no React Hooks, data structures and algorithms is rushed.

Overall, I think taking this Bloc program was really rewarding and I believe that for the most part they kept up their end of the bargain. I learned a lot in a pretty quick time, and I was able to take those skills and use them in pursuit of a new career. I ended up with a great mentor initially and everything was great. As the course is 'Go at your own pace', I took it full time and ended up finishing in just under 4 months. Even though it is go at your own pace, throughout the course Bloc references 8 month finish time. It's pretty weird that they keep referencing that throughout the course considering it is go at your own pace. For the future I hope that this changes considering not everyone will take 8 months to complete the course. Along the same lines, sometimes it can take a long time to get an assignment reviewed. Since I was going at a faster pace, I kept moving and would receive a response a week later, after I had moved way past that assignment. It can get a little annoying to have to go back and fix a little mistake when I am already far past that checkpoint. Overall though, it's not a huge issue. 

In terms of the course work and teaching style I think it is pretty well written and easy to understand - for the most part. The first half of the course is much easier to follow and I believe more well written than the second half. They seem to dive way deeper in the fundamentals than they do in the later parts while learning React and Data Structures and Algorithms. Those later portions of the course feel rushed and not explained as much. They essentially want you to follow along, but then you go to implement it yourself with the same steps and it won't work. I had to take a udemy course on react side by side Bloc in order to understand the concepts easier and get a more thorough understanding. This seems to be what most people do. In the case of Data Structures and Algorithms, I also think they should take more time to go over these concepts, it's not really clear what they are wanting or explaining, and then you have a mock interview on it right after.  

Overall, I enjoyed the course and think it was reasonably priced. I think there are a few things that could be improved going forward but overall they prepare you for a new career and provide a ton of help to do so. I would recommend it to a friend depending on their situation. I think if you have 15k to spare, it's probably better to go to a full time in person bootcamp.

I took the course in 2016 for front end web development. During that time they promised 6 month tuition reimbursement guarantee. Which was one of the things that attracted me. It made me feel comfortable. I finished the course within the given time frame and followed their rules. I applied for jobs for 6 months and was not able to find job. They promised job after 6 months of job searching. If you weren't able to find work within then they promised tuition guarantee. If you are planning to enroll DO NOT bank on the tuition guarantee. Although the content of the course was decent and helped me become better coder but they will not follow through on their promise for tuition guarantee. At least for me they didn't. They told me to do an extra 3 months of job searching. I never did get a job or my tuition. Now I'm stuck with a 10 grand debt I've been paying off for 4 years. I'm working on filing a lawsuit but they make you sign an agreement to arbitrate any disputes. No taking issues to court. They are very sneaky. Worst experience of my life. Highly do not recommend. 

I am a Bloc graduate after being in the Web Developer Track from July, 2019 to March, 2020. I feel this bootcamp does a great job of teaching you the essentials of modern-day web development. My mentor was great at answering questions and the technical coaches on Slack were superb in addressing my coding issues. I liked the fact that mock interviews and job prep were integrated into the curriculum as they are a great primer for getting me ready for the job market. I liked the online self-paced structure of the program as well. I would highly recommend this program to others!

I was previously a graphic designer at my job stuck in my career. I decided to enroll myself in Bloc's Designer Track hoping to transition my career from a graphic designer into a UX Designer. Bloc's Designer Track is incredibly challenging and a lot of work. However, out of the program, I was able to understand UX Research methods, obtain more knowledge in Visual Design, and also learned how to Front-end Code. We took all that we learned and was required to create our own website from scratch. The ability to learn how to code already made my money's worth in my opinion. It has been a valuable bonus skill when I spoke to employers. All the mentors I had in the course were really helpful and definitely did their best to help students out. However, for those interested in enrolling in the course, be mindful that it takes up a lot of time and effort. I oftentimes found myself lacking self-motivation. However, if you keep moving forward, it will all be very rewarding in the end. After graduating, I was given an offer soon after for a full-time UX Design position. 

There are a lot of things I wish I had known about this program before signing up so I'm here to tell my story hoping someone finds it useful if you're on the fence about this. I'm surprised at how many 5 star reviews are on here. The program pesters you to complete a review 2 - 3 weeks into the curriculum which was really annoying. I'd take some of these 5-star reviews with a grain of salt.

Curriculum: Once you're enrolled, you're given access to their Slack channels and to their site to begin the program. You then choose a mentor that you'll meet once a week to go over any problems or questions you may have. The material consists of a series of checkpoints with practice problems that you need to complete in order to move onto the next. There are slack channels for each section/modules you're on to ask technical mentors for help when you're stuck on a problem. You'll take an assessment after each module through online video conferencing which will unlock the next module upon successful completion. In the end, you take your final assessment along with a final project to see if you get your certificate.

Pros: It gets you started with web development. Some of the mentors seemed to genuinely care about my success and learning. The git workflows. Career services were solid.

Cons: This is going to be a lot - The material was pretty disappointing. I was expecting video content at least to explain difficult concepts, but it was just plain text with external links to other resources. It's no different from going to a library and checking out a book on web development. I learned most of the material through Google, Udemy, YouTube - All significantly better resources.

The slack channels where you ask for help was extremely inefficient and clearly suffered from having understaffed technical coaches. This was really frustrating and really slowed down momentum when you're trying to solve a checkpoint and have limited time in the day. Sometimes a response could take 20-30 minutes since they had so many questions from other students. If a technical coach's shift is ending midway through a problem, a new one will jump in and you'll start the process over again. This is a HUGE problem when you're trying to complete the curriculum within 8-months. The program is aimed at working professionals, but after an 8-hour workday, I only had about 4 hours before the technical coaches leave for the night. This along with the fact that they were understaffed with 20-30 min response time was painful.

My mentors were hit or miss. As I said, some of them seemed to really care about my growth, while others seemed like they were just there for a paycheck and riding the hype train. You're expected to come prepared for these mentor sessions, but the mentors seemed to be disconnected from the curriculum and didn't come prepared by looking at your status in the program (even though they have access to it). Sometimes going over the checkpoints, they don't know what the projects or problem statements are so you have to spend extra time just familiarizing them. You only have 30 mins a week with them which is sometimes just enough 1 problem and familiarizing them with the curriculum didn't help. I also don't think that the mentors, technical coaches, and graders were all on the same page - There have been numerous times where they would have conflicting feedback on the checkpoints.

Overall: In the end, I did eventually find a job in the industry, but I wouldn't give too much credit to Bloc for that (Thanks Google, Andrei Neagoie, and Brad Traversy!). I know Bloc and Thinkful were going through a merger throughout this time so that may have contributed to the issues, but either way, it wasn't good for the students. If I could go back, I'd definitely attend an in-person, well-known Bootcamp to alleviate all the inefficiencies. I didn't know this going in, but a bootcamps network and reputation is pretty crucial in the job hunt phase. They can introduce you to more companies along with past alumni's in the industry to help get your foot in the door. While Bloc's career support was ok in job leads, their network is small in comparison. Also, after going through the job search, no one is going to care about your certificate of completion from the bootcamp. Networking, grit, portfolio, and interview skills will be key.

I recently graduated Bloc's Designer Track and I'm very happy with the results

The curriculum is very well detailed and easily explains how the design process works, and even goes a bit deeper and teaches you front-end development, such as HTML5, CSS3, VanillaJS, and jQuery.

My mentor was amazing, whenever I had any doubts or felt like my projects needed a few tweaks, she was always willing to help, even on her days off, she told me to send her an email if I ran into any issues, and when I did, she immediately emailed me back.

The grading team was also a very important part of my journey to grow as a designer, sometimes it was a bit frustrating when my assignments were sent back for revisions, but their feedbacks were extremely helpful. The only issue I had with the grading team is that sometimes it took a few days for them to correct my assignments, which was a bit of a problem since I needed to pass those assignments to move on to the next checkpoint.

Aside from the grading team, there was also the student success, the slack community, daily design critiques, and a few seminars, which I used all of them, and proved to be extremely helpful towards my new career as a UX Designer.

One thing I wish Bloc's Designer Track had was a mandatory team project. Other than that my experience with Bloc has been amazing.

Bloc did not honor their guaranteed tuition reimbursement policy even though I followed protocol and adhered it's policies. I was finished with the intense 6 month track on web development and transitioning into the final stages of the program. But before I get there, I just want to give a background on why I chose Bloc over all other web developer alternative programs. Among many features that stood out, one stood out to me more than any. Bloc is an online course that boasts one to one mentorship which provides higher quality mentorship and support. Additionally they offer a rigourous 6 month courseload, Instenlsy focused to ensure rapid development of skills, in my case web developer and programming skills. They also guarantee a job within 6 months of completing Bloc curriculum, granted you keep up with their protocol. This included such actions such as keeping an excel spreadsheet and keeping track of interviews and recording particular details and reporting it at the end of the six month period. This is just one example amongst a list of things which was kept tracked on the course dashboard through a checklist. Mind you this checklist is automated and cannot be manually checked off. The only way it is checked off is if the system verifies it through the site. I followed all the protocols. Went to and applied to jobs required every week. Recorded and kept tabs. I tried my hardest and believed that I could do it but I believe my efforts were not enough. When it came time of the limit of the tuition guarantee, and after having applied time and time again with no luck, I reached out to Bloc leadership and have them notice about my situation that I had did what I was told yet without success. And that i wanted to knnow how it would work to get my tuition reimbursemt. When I confronted them, that's when everything changed. They knew my situation and. Ow all of a sudden they make an excuse. I spoke with Riley on the phone. He tells me a sob story about this wife that it wasn't easy for her as well and took her almost 9 months to get a job doing the same things I was doing. So after almost 6 months of following their strict regiment with no success on job placement after the course was finished, I walk into a wall and Riley tells me he can only honor the reimbursement under one condition. He says I need to do another 3 more months I. Order to get my money back. Mind you this is after 5 and a half months of doing what they told and following all the rules. I threaten to take this to court bbut they have arbitration instead. This is another catch I didn't know about I til I read the fine prints. Riley I want my money back. I never got it and you guuys lied to me and sacrewed me over. Anyone looking into Bloc, please make sure to gather all the facts. They have a history of screwing people over. They are money hungry and don't give a damn about whether you get a job after their course. They use technicalities of the legal process such as using arbitration laws instead of taking it to traditional legal proceedings that PUT EVERY CUSTOMER AT A DISADVANTAGE TO BLOC. I spoke with lawyers and they say this is what they do to get away with their corruptions.

I honestly feel really lucky and happy that I chose to go through Bloc to learn UX Design. As compared to other programs, I found Bloc to be really extensive and feel confident now that I'm a graduate, that I am ready to find a job with those skills. 

I had a good experience with my first mentor, but felt that my second was not helpful in ways that I needed. I also noticed that some students finished the program and got their certificates, even though their actual designs were not very good. So I think my main grain of salt is that I wished that we were also graded for how good our designs were and not that we passed the given criteria for assignments. 

I'm currently job searching and am really happy with my assigned career coach. It's definitely not the easiest to get a job as a junior, but I've appreciated our weekly chats and strategy. 

I graduated last week.  It took me just over 15 months to finish the program. I had an overall good experience with the program and feel it is a good value and useful for accelerating my new career path. 

Pros:  Student success really listens well and has always responded in a timely fashion with relevant information.  The actual content is engaging and well drilled, each time in greater detail and demanding of more refinement.  There was no filler content.  Every checkpoint I felt was relevant and had a valuable lesson to teach.  If I had a question about the content, or became stuck, I was eventually led into the right direction.  I feel I can speak confidently on what UX is and I came out of the program feeling energized and optimistic, not beat down or jaded.  A handful of the people in the program are absolute gold at instructing and I had gained much valuable insight from them.  

Cons:  I utilized my mentor rarely.  I didn’t need them to get through the program.  I had tried out three mentors, each with variable quality.  The grading team can have a slow turnaround time.  Often, I waited 80 hours to get input.  During a few parts of the course, I was able to apply myself elsewhere... but often I would need to sit and wait before I could move forward.  Sometimes, the feedback conflicted with other graders visions and advice which could be annoying.  Some of the demonstration videos Bloc uses are well edited... but I found many did not have any editing at all and it felt like a slog to get to the relevant information.  I didn’t ever feel there was a community of students to bounce ideas off on the slack channel.  I think this is a powerful tool that could be refined and be a great asset.  The technical coaches were hit or miss.  Sometimes I would get exactly what I was looking for.  However, other times, I felt I had to explain simple ideas of what I was struggling with and was not given pertinent feedback and had to re-re-re explain the situation.  Bloc asks for 3-4 checkpoints a week.  I would say this is an unrealistic pace for most weeks.  Some of the more involved checkpoints took me two weeks just to finish one.

I would recommend this program to others.  If I were to do it again, I would have studied on my own what UX was instead of going in to the course totally fresh.  The most important aspect for me was the feeling of optimism at the time of graduation.  I feel fresh and ready to step into the UX job market.  

This review is for both Thinkful and Bloc, since they are actually the same company now.

I started Thinkful's Data Science program in August 2018 and finished in May 2019. It took me 2 extra months than the scheduled 6 months, but I made it, and finished strongly. Since before enrolling, I knew I wanted a longer type of program, to really allow myself the chance to learn things in depth.

The program was very hard, but also very good. There's some rough edges in the curriculum, in which I'd like some topics to be covered more in depth, but all in all, it's actually great and very complete. Plus, after all that, you really become proficient enough to continue learning by yourself whatever you want. This just kinda helps you take off, mostly, if you've never been into the Python data science world and used all the main libraries.

The jobsearch was hard as well, but I managed to land a paid remote internship in two months, which actually was a great deal. The internship is in a data science capacity, which is great. And it was with a small company, which means a high chance of conversion to full-time. Their careers curriculum was very helpful in preparing myself in general: Resume-building, Linkedin profile, networking, applications, interview-prep. I had about 8 interviews total in that time, most of which came from my own efforts applying on various sites. Some others came through their employer partnerships. This is a key feature of Thinkful and Bloc, which sets them apart. They actually help you get interviews with some of their partners. I got two of these during that period.

Im very happy with my outcomes and would recommend Thinkful/ Bloc to anyone interested in starting a career in Data Science.