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Holberton School is a two-year software engineering school with campuses in San Juan, Bogotá, Medellin, Cali, Barranquilla, Montevideo, Lima, Quito, Beirut, Lille, Laval, Toulouse, and Tunis that trains individuals to become Full Stack Software Engineers. The school's mission is to train the next generation of software developers through 100% hands-on learning. The bootcamp is broken into three different components. Students complete the 9-month Foundations school then a 6-month internship follwed by a 9-month Specializations course.
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 frameworks, students at Holberton "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 is free until students find a job and is open to anyone over 18 years old. 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. 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.
TLDR; This program isn't worth it, stay away. Also their ISA is choking and has a rediculous cap on maximum payment. 17%, 3.5 years and 85k max.
App Academy, Rithm, Lambda are a few that i know which are MUCH better ISAs. around 15%, 2-3 years and 40k max. Better curriculum, better cost, muuuuch faster timeline...just better. Hell, 42 school is FREE.
I know a lot of people share my frustrations and its stupid to see none of it brought to light because they won't make an...
TLDR; This program isn't worth it, stay away. Also their ISA is choking and has a rediculous cap on maximum payment. 17%, 3.5 years and 85k max.
App Academy, Rithm, Lambda are a few that i know which are MUCH better ISAs. around 15%, 2-3 years and 40k max. Better curriculum, better cost, muuuuch faster timeline...just better. Hell, 42 school is FREE.
I know a lot of people share my frustrations and its stupid to see none of it brought to light because they won't make any changes if everyone is just all "Keep it up, everything is just amazing at holberton!" they will never change if they aren't exposed.
There was one other review about lazy education and he was 100% right, it's the most helpful review on course report if you click the filter "most helpful" because it's true.
Do your research, message holberton students on linkedin, find their githubs and see what kind of stuff they did. Is it worth it to you? Probably not as you'll see.
If you really want to do this, stay for the 3 months of C and bash ( if you really wanna learn C, Command line/Bash ) and then drop out and self learn, everything else after that is just a private company's attempt at being freeCodeCamp minus all the hundreds of hours of totally FREE videos/tutorials and lessons, all put together by actual industry experienced professionals. It's not 2014 anymore, theres many other programs with much more competitive ISA agreements and faster. 2 years is a joke their 2nd year program is a joke.
I've done the whole program ( which is the first 9 months lets be real ) and currently this program is just not worth it and not competitive cost wise. So lets get this out of the way:
Don't believe any marketing they advertised about "only 3% get accepted" this is pure bs.
They might have taken that down already, because they accept as many people as they can get, it is a pure numbers game. I remember submitting a serious youtube video, a long ass medium post, moved on to buliding a decent website that did everything and was accepted almost immediately, seconds later, way too fast to check anything.
Bottom line is that they just need to get as many people as possible to sign their ISA agreement and hope that a large percentage of them stay for the lock in period where they owe the full 17% I think it's over 3 months. Just completely arbitrary rules and hours about how long you stay versus what you owe:
it is 3.5 years of payment on 17% off the top of your salary. The max here is 85K which is absolutely rediculous. They recently divided up year 1 and 2 as 40k and 45K Even if you opt out of year 2 they consider your year 1 as 60% of the full program and apparently 60 == 100 where you are expected to pay the full percentage and at the full maximum amount. This is just pure greed, bullshit. I wouldn't be upset about this if the program was worth it but it is not.
Doing this program will most likely get you a devOps job. I did not even know what devOps was until it was too late. It isn't software development, it's not frontend/backend. It's playing around with infrastructure tools and services and building automation scripts. "Full Stack Developer" is also just a marketing lie. they never even mention devOps.
The whole point here in doing this program is to get a job. You are given 3 months of C. This is helpful to nothing but C/Embedded jobs which are slim to none and definitely favors CS grad/actual computer science qualified candidates. Bash is also thrown in, a skill only nice to have with devOps. Sooo 3 months go to a low/unmarketable job skills.
After that you focus on python. a language that favors... data science? which usually is a field of PhDs masters people or statistic majors. machine learning? Again you don't have the background for the machine learning field and that isn't taught at school anyways. Annnnd devOps, the field they failed to mention anything to you about. The only job you will basically be preparing for in this school. SO about 3 months of a very specific job skill.
Everything is broken up into small bite sized tasks, and then a project is thrown on you that kind of tests what you've learned. It's a good attempt at what freeCodeCamp gives you for free, but it's worse because where freeCodeCamp is constantly improving by a team of people and it's FILLED with projects to work on. Holberton's curriculum staff drinks the koolaid hard and thinks everything is just perfect and any criticism is a hostile attack that needs to be aggressivly defended on every point made.
There are no instructors. staff at the school was always very defensive and held off on offering much support. It was as if you should be grateful you're even in the building and everything you are given is a form a charity, and don't question it.
It's "peer learning". You are basically on your own and have to rely on google or other students that also googled it...so basically use a lot of google? So no, not peer learning. they pad the weeks with "PLDS" peer learning days. Which are days that nothing happens: people that did the work are held back a day, people that struggled and continue to struggle by asking people and failing to google then spend the day asking people again and without googling and still struggle. Most people in this category would eventually just give up and copy code or ask a friend to just give them the answer. So maybe a combined 2 weeks of the 9 months is spent like this.
So what about projects? You get one fully built over engineered website that they make you spend WAY too much time on. It's one website, with an API a database and very light frontend. it's all built with python and flask which again very few companies use for web development backend. MySQL which is useful. about 2 weeks of useful SQL knowledge. Again this is all WAY stretched out.
Your portfolio is going to be one shell terminal and one end to end website.
How about javascript? the most desirable language that every web development job looks for? filled with very popular and desirable frameworks? You get about 1 week of javascript and jQuery, the least cared about framework/library at this point. So basically nothing.
The final project is something that you have to come up with yourself and spend 2 weeks off and you show it off the holberton's "connections" that they gather for a "career night". I did mine, guess how many people showed up? No one. Which leads to my next point
How about mentors? This is another marketing Lie, WAY over exaggeration. This school has no one that works on building connections for the school. Mentors in my experience were few and far in between and usually were not even engineers. A tiny fraction of the mentors were engineers and we were basically discouraged from contacting them about anything career related. They were never helpful, just showed up for 30 minutes of public speaking practice. It's usually up to students to find mentors.
Any connections this school had were dried up by batch 2, it is now batch 8.
Job Support, the biggest thing a coding bootcamp student would need? Terrible. I would say not applicable but basically it boils down to a founder direct messaging you for something he came across. If you are lucky he will message you, if not he messaged someone else and you are on your own. That means countless hours networking and going to events and practicing hackerrank
Interview practice? very bad. The majority of the material they would give you were recycled questions with 1 word answers "who founded twitter?" "who created C?" "how much is amazon worth" "what command would I use to change directories?" "what is the shadow file?" "what is contained in the passwd file?" Completely useless questions with no value that you'll never hear. and then 1 or 2 recycled algorithm problems that you had already worked on in a past assignment. Only the last 3-4 interview practices felt good. We did a total of maybe 10 interviews?
So 3 months of unmarketable C and barely marketable bash, 3 months of devOps popular python, 1 week of javascript, 2 weeks of MySQL.
Not nearly enough web development exposure (read:javascript/a portfolio) to match up to any other coding bootcamp. Hackreactor and all the rest will blow you out of the water for web development. Unless you spend more months self learning without the school, something you could have done from the beginning.
Soft Skills, what soft skills??? You give 3 presentations, write useless blog posts that no one reads, useless diagrams. Nope i'm not talking about something useful like UML diagrams, like "draw a picture of how recursion works". If you don't already have great people/networking skills, none of their advice is going to help you.
The last portion of this padded/stretched out curriculum is devOps. You learn a very VERY surface level explanation of the internet, protocols, system design, etc... just enough that maybe you can regurgitate a term or too, but if anyone asks a deeper question you are screwed. So this portion is almost just like a glimpse of "oh btw this is devOps, that thing you've been unknowingly working towards" You setup up an nginx server a few times, haproxy, draw a few system design diagrams. You don't ever focus too long any one topic or tool to be able to market yourself as having any kind of proficiency in it. So basically, it is almost useless, and if you still weren't interested in a devOps job, it is actually completely useless.
Out of the 9 month curriculum the most useful things you will learn and can confidently say you are at a junior engineer level of understanding are python, bash, and MySQL. Minus all the C and devOps and peer learning days and jeapordy question interviews and blog post writing....Maybe 3 months total.
They also mentioned a "6 month internship" this is written down as if it is baked into the program. It's not. That's completely up to you, whatever you find. it's just more bs and makes you think like this is part of the schedule lol. No.
The year 2 was never anything very fleshed out. And if you can go 2 years without work, in SF, ummm lucky you?
There was more web development practice, more C practice, and now they offer "machine learning and VR" that was developed entirely by other students??...yeah i'll pass. Udemy has courses and most are made by actual experienced industry professionals/educators. Go there for that.
It's bad enough that you can't just get a loan and pay it off because 85,000 is rediculous. So you will be stuck with a big chunk of your paycheck sliced off the top and after taxes and whatever fees you are basically going to be living tight in SF for the next 3.5 years.
The only good thing that came was from the friends I made.
Holberton School of Holberton School
Community Manager
Apr 19, 2021
Is the best school of software because you have learn a lot of things and you used every concept in the next project, and you start with C and learnt from the basis to the advanced topics in order to use that concepts in posterior python knowdledge
It's a great experience from every aspect, helps you grow personally and professionally, not only teach you programming also teach you soft skills to have a better performance in real life, create very strong ties with your peers, can make friends for life, as far as academics has a good management of the content they offer and encourage you to take out all the mental potential that one has, in general has been a great experience, maybe one thing that is against it is that many people do n...
It's a great experience from every aspect, helps you grow personally and professionally, not only teach you programming also teach you soft skills to have a better performance in real life, create very strong ties with your peers, can make friends for life, as far as academics has a good management of the content they offer and encourage you to take out all the mental potential that one has, in general has been a great experience, maybe one thing that is against it is that many people do not have the ability to devote 100% to this program because of its hourly intensity, before entering the program many people have to save a large amount of money to be able to devote to study, I also feel that they should manage all the sites in the same way, because there are very significant differences in infrastructure and other administrative and academic issues of each site.
Is a really good program to develop all your endemic an non-endemic skills .The projects are designed to feed and boost your hungry for knowledge. The framework is a remarkable way to polish your knowledge by teching othes and letting others help you.
I am currently a student at Holberton School, in the middle of my first year (foundations).
I already loved the innovative concept of the Income Share Agreement (ISA) before starting because I couldn't afford going to college or paying for a super-expensive bootcamp. Now I can focus on studying, and pay 17% of my salary for 3 years and a half once I land a job! Also, this makes the school super inclusive, and you can really feel that they're trying their best to bring more minori...
I am currently a student at Holberton School, in the middle of my first year (foundations).
I already loved the innovative concept of the Income Share Agreement (ISA) before starting because I couldn't afford going to college or paying for a super-expensive bootcamp. Now I can focus on studying, and pay 17% of my salary for 3 years and a half once I land a job! Also, this makes the school super inclusive, and you can really feel that they're trying their best to bring more minorities in tech and I love it. The space we share is super safe, and absolutely everybody has the same chances of success.
The culture at Holberton is what I like the best. Since the program is project-based and peer-learning based, we are constantly push to collaborate, help each other out and move forward together. I love this because in other schools I've been, the focus was always on obtaining the best grades and it made the atmosphere toxic. At Holberton, I have a real community I can rely on: peers, staff, alumni, mentors. Everybody will go out of their way to try and help you if you put the effort in.
The curriculum is tough, so it might not be a one-size-fits-all type of school. There is a lot of material we cover, and we move quite fast. This is awesome for me because I really feel the progress on a day to day basis and I can tell I've gotten more confident on a variety of skills, both technical and soft. But it takes a lot of hard work and you have to be prepared for long, tiring weeks. Although I have to say it's been really rewarding and satisfying so far!
In any case I would recommend giving the application a try because you have nothing to loose, and you get to learn how to build your first web page (yes, during the application process). And the application is totally free!
I'm writing as a student halfway into the program.
Coming from a background of studying Computer Science's in high school and one year of communal college, I was in awe after coming here. I always felt the way I was learning wasn't very efficient. Starring at a professor hours at a time while he goes line through line of code - I was processing 10% of the information coming in. I took multiple online courses on my own and was already learning more than I did in months in school.
...
I'm writing as a student halfway into the program.
Coming from a background of studying Computer Science's in high school and one year of communal college, I was in awe after coming here. I always felt the way I was learning wasn't very efficient. Starring at a professor hours at a time while he goes line through line of code - I was processing 10% of the information coming in. I took multiple online courses on my own and was already learning more than I did in months in school.
But I wanted to take this one step further - I wanted a place that realized how to free ones full potential, and I think I found it. One thing that's extremely important to realize, it's not going to be easy. There's no 'easy' way of becoming a software engineer. You are going to have to work hours every single day and most weekends. You might feel at certain points that you can't do it, but you will get through those times.
There are no formal teachers or classes at Holberton School. Everything you learn is through projects you do on a daily basis (sometimes more than a day). If you come across a problem you can't seem to figure out on your own, you will always have ~30 other friends around you who are going through the exact same thing. Of course not everything is self taught, and multiple days a week are mandatory to be on campus, in which you will go over the projects from the past few days in groups of peers.
If you're wondering if this is the best place for you, I think you have to know exactly what you want. If you're looking for some similar college experience (parties, less intense studies, etc.), this is not what you will find here. All of the students in this school are extremely motivated and focused, and thus are capable of working together in the best way. We all have one goal in common - to become software engineers.
Feel free to ask me any more questions - DM me on twitter @eitanmayer57
I am from cohort 0 from Bogota Colombia and I just can say. if you are a person who wants to learn/improve your tech skills Holberton is the perfect place for you, therefore, you have to be willing to learn from scratch in a high-level.
Honestly, I learned more in three months here than a year in a traditional school.
Holberton has a disruptive method is not centralized only en tech skills also the program make you improve your social skills and make you learn how to work into ...
I am from cohort 0 from Bogota Colombia and I just can say. if you are a person who wants to learn/improve your tech skills Holberton is the perfect place for you, therefore, you have to be willing to learn from scratch in a high-level.
Honestly, I learned more in three months here than a year in a traditional school.
Holberton has a disruptive method is not centralized only en tech skills also the program make you improve your social skills and make you learn how to work into a team.
They have an amazing curriculum you will learn about low-level programming, algorithms, high-level programming, Devops and more.
highly recommended
My experience at Holberton has been mostly positive. I will say that it is a commitment, and that I had to cut out various social aspects of my life to finish projects, but if you go into the program with the mindset of devoting large portions of your time to it, you'll be good to go.
The content and projects were challenging and covered a wide spectrum in the realm of software engineering. I've attended one other coding bootcamp in SF and found it to be lacking in content and de...
My experience at Holberton has been mostly positive. I will say that it is a commitment, and that I had to cut out various social aspects of my life to finish projects, but if you go into the program with the mindset of devoting large portions of your time to it, you'll be good to go.
The content and projects were challenging and covered a wide spectrum in the realm of software engineering. I've attended one other coding bootcamp in SF and found it to be lacking in content and depth compared to Holberton. Even my college degree felt like a cakewalk compared to some of the projects I had to work through during the program.
Another great aspect of the program is that it's okay to fail at something or not meet a deadline because you have the ability to resubmit the project after meeting with your peers and discussing the project. Peer learning is a huge aspect of the program, and it really helps to learn from your peers / see different methods of thinking and problem solving.
Overall, I recommend this program to anyone who has the time and drive to really dedicate themselves to it. It can be difficult, time consuming, and exhausting, but ultimately worth it.
I love the self-training, learn the number of things I could find in reputable sources, I tried really hard to find something good enough to take as my professional route when I was close to taking my decision to be an entire autodidact. I meet Holberton, read the syllabus and feel secure that I finally could say, I find it, I found what I was looking for, the best way to learn the best technical abilities and engineer thinking, adding the possibility to interact with other extraordinary p...
I love the self-training, learn the number of things I could find in reputable sources, I tried really hard to find something good enough to take as my professional route when I was close to taking my decision to be an entire autodidact. I meet Holberton, read the syllabus and feel secure that I finally could say, I find it, I found what I was looking for, the best way to learn the best technical abilities and engineer thinking, adding the possibility to interact with other extraordinary people in the tech industry, until the sun of today I still think the same, based on my experience I recommend Holberton School.
Having gone through traditional university at NYU as an econ major, worked in the tech industry, and started my own startup, it was not easy to get an interview for any junior/intern developer position in tech. However, I was eventually able to get an iOS contract job at an early stage startup that took a chance on me for 3-4 months.
It was after this iOS contract job that I started evaluating possible options for 1-2 year long coding schools (not a bootcamp, but not a traditiona...
Having gone through traditional university at NYU as an econ major, worked in the tech industry, and started my own startup, it was not easy to get an interview for any junior/intern developer position in tech. However, I was eventually able to get an iOS contract job at an early stage startup that took a chance on me for 3-4 months.
It was after this iOS contract job that I started evaluating possible options for 1-2 year long coding schools (not a bootcamp, but not a traditional university) where I can grok foundational CS concepts (and their practical applications), build my own professional network, prepare for interviews, and, most importantly, learn how to learn. When trying to find a school that fit these criteria, I happened upon Holberton. It not only satisfied these criteria, but they were free upfront and would only charge me once I got a high-paying software engineering job through the ISA model. After doing my due diligence about the program and the people behind it, I was convinced and moved my life from NYC to SF.
Year 1 was really tough, but I couldn’t have built those programming/CS muscles without the continuous cycle of “struggling, getting into a good rhythm, and drastically ratcheting up the difficulty.” Having been in the tech industry for a little while before Holberton, my favorite parts of the program were that it: incorporated peer-learning in a way that properly simulates what it’s actually like to work on a team, made everything project-based so that you were able to apply concepts in relevant scenarios, and did not have any formal teachers spoon-feed you knowledge.
That being said, Holberton staff and TAs are always available if you do need help. However, as a student, you’re expected to use the resources that are given on projects, your peers around you, and Google to try to solve the problem at hand before “moving up the ladder.” If you’re asking your boss (technical or non-technical) a question that you can easily figure out through Google, you’re wasting her time. If you’re asking your boss a very-well framed, specific question that you’ve racked your brain over and thoroughly researched through Google and your peers, but couldn’t find the answer you were looking for, then you’re saving everyone’s time by asking the person high enough on the chain who probably does know what issues you’re having.
I loved how Holberton approached education so much that, even after having ~10 interviews, I decided to immediately take the full-time offer at Holberton as their newest software engineer at the time. It’s almost been a year that I’ve been working here at Holberton and I’ve been learning at that same insane pace as I was as a student.
If you have any questions about the program, feel free to tweet me @srinitude!
Hi I'm Spencer. I was in Cohort 5 at Holberton School SF and I started in Jan 2018. Before starting I was a chef, and before that a Navy vet. I got a job at a startup called Naborly 2 months before I finished year 1. Holberton School was one of the best experiences that I've had at a school as well as being one of the most difficult points in my life. I'm a major fan of the project and peer based learning. I don't really do well in traditional learning enviornments. I don't want to sit an...
Hi I'm Spencer. I was in Cohort 5 at Holberton School SF and I started in Jan 2018. Before starting I was a chef, and before that a Navy vet. I got a job at a startup called Naborly 2 months before I finished year 1. Holberton School was one of the best experiences that I've had at a school as well as being one of the most difficult points in my life. I'm a major fan of the project and peer based learning. I don't really do well in traditional learning enviornments. I don't want to sit and have someone tell me how it works, I want to get my hands dirtry and learn through experience. This is a major tenant of Holberton. There are no instructors. You have to rely on your research skills, but more importantly you have to develop your communication skills. Your biggest resource at Holberton are your peers. Somewhere in the building is someone who has encountered the same problem that you're possibly facing and I guarantee you that the same person will be more than happy to give you the answer.
All that being said Holberton is not easy. We start of with C and at first it can be difficult to understand, but learning C also provides a lot of benefits. A lot of programming languages are heavily influenced by C and it's the perfect language to learn strong programming fundamentals. Once you learn C languages like Python, Javascript, etc become very easy to pickup.
I really enjoyed my time at the school. I learned a lot about being a good team player, communication, and networking. The most important thing I learned though was that being able to write beautiful code is the smallest part of it. I'll leave you with some advice that Julian, cofounder of Holberton, gave me: "You can write the most amazing code the world has ever seen, but if you can't communicate what it does or teach someone how it works then you're not a very good engineer." If you want to be a great engineer, then I recommend Holberton School.
How much does Holberton School cost?
The average bootcamp costs $14,142, but Holberton School does not share pricing information. You can read a cost-comparison of other popular bootcamps!
What courses does Holberton School teach?
Holberton School offers courses like Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality | Project-Based Curriculum, Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum , Full Stack with Living Assistance and Reduced ISA, Low Level & Algorithms | Project-Based Curriculum and 1 more.
Where does Holberton School have campuses?
Holberton School has in-person campuses in Barranquilla, Beirut, Bogotá, Cali, Laval, Lille, Lima, Medellín, Montevideo, New Haven, Quito, San Juan, and Tunis.
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!
Is Holberton School legit?
We let alumni answer that question. 80 Holberton School alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Holberton School and rate their overall experience a 4.27 out of 5.
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.
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 rate their overall experience a 4.27 out of 5.
Is Holberton School accredited?
Yes Licensed in the state of CA by the BPPE. Licensed in the state of CT by OHE. No licensing requirements in Colombia.
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