Eleven Fifty Academy

I was disappointed by my experience.  I would have given 5 stars if the instructor had been better.  I would have even taken more classes. 

Con: The instructor was far too inexperienced to be teaching.  He didn’t know how to explain or answer questions.  He expected us to catch on right away without any explanations.  Any wrong answer would result in eye rolling or mocking.  It was clear that they needed someone with more experience teaching.

Pro: The environment and vibe is really fun.  They try to make sure you feel welcomed and try to encourage a sense of community.  

Eleven Fifty is an excellent school for those wanting to learn about coding for either recreation or professional needs.  I had zero experience in Coding, but after taking the Intro course, I felt confident to pursue Coding as a potential career.  The facility is amazing, the hospitality of staff is awesome and the instructors are exceptional. The instructor created a climate of openess and that no question was a stupid question.  I would reccommend Eleven Fifty to anyone looking to learn Coding.  

The 12 weeks spent with Eleven Fifty Academy was challenging, exhausting, and exciting. I came into the program having done my research, so I knew it would be difficult and fast paced; but whew, it was crazy fast. The first 2 weeks had my head swimming in symbols, characters, numbers, and words that had me questioning if programming was for me. Slowly those words, numbers, and symbols began to make sense and that is when the excitement comes.  

The instructors are knowledgable, articulate, helpful, and passionate about their craft. They seek to educate the students with the latest, most up-to-date technologies and frameworks possible. 

I found the entire staff at Eleven Fifty to be incredibly helpful and caring. Always taking an interest in how I was feeling about my progression in the course. They made me feel welcome from day one, which was greatly appreciated.  

There are areas of the curriculum that need to be addressed. In my opinion, there needs to be 1-2 more hours per week of classroom instruction. 

My overall experience at The Academy was a positive one. If I had to do it all over again, I definitely would, I would just make sure I was better prepared. I would encourage future students to prepare for the class above and beyond the pre-work they suggest for you. 

I do not have a job yet. I did not expect to, since I just graduated last week and did not begin seeking employment until the class was finished. Through job assistance programs, networking, and mentors I have faith that it will happen in the very near future.

 

 

 

 

This bootcamp has been extremely helpful in my career change. The instructor was incredibly knowledgeable and patient with the students. The facilities were incredible and all of our needs were taken care of, allowing us to concentrate fully on learning.

Immediately after completing my course I was allowed to apply for an apprenticeship with the consulting firm and promptly received an offer. This has been the best learning experience I have ever had and has definitely prepared me for a career change into the software engineering field.

Before I continue with this review- the background: I have given this a lot of thought and held out to write a review since I was removed back in September of 2017 to avoid coming off too emotional. I want to be honest and give my full critique of this Academy as objectively as possible so those future enrollers go in with all the warnings, what to expect, and that sort of notion.

First the positives: Eleven Fifty looks promising. They have a nice faculty/instructors and plenty of space to kick back and study within their walls. They even offered lunch and snacks. They even have a shower.. In case you stay a night.. or more.. So since I have last attended they provided 24/7 access which is great if you want a private place to study away from home. This location also has places to shop nearby if needed for anything. The course itself- the material I thought was great but also a bit fast (as advertised). I've already had some background in Javascript and I needed something to help focus on advancing further in that realm of coding. The prospects of the course from start to finish seems very promising if you do your part.

The negatives: The main part I want to emphasize and get my message across.. The policy of Eleven Fifty at that time (and most likely still is) was very strict in the sense of the final projects to be turned in during the end of their individual tiers throughout the program, otherwise you will be removed.

In my case, I made some bad choices during the program and tried to remain independent of getting caught up which I failed to do so as well as to bring to attention prior to the end date of 1st tier. They say that they want to maintain some sort of business ethics upon their decision making and that allows them to uphold this overprivileged policy of kicking you out despite how expensive this place is.. over $10K. Regardless of the circumstances, would any of you individuals out there posing as someone running a business just take people's money like this? I wasn't asking for a refund. I was asking for a second chance- all in vain because of bearucratic powers that be "policy".

To my defense- I have seen what the other students turned in and being more than nice I can say that I could have expected high schoolers to create higher quality projects. This was the first tier however.. still sort-of-the-beginning of the program right? If that's the case why wasn't this given more consideration for my desire to stay and push through? My projects that were incomplete had bigger plans that I wanted to use to WOW the other students as well as the instructors. I aimed a little too high for my goals- is that always bad business practice? I strongly dislike turning in low quality work. I have always dealt with time-managing skills with difficulty- any other human being would say the same to some degree of themselves if they're honest.

This is the whole point I am making.. So early in the program- you cannot predict a student's prospects so early unless you are arrogant by nature. I admit I made mistakes and wished I handled it differently- but how does that justify their final decisions or the policy that stands? It would have been more reasonable if it were during the 2nd tier if you were to remove me- not the first.

I even took the pre-course to determine if I would excel in Javascript- which I did! To be fair they did leave me access to the slack channel, so I can still try to "learn" even though the whole point of enrolling for me was to learn in person as I always perform better in. And even when I decided to check on the slack channel several weeks later- I no longer had access to it. Just lovely.

I wouldn't care if they stripped the job assistance from me to maintain their golden image of themselves if I could have stayed and learned, but they did not budge or do anything that any other human capable of sympathizing would do. I understand not everyone at Eleven Fifty is capable of overriding decisions/policy.. But nobody has tried or shown any real sympathy. Saying sorry and acting in the opposite nature.. That's just a recipe to break someone down.

Summary: If you have difficulty learning/focusing... if you have budget restraints.. if you already have plenty of loans as it is.. I do not recommend enrolling here. If you will be paying out of pocket to some degree for this place- I would recommend finding cheap online courses like udemy or udacity instead of bootcamps and build a profile from what you learned. You would save more money and avoid heartache if this were to backfire on you like this. But if you have money to throw around and enjoy a challenge with high stakes with a good healthy demeanor and most importantly a natural talent for these sorts of things.. go for it. I gave job assistance 4 stars because majority of the graduates find it useful and I cannot leave it blank.

My message to Eleven Fifty: I have not reached out to you since I left because I don't know how to reason with unreasonable people- further efforts would have seemed futile as it was for me at the end especially the way I was feeling for several months after.

You should really consider changing the policy to better reflect student's needs a little more in the sense of not removing a student during the first tier to be the nonprofit you claim to be of helping the community. You let some students who didn't have high enough prospects for this sort of work graduate anyways just because they turned work in on time.. Two wrongs don't make a right.

I wouldn't mind coming back to regain what knowledge I lost in the future if it were possible- but I already paid majority of the program and got very little out of it other than a heavy dose of reality. I don't hate you guys. I loved your instructors while I was there- their enthusiasm for teaching shown brightly and helped keep my self-confidence afloat when I struggled. You show some promise in respects to bootcamps such as yourself, but this policy really leaves a bad taste in anyone's mouth who is dealt with it. Reflect.. Learn.. and improve as I have done since I have left this cohort.

The Java for Web was a great course in a great environment. You really do get to learn in an environment where they care about you and make you feel welcome. They are there to help you learn and make sure you are on track for knowing what is important. This class focused in on basic understand of Java the first two days, then you went all into learning Spring for Java the rest of the week. The class is more hands on then lecture which was great for us. The instructor was always on hand to help and answer questions.

I took the intro to iOS course at Eleven Fifty in January of 2015, with absolutely no computer programming background. I was lucky enough to be offered an apprenticeship a month or so after completing the week long, immersive coding class.  Since starting as a full-time employee for Eleven Fifty in March, my knowledge of development and experience consulting real-world clients has expanded tremendously.  I have now submitted two, going on three, apps the app store.  I have learned so much from my fellow apprentices, and especially our senior developers. This experience has given me the skills I need to ultimately get a job elsewhere doing what I love, which I would have never been able to say prior to enrolling at Eleven Fifty.

I took the Intro to Coding course during a weekend and I loved it. The instructor was great; I had no coding experience prior to taking this course. Our instructor was helpful and so patient with everyone. The environment was amazing; everyone in the class helped each other as we worked through the problems and all of our needs were taken care of. The staff were friendly and made sure everyone was happy. The course was challenging but great because I was able to be exposed to what coding really is. I hope to take the next course in the near future to continue learning about writing code. I would suggest this course to anyone because anyone can learn how to code! 

I came to Eleven Fifty Academy hoping to “transform” or “launch” myself into technology because it is a rapidly growing field. I began on September 13th, 2021, and had no coding experience except for a semester of basic programming in high school. I knew it would be difficult to learn to code, but the way they advertised it to me was I’d feel comfortable enough to go against the job applicants that came out of an undergraduate CompSci program upon graduation. This was not the case. The graduates that successfully landed themselves into the career advertised had prior experience programming in frontend technologies, and the other taught software to students for a decade. They were consistently top of the class for good reason.

I never missed a day of class and worked hard to understand the concepts. However, the lectures were not interactive and quickly moved on to other concepts. It would have been easier to focus on furthering this understanding via self-study, but all the practice was graded and actually went to whether or not you pass to the next badge. Practice makes perfect, and my practice was not perfect. A “firehose” of information is what they called it and it truly felt that way. If you did not understand the concept right away, you quickly fell behind. My instructor would reassure the class that “you’ll understand it eventually;” my understanding is that if the fundamentals aren’t there, how do you expect to even attempt the advanced concepts? My instructor was also infamous for being late 10-30 minutes and sometimes not even knowing what we were doing outside of lecture. We’d be in a Zoom room, but where would my instructor be?

I fell behind (as did others) because the emphasis is on showing the information, not making sure everyone understands completely. Often times there would be 3 or 4 students that would be done already when there’s a week left to go on an assignment. Not a level playing field by any means. Each project was tough because you had to teach yourself the concepts and develop frontend and backend programming all in a short timespan (1-2 weeks). Some projects were really well done by students, but with a lack of understanding for a significant portion of the class, these are supposed to go into a portfolio to showcase to employers. Many ended up redoing them or scrapping them entirely after meeting rubric criteria. I crawled through the finish line and relied on my instructors for lots of help just so I could obtain the certification to show for my past three months in the Academy.

Within the first month the second instructor (there were two main ones, two learning assistants) left to go work on some other part of the company. So that was great. By the time we were in our last month (note that our class size was now at 15 or so, we started with 30~) Career Services had people leave their team AND Eleven Fifty Academy accepted many more students that they could not handle at the time. Now it’s 50 days since graduation (when they said 80% of their graduates are placed in jobs), and my personal career advisor is leaving Eleven Fifty Academy. So now I’ll get someone new at some point in the future. I was surprised of this announcement because my advisor starts a new position this upcoming Monday and I heard today. Shouldn’t we have someone new to go to right away? At this point I’ve accepted that EFA has failed to prepare myself and others for a web development career (only speaking for some classmates in my cohort), so I have resorted to self-studying and finding a job outside of this field because I feel unqualified.

I took the weekend Intro to Computer Programming course at Eleven Fifty and couldn't be happier! The instruction was phenomenal and very hands on, I was typing my own code and editing images and actually understanding what was being taught. I felt comfortable asking questions at times when I didn't fully grasp certain concepts, but the course itself moved at pace that kept me from feeling like I was drowning.

I couldn't be happier with Eleven Fifty and the investment I made in this class. I will certainly be returning for more advanced classes in the future!

I had a terrible experience and would not recommend the EFA online school.  I don't know anything about the in-person school, but I have heard some of the on-line instructors have moved to in-person learning, so I would expect a similar experience there.  If you look at their instructor profiles on their website:  https://elevenfifty.org/about/our-team/ , they are all recent EFA grads with no experience in teaching or coding.  As far as the executive staff...ignore them, because they will most certainly ignore you.  One of the Senior Instructor's profile starts with "I attended EFA as a student with no coding background...then became an instructor with EFA."  The instructor for 2/3 of my school was not, and still is not listed on their website and looked like he was teaching from his mom's basement.  We were constantly dealing with barking dogs, crying kids and his computer issues.  My biggest complaint is that they don't provide you the material or the instruction to learn, they give you topics and you are expected to go out and find sources to learn.   They use a "watch me code" approach to teaching, but the instructors don't explain what they are doing, and the examples they use were made up and the "Apps" they created had no functionality.   During the entire bootcamp they never showed how to create and deploy a real webpage or app.  EFA works hard to get funding so your school will be free, and they treat you like a freeloader.  Only 4 of the original 30 students graduated, and each new section of our school was backfilled with people who failed out of previous classes.  The graduation and hire statistics on their websites are not accurate, not even close.  During my bootcamp there were 22 instructor led classes and 34 lab classes with no instruction, 2/3 of the 24 week school only had 8 instructor led classes, 4 hours each.  As far as a Portfolio...it was never mentioned again after the first section (1/3) of the school was completed, which only glossed over HTML, CSS and JavaScript.   After the Bootcamp the staff initially responded to my emailed questions, but never followed up with responses and I have never heard from them since.  Other students didn't even get a response at all.   The only job placement they help with is hiring learning assistants for EFA.   I purchased a Udemy React course from Academind and learned React in 3 weeks, save yourself a ton of frustration and bypass EFA, you'll end up buying a Udemy course anyway!