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Holberton School

Average Rating 4.27
80 Reviews 5 Courses

Holberton School is a software engineering school with campuses on 4 continents and over 20 countries that trains individuals to become Full Stack Software Engineers. All schools offer the 36-week Foundations of Computer Science program, with short- and long-term specialization courses in Fullstack Web Development, Machine Learning, AR/VR and Low Level. The school's mission is to train the next generation of software developers through 100% hands-on learning. 

The curriculum adopts a project-based, peer-learning approach. As an alternative to college and in lieu of formal classes, students solve increasingly complicated programming challenges with minimal instruction. Students will develop resourcefulness as they search for the tools they need to solve these challenges while working with their peers. Rather than focusing on tools and programming languages, students at Holberton have a framework that teaches them the mindset of "learn to learn" and develop problem-solving skills. Throughout the course of the program, students work on industry-level projects and build their own applications. Holberton School mentors ensure that the Holberton curriculum stays up to date. Holberton mentors work for rising startups and top-tier Silicon Valley companies such as Google, Apple, LinkedIn, Tesla and Airbnb.

No programming experience is required. Admission to Holberton School is based only on talent and motivation, with no consideration given to gender, nationality, ethnicity, age or social status.

Reviews

80 reviews of Holberton School

Schools can't pay to alter or remove their reviews. Course Report never suppresses negative reviews.
  • Liz Verified via LinkedIn
    Student · Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum · Graduation year 2018

    Holberton School is awesome!

    Holberton School is an amazing place to learn full stack software engineering - from the fundamentals and low level software engineering to higher level programming. All assignments are project based and there are no traditional teachers. The students are e...
    Overall
    5.0
    Curriculum
    5.0
    Job support
    5.0
    Instructors
    5.0
    Flag Submitted December 16, 2017
  • Philip Yoo Verified via LinkedIn
    Software Engineer · Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum

    Student from second Batch (Batch 1)

    I'm a student from Batch 1, which is the second batch from Holberton (since we go by zero index in programming). Also, I'm currently in the second phase of the program, where you get 6 months to either find a job/internship to work in the industry or you ca...
    Overall
    4.0
    Curriculum
    5.0
    Job support
    5.0
    Instructors
    5.0
    Flag Submitted December 14, 2017
  • Siphan Bou Verified via LinkedIn
    Software Engineer · Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum

    Student

    Pros Peer learning Project-based, hands-on Full-stack curriculum Network of industry experts Staff and mentors care about students Projects prepare you well for professional life Cons Inaugural batch faced a trial and error approach Being lucky enough to be...
    Overall
    5.0
    Curriculum
    5.0
    Job support
    5.0
    Instructors
    5.0
    Flag Submitted November 4, 2017
  • Chandler Mayo Verified via LinkedIn
    Full-Stack Software Engineer · Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum · Graduated 2018

    An Excellent Choice

    Holberton is setting the standard for training new software engineers with a two-year program that can take anyone, no experience required, and make them an impeccable Full-Stack Software Engineer. I was coding and working with peers on the first day at Hol...
    Overall
    5.0
    Curriculum
    5.0
    Job support
    5.0
    Instructors
    5.0
    Flag Submitted October 17, 2017
  • Steven Garcia
    Steven Garcia Verified via GitHub
    Student · Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum · Graduation year 2017

    Amazing School

    Holberton School is unparalleled in it's curriculum which is focused on prepping it's students to learn the full scope of coding to fully prepare them for a career in the software engineering field. The entire program consists of a two year dual-sided commi...
    Overall
    5.0
    Curriculum
    5.0
    Job support
    5.0
    Instructors
    5.0
    Flag Submitted October 13, 2017
  • Electra Chong
    Electra Chong Verified via GitHub
    Software Engineer · Graduation year 2018

    Practical, strong foundation for a software engineering career

    Full disclosure: I was part of the first experimental batch at Holberton School, which was granted full reprieve from the tuition model. Overview (lengthy, skip to get to my subjective review if you're more interested in my personal experience than a discus...
    Overall
    5.0
    Curriculum
    5.0
    Job support
    5.0
    Instructors
    5.0
    Flag Submitted September 17, 2017
  • Alejandra
    Student · Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum

    ABUSIVE contract, money SCAM, poor content, ZERO support

    READ THIS BEFORE YOU TAKE THE WORST DECISION IN YOUR LIFE!! I enrolled in Holberton school Bogota last year, everything was ok when I wanted to start doing the advanced program, they suddenly issue an addendum (a document to modify the original contract); s...
    Overall
    1.0
    Curriculum
    1.0
    Job support
    1.0
    Instructors
    1.0
    Flag Submitted January 8, 2021
  • Geoffrey Zoref
    Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum · Graduation year 2020

    Two trimesters in, would recommend

    Holberton is not for everybody. It is rigorous and fast-paced. I began in September 19 with around 22 others in my cohort. In March 20 we are 12. The curriculum weeds out those who can't or won't keep up with the grueling schedule. I say this so that you ta...
    Overall
    5.0
    Curriculum
    5.0
    Job support
    N/A
    Instructors
    1.0
    Flag Submitted March 21, 2020
  • Diego Fernando Rodríguez Orejuela
    Ruby on Rails Software Developer · Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum

    One of the best decisions of my life

    Holberton School is the best programming bootcamp in Latin America. In my experience, I studied at the site in Bogotá, the first in all of Latin America. "Project-based learning is a proven, alternative learning methodology to the traditional teacher-led re...
    Overall
    5.0
    Curriculum
    5.0
    Job support
    5.0
    Instructors
    5.0
    Flag Submitted November 24, 2019
  • Rodrigo Sierra
    Python Developer · Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum · Graduated 2019

    Self and Peer Learning

    Holberton change the scenario of education, first of all, you don't have to pay in advance you pay later when you have a job in the tech industry, second, there are no instructors or professors you learn by yourself or from your peers as it is in the real w...
    Overall
    4.0
    Curriculum
    4.0
    Job support
    4.0
    Instructors
    1.0
    Flag Submitted November 21, 2019
  • Marc C
    Student · Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum · Graduation year 2019

    New Way to Educate!

    I'm more than halfway through my first year at Holberton and so far am very pleased with my experience. I enjoy the style of learning Holberton provides, specifically the self-motivated peer-learning. This type of learning might not work for everyone though...
    Overall
    4.0
    Curriculum
    4.0
    Job support
    3.0
    Instructors
    3.0
    Flag Submitted August 9, 2019
  • Geraldinne Bohórquez
    Software engineer · Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum · Graduation year 2020

    Best and hardest experience ever!

    Holberton School is not the easy way to learn to code but nowadays I think it is actually the best option. The most valuable there is that they are teaching you not just how to code but how to learn whatever you want. The hardest is not the curriculum or th...
    Overall
    5.0
    Curriculum
    5.0
    Job support
    N/A
    Instructors
    5.0
    Flag Submitted August 1, 2019
  • Heindrick
    Systems Software Engineer · Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum · Graduation year 2019

    Fast pace but thorough learning

    First-year was a memorable experience. I got to meet really cool people at a nice new location. The curriculum requires you to complete 24 hours to a couple of days projects. I really loved the program because it was designed for you to learn, think and sol...
    Overall
    4.0
    Curriculum
    5.0
    Job support
    2.0
    Instructors
    4.0
    Flag Submitted July 28, 2019
  • Emma Gachancipá
    Student · Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum · Graduation year 2021

    The best decision of my life

    The peers are awesome, you learn from everyone, and the most important you learn is how to learn. Also you improve your soft skills while learning english everyday.

    Overall
    5.0
    Curriculum
    5.0
    Job support
    N/A
    Instructors
    5.0
    Flag Submitted July 26, 2019
  • Alvaro A
    Contreras · Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum

    I am Holberton

    In holberton you define your future. Suitable only for the best.

    Overall
    5.0
    Curriculum
    5.0
    Job support
    4.0
    Instructors
    4.0
    Flag Submitted July 26, 2019
  • Koome Mwiti
    Full Stack SE Student · Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum · Graduation year 2019

    Full Stack software engineer

    Pros: - Convenient - Accessible easily from the Bart Station in SF - Affordable - Getting trained to become a full stack software engineer and no down payment needed - Amazing! - Great facilities accessible 24 Hours a day with state-of-the-art equipment - T...
    Overall
    5.0
    Curriculum
    5.0
    Job support
    5.0
    Instructors
    5.0
    Flag Submitted June 17, 2019
  • Rene
    Student · Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum · Graduation year 2020

    Peer Learning At It's Finest

    Figured this would be a wonderful platform in which to speak on my current school Holberton. Personally I identify as someone who always loved to learn but was never a fan of rote memorization in classrooms simply for the sake of test taking or sitting in a...
    Overall
    5.0
    Curriculum
    5.0
    Job support
    3.0
    Instructors
    5.0
    Flag Submitted May 16, 2019
  • Lucía Rodríguez
    Student · Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum

    Great option for start coding, even if it's your first time.

    I've been at Holberton School three months and a few weeks at cohort 8 and I'm glad to be here. We're the first cohort in Bogotá, also, and my impressions of Holberton School are mostly positive. The routine here helps to catch up with the common workflow f...
    Overall
    5.0
    Curriculum
    5.0
    Job support
    N/A
    Instructors
    4.0
    Flag Submitted May 7, 2019
  • Miguel Cortes
    Student

    Best coding bootcamp experience.

    Holberton is one of a kind bootcamp. With an emphasis on peer learning, there are no teachers, but students learn from each other and learn how to both learn and teach difficult concepts. There are PLDs or peer learning days, mandatory days where you can le...
    Overall
    4.0
    Curriculum
    5.0
    Job support
    5.0
    Instructors
    4.0
    Flag Submitted May 6, 2019
  • Haroldo
    Student · Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum

    It lets you be free enough to develop your creativity and you are guided enough to become a great software engineer.

    I have been here for two months (first cohort in Colombia) and all I have to say is that I consider a precious gem all the knowledge I have acquired. It is a really hard and intensive program, there is no doubt of it. Since first day, you will be told that ...
    Overall
    5.0
    Curriculum
    5.0
    Job support
    N/A
    Instructors
    5.0
    Flag Submitted May 6, 2019
Course Report Awards

Recognized in 1 Best Of List

News

Recent Holberton School News

Jess Feldman
Jess Feldman
Updated September 17, 2026
After years of trying different career paths as a salesman, bartender, and caterer, Rory Fahy realized that his future was in technology. When Holberton School’s New Haven campus opened up right near his home, Rory took it as a sign to enroll in the Full Stack Web Development career pathway. After completing the Foundations portion of the program, Rory landed an internship at Lockheed Martin. L...
Liz Eggleston
Liz Eggleston
Updated September 17, 2026
Rene Goertzen has always taken her education into her own hands – so she found the self-driven, collaborative classroom at Holberton School to be perfect for her learning style. After learning C and Python at Holberton in San Francisco, Rene landed a remote internship with Alygne. We caught up with Rene to share her tips for working remotely, the importance of building community while learning,...
Jess Feldman
Jess Feldman
Updated September 17, 2026
Course Report · April 2020 Coding Bootcamp News As much of the world sheltered in place this April, we’re sharing musings about the future of work and how alternative education like coding bootcamps can help with reskilling. And we’ve continued keeping tabs on how coding bootcamps are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, plus all the new hardship scholarships and initiatives now available. In a...
Jess Feldman
Jess Feldman
Updated September 17, 2026
In the face of the global coronavirus pandemic, this month has shown that coding bootcamps are uniquely prepared to deliver quality remote learning to those now staying indoors, working from home, or even unemployed. In addition to COVID-19 news, March brought a $19 million fundraise, regulatory news, several scholarships to close the gap in diversity in tech, and 6 new schools in the Course Re...
Liz Eggleston
Liz Eggleston
Updated September 17, 2026
High-level languages like JavaScript and Python may be the most popular programming languages today, but there’s no argument that these languages are doing a lot of work for the developer, from memory management to runtime interpretation. On the other hand, low-level programming has very little abstraction – you’re writing code much more closely to the computer. So why would you want to learn l...
Liz Eggleston
Liz Eggleston
Updated September 17, 2026
Schools and universities may be scrambling to figure out remote learning, but coding bootcamps have essentially been preparing for this since 2013. Online coding bootcamps already use Zoom video, Slack, GitHub, and VS Code Live Share for pair programming, online lectures, and to connect mentors and instructors with students. Of course, you can learn to code online – but it doesn’t stop there! M...
Jess Feldman
Jess Feldman
Updated September 17, 2026
February was busy with $70 million in fundraising, 5 new university-bootcamp partnerships, and regulatory controversies that centered around California schools Lambda School and Holberton School. We also talk about two new influential reports about tech training this month, and continued discussion about the future of tech education. And of course we round up new campuses, and 13 new coding boo...
Jess Feldman
Jess Feldman
Updated September 17, 2026
It's our first podcast of 2020 and January is already buzzing with bootcamp news! To kick off the New Year, we’re telling you about new acquisitions, fundraises, accreditation, and regulation. Plus we’re passing along tips on how to spruce up your resume for that new tech job! And of course we round up general coding bootcamp updates, new campuses, and new coding bootcamps in the Course Report ...
Imogen Crispe
Imogen Crispe
Updated September 17, 2026
Holberton School’s new Tulsa campus launches in January 2020 in Tulsa’s downtown Arts District. Libby Wuller, the Campus Director at Holberton School’s Tulsa campus, tells us why Tulsa is the perfect city for their new campus, the financial incentives they’ll be offering to attract and keep software engineers in Tulsa, and what the tech industry looks like in Oklahoma. Plus, Libby’s favorite Tu...
Imogen Crispe
Imogen Crispe
Updated September 23, 2019
After an injury derailed his plan to be an orchestral flute player, Jinji Zhang started wondering how his computer (or “Netflix machine”) worked. He tried out coding, and became addicted! His love for San Francisco combined with his self-starter personality led him to Holberton School. Jinji tells us how Holberton’s application process convinced him it was the right choice, how diverse his coho...
Imogen Crispe
Imogen Crispe
Updated September 17, 2026
When Athena decided university wasn’t the right learning environment for her, she switched gears to attend Holberton School in San Francisco to learn to code in a collaborative space. Athena tells us about learning alongside a diverse cohort, what sort of projects she worked on, and all about her fully functional final project – an Egg Translator! Watch the video demo or read the Q&A to see how...
Imogen Crispe
Imogen Crispe
Updated September 17, 2026
June 2019: a coding bootcamp fundraise, an interesting acquisition, and great new initiatives to encourage more women and underrepresented groups to get into tech. In this month’s podcast, we talk about the status of the tech skills shortage, what is happening to fill the gaps in areas like data science and cybersecurity, and the ongoing conversation around ISAs (income share agreements). Plus,...
Imogen Crispe
Imogen Crispe
Updated June 20, 2019
Maybe you’ve played AR games like Pokemon Go, or tried out a VR headset, but do you know what it takes to build AR and VR products? As AR and VR become more ubiquitous in gaming, education, and healthcare, the need for AR and VR engineers who can build these products is likely to increase. In this guide to AR and VR, Carrie Ybay, a Software Engineer for Holberton School’s AR/VR curriculum, expl...
Imogen Crispe
Imogen Crispe
Updated September 17, 2026
In May the coding bootcamp industry got a lot of coverage in mainstream news including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. In our latest podcast we discuss the new ways military veterans can learn to code, we look at three New York Times articles about coding bootcamps, and hear about a coding bootcamp facing closure. Income share agreements remained a hot topic, plus find out about...
Imogen Crispe
Imogen Crispe
Updated September 17, 2026
Jacob began his professional life running a water polo club, but kept thinking about the coding he explored in community college. He decided to switch careers into software and enrolled at Holberton School! Jacob tells us how the income sharing agreement and curriculum made Holberton stand out as the best option, and how a project at the school inspired him to pursue a DevOps career. Find out h...
Imogen Crispe
Imogen Crispe
Updated October 17, 2019
Each month, the Course Report team rounds up the most interesting bootcamp industry news that we read and talked about in our office. In April, we were showered with a ton of exciting fundraising and acquisition news, ISAs (income sharing agreements) continued to be a hot topic, and coding bootcamps began getting approved for a new veterans program called VET TEC. We also saw some great diversi...
Sylvain Kalache
Sylvain Kalache
Updated April 03, 2019
Everyone in tech knows there is a lack of gender and racial diversity in the industry. So what are coding education teams doing to improve diversity? At Holberton (I’m a co-founder), a big part of our mission is about the accessibility of our education, which ultimately leads to increasing the diversity of the tech industry. From a blind (bias-free) and automated admissions process to a tuition...
Michelle Lai
Michelle Lai
Updated September 17, 2026
To launch your career as a software engineer, you’ll need to approach your education with your job goals at the forefront. So where should you put focus in order to equip yourself to land your first software engineer role and excel in that role? Holberton School’s Student Success Manager, Michelle Lai, shares her tips for choosing the most marketable skills, spotting the right companies to appl...
Imogen Crispe
Imogen Crispe
Updated September 17, 2026
In January 2019, the top news in the tech bootcamp industry was all about Income Sharing Agreements and university coding bootcamps – it was a flurry of fascinating news! We start with a potential policy change being discussed in congress, talk through a $30 million fundraise, and summarize articles about ISAs from the New York Times, Fortune, Vice, and TechCrunch. Plus, we will tell you about ...
Imogen Crispe
Imogen Crispe
Updated September 17, 2026
As we near the end of 2018, we're rewinding and reflecting on the most interesting and impactful coding bootcamp news of the year. Come with us as we look at trends, digest thought pieces, break down the ~$175 million in new funding, and more. We’ll also look at our predictions for 2019 and our hopes for the future of coding bootcamps! 2018: Course Report in Numbers We added 89 new schools to o...
FAQ

Holberton School FAQs

Find answers to the most-asked questions.

Is Holberton School worth it?

Holberton School hasn't shared alumni outcomes yet, but one way to determine if a bootcamp is worth it is by reading alumni reviews. 80 Holberton School alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Holberton School on Course Report — you should start there!

How much does Holberton School cost?

Holberton School does not currently share course pricing information.

Where does Holberton School have campuses?

Holberton School has in-person campuses in Barranquilla, Beirut, Bogotá, Bordeaux, Cali, Laval, Lille, Lima, Medellín, Montevideo, Quito, San Juan, Toulouse, and Tunis.

Does Holberton School offer scholarships or accept the GI Bill?

Right now, it doesn't look like Holberton School offers scholarships or accepts the GI Bill. We're always adding to the list of schools that do offer Exclusive Course Report Scholarships and a list of the bootcamps that accept the GI Bill.

Is Holberton School legit?

We let alumni answer that question. 80 Holberton School alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Holberton School and shared their experiences. Their overall rating is 4.27 out of 5.

Can I read Holberton School reviews?

You can read 80 reviews of Holberton School on Course Report! Holberton School alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Holberton School and shared their experiences. Their overall rating is 4.27 out of 5.

Is Holberton School accredited?

While bootcamps must be approved to operate, accreditation is relatively rare. Holberton School doesn't yet share information about its accreditation status.

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