Horizons School of Technology

I loved my experience at Horizons. It was one of the best things that I've ever done. I learned so many different skills and concepts from the exceptional instructors as well as peers. The learning environment was supportive and friendly, but not too easy; it kept pushing you to do better. The practice projects always made sense. I never went "when will I even use this?" The fast pace kept new content fresh and me always being excited for the next day. Overall, it was a wonderful experience and I urge anyone who wants to learn web development to give this program a shot.

I did Horizons two summers ago after my Freshman year. I really had no idea what to expect when I started the program but I knew that I was considering computer science as a major and I wanted to solidify that decision before I realized I had gone down the wrong path. Horizons summer program was everything I wanted and more. While the program is definitely one of those experiences where you get out only what you put in, if you work hard it is truly a transformative course. I came into the program with an interest in programming and came out a confident web developer with multiple projects to show. I also ended the summer convinced I wanted to continue with CS at school. The summer gave me the confidence to transfer into engineering and pursue a career in development. Not only were the instructors extremely inspiring and invested in my technical education but they were also more than willing to give me resume and interview tips as well as help me network. This past summer I interned at Google as an Engineering Practicum intern and this summer I plan to intern at Palantir as a Forward Deployed Engineer. I am so excited to have these opportunities and it all started with Horizons.

If you have the slightest thought of enrolling in a coding bootcamp, do yourself a favor and go for it! The instructors were incredible, the material was engaging, and the oppertunities which opened up to me were invaluable.  I went from having nothing to show employers on my resume, to having three soild programming projects which I was able to talk about when approching employers.  Aside from the technical experience, there is a strong sense of community formed with your fellow classmates.  We had BBQ's, went on trips, out to dinner, and Horizons scheduled class trips for us on weekends! (Bubble soccer!). 

I went to Horizons last summer and had a pretty transformative experience. I had very little prior coding experience so I learned a lot very quickly. The sheer amount of information could be sort of disorienting at times but it's clear to me that it was incredible growth experience both personally (coming from the Midwest and living fulltime in SF was very different and sometimes difficult) and academically (I learned a lot, I know I can learn anything I want in software or data science and I didn't have that confidence before the experience). They were clear about the curriculum from the frontend and they followed it well. I felt like it was very comprehensive and it covered a lot of what a software developer could need. However, I wish there was a bit more emphasis on pure comp sci--we had a week on algorithms and basic coding etc. but I would have appreciated a little more depth on that. I also realized during the camp that I am not that interested in software development full-time, so while that kind of soured me on parts of the curriculum, the team at Horizons was very understanding and flexible. They figured out how to provide us resources for what we were really interested in if we didn't attach so much to software itselfwhether that is venture capital, product design, or just general consulting and business. All in all, the instructors and founders are hands-on and helpful, you can tell that they want to provide people a good experience. That supportiveness is really what made the camp for me.

Coming into Horizons, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I wasn’t a CS major in college, but I took a couple CS classes and did plenty of coding in some projects on the side and in different research labs, so I had the basic fundamentals down (data structures and databases mainly). Horizons completely surpassed all of my expectations. I learned a completely new stack (NodeJS + React/Redux) that was geared towards industry and completely different than the things I learned in an academic setting. Everything they taught was new, and I learned a ton over the summer. All the instructors and TAs were super great and were ready to help whenever I needed them. It was pretty straightforward coming out of Horizons to find a job in the tech industry but more importantly, Horizons really gave me the confidence that I could build anything. Can’t recommend this bootcamp enough.

I took the summer course offered in the summer of 2017, in lieu of exploring internship opportunities. It was a risk from my perspective, as I was a rising senior in college - but it was well worth it. Not only did I have an incredible time meeting so many new people, but I got a chance to delve into development, an area that I had no experience in. Taking my background with the more creative, this program gave me the technical skills to bring my designs to reality. 

Specifically to the curriculum itself, it is pretty comprehensive and covers a wide spectrum of topics. What is great about the structure is that, in many ways, it allows for anyone to maintain their own comfortable pace and the support is there to help if you do fall behind. The instructors were helpful and there to assist if any problem arises. Something to keep in mind is that a lot of the information presented is the foundation and so to make most of this program is to keep pushing oneself further and going beyond what is required - this program is equipped to help you make that extra mile. 

In terms of the entrepreneurship, a lot of interesting speakers are brought in to talk and give their perspective of the industry. It was very interesting to see these different views and just a great way to decompress after staring at a screen. 

My advice for anyone interested is to make the most of your experience at this program - how much you learn depends on how much you apply yourself and how hungry you are to grow. Horizons provides a great community and a vast array of resources, so make use of it while you can. 

I attended Horizons as a 2017 Summer Fellow (tuition and housing covered). I had a very positive experience--here's some things that stood out.

• Relentless focus on practicality: Horizon's syllabus is packed with topics directly relevant for developing modern mobile and web apps. Little to no time is spent on more theoretical CS concepts. The result is that you can start making tangible projects really quickly. For example, many of our early projects were implementing imitations of popular web apps: Twitter clone for learning HTML/CSS, using Twilio for learning API calls, mock Facebook chatroom for implementing servers, to name a few.
• Choice of tracks: In my year, Horizons offered 3 tracks in the latter half of the program, allowing us to curtail the program towards our specific goals. You could complete some guided week-long projects (most popular), prepare for job interviews (primarily recent grads), or work full-time on your project with a team.
• Community: I felt a really strong sense of community at Horizons within the first week of the program. Part of it is the fact that most Horizonites are college students or recent grads. This helps you bond with other students, because you're all looking to learn about tech and potentially start tech-related careers. At the same time, I found Horizonites highly energetic, collaborative, and innovative--I always looked forward to spending time with and learning from my fellow students.  I'm guessing most other students felt the same way (just read the rest of the overwhelmingly positive reviews on this site). I'm not aware of any other bootcamps that are similarly focused on college-aged students.
• Exposure to Silicon Valley culture: Horizons gives you a sense of life in Silicon Valley and the broader tech industry. Besides being situated in San Francisco blocks away from such impactful tech companies as Uber and Twitter, you also learn from regular speakers working in tech. I learned so much from these speakers, not only about careers paths in tech, but about different ideas for improving lives through technology. Last year, we had venture capitalists, product managers, founders and CEOs, and software engineers, with several high-profile speakers including Keith Rabois, Cyan Banister, and Balaji Srinivasan.
• Availability of teachers and founders: I generally found the founders Abhi and Darwish as well as the head teachers Moose and Ricky extremely supportive and accessible. I never hesitated to ask for coding help or career advice from these knowledgeable individuals. After the program, I frequently went to Sunny and Darwish for advice about the recruiting process, and they were extremely helpful in the process of securing a tech internship for the next summer.
• It's really fun: Horzions is just objectively a fun way to spend a summer. You're spending all day coding and building with 100 different diverse, energetic college students. And outside of coding, you have the entire city of San Francisco to explore with your fellow Horizonites! 

Horizons was one of the best summers I've had so far. I would recommend it enthusiastically to any college student looking to learn about tech and start building things quickly.

I did the 12-week summer session at Horizons because I wanted to get a job in tech. In college I studied Economics and Math, so I wanted to get some coding skills to be more competitive in the job search.

Here's Horizons in a nutshell: 

smart people + lots of work + great resources = extraordinary amount of learning 

Smart people: Your classmates will be brilliant students from around the world who are committed to learning how to build things. You'll also be able to meet potential cofounders, which is vital to launching a successful startup or even working on fun projects. 

Lots of work: Expect to work a lot at Horizons, especially if you don't have a background in coding which was the case for me. However, there is no busy work. All the work you do is valuable. What you put in is what you get out. 

Great resources: The team at Horizons has put together a superb cirriculum. Horizons also employs Teaching Assistants who there to help you learn. The speaker series helped us to learn how to turn the coding skills we were learning into tangible results out there in the world. I'm always impressed with the caliber of people that Horizons manages to bring in. They even took us to Founders Fund (Peter Thiel's venture capital firm) for a panel Q&A with three Founders Fund partners. My friends and I spent a lot of time talking about ideas from the speakers. 

Extraordinary amount of learning: If you want to learn how to code and you're willing to work hard, you can do no better than Horizons.

I now work in Product Operations at a fast-growing tech company. It's an incredible job, and I woulnd't have gotten if it weren't for Horizons. I rely upon skills that I learned in Horizons on a daily basis. When I was searching for jobs, the Horizons team bent over backwards to help me.

Abhi, Darwish, Sunny, Moose, and the whole Horizons team have created something very special. They are completely dedicated to helping their students realize their dreams--I know because they did it for me :) 

Horizons is a coding bootcamp, and it excels at that: a low student/instructor ratio with qualified and experienced instructors, a top of the notch, ridiculously refined curriculum, a very very high potential network, and an ambitious management team. But it is much, much more than just a place to learn code. 

I took a considerable risk to do the Semester immersive course, left a paid internship at a tech start-up in NYC and flew to SF with practically no safety cushion. I was also worried that the curriculum wouldn't be challenging enough since I was already writing code at work, had taught myself some programming languages and learned some CS related concepts in college (I studied engineering in college). Also had a bias against JavaScript at the time, because I didn't have the key to its powers. One week into the program, all of those concerns were completely wiped away: many of my classmates were CS majors/grads and were definitely learning as much as the rest of us, I was very much challenged intellectually allbeit without any negative pressure, and I discovered the almighty omnipotence of JavaScript. Before I describe the non-coding components of this experience, I want to stress how good Horizons was strictly in terms of technical education. I learned to build the front-end of a website in a million different ways, SQL and NoSQL databases, the basics of computer networking and of the Internet and how to practically utilize those concepts to set up a full-stack application, Shell scripting, algorithms and data structures, software design paradigms. And this was just in the first month. The TA's were obsessed with teaching us the best technologies, seeing us implement best practices, etc. The instructors were bottomless tech-knowledge pits (thinking of Demi in particular here #legend). 

Now that I've hopefully hammered home the quality of the coding education, let's move on to the fun (or boring depending on your personality) stuff. The network. This is a one of a kind web of high achieving, ambitious young individuals. It's impossible to objectively define success and satisfy everyone with the definition, but I have seen so many different takes on that word in my time at Horizons. You will be part of a diverse, gender-balanced mix of amazing individuals from all walks of life, and you will create strong bonds with them. You will learn from and debate with hard-working, thoughtful VCs, entrepreneurs, investors, C-level execs from wildly successful organizations about topics ranging from product design, to the meaning of life. And then you will realize that these people aren't very different from you, an adventurer, and knowledge hunter attending a coding bootcamp in SoMA, SF. You will connect with Darwish, Abhi, Demi, Moose and other fantastic human beings who will do whatever they can to help you become better and achieve your goal. You will be in the cradle of innovation, Rome of the 21st century. While grabbing a drink at a bar 2 blocks away from Horizons, I met the CEO of Dropbox. We were blocks away from the offices of the tech companies that people in South Africa, the UK, Chile and Singapore all use to get by every day.

I strongly recommend this experience to anyone interested in the tech industry and entrepreneurship - future software engineers, product managers, entrepreneurs, investors and unicorn CEO's to apply. And if you're selected, don't hesitate, do it!

Many aspiring Horizonites ask me: 
Has the program changed your life in any way?

I applied to Horizons around July of 2016, about a year before the actual program. Horizons emailed our school’s email list, and I was deadset on nabbing that fellowship.

I got it November of that year and committed to starting the program June the following year. I committed to it before committing to any other post-grad plan and banked on the hope that whatever company was going to employ me would be willing to accommodate the Horizons timeline. I committed to it because I knew it was only going to change my career path for the better. It's changed me in reinforcing my abilities and my commitment to entering the tech industry. It's given me confidence in my skills, commitment to a career in tech and a solid and strong community.

In CS classes in high school I always told myself I wasn’t good enough, especially when my (mostly) male classmates told me how early and easily they finished. I never thought I could fathom becoming a software engineer because people were always better and smarter than I was. But going through this program has built my confidence in my technical capacity. I’ve also found so much joy in coding – it’s like a giant puzzle that I MUST solve. I get into flow so quickly now, and it’s hard for me to snap out!

I’m now confident that I can build things for myself and others. The instructors, TAs & founders themselves were extremely kind, caring and helpful. They have your back and you can trust they'll help you grow in any way they can. Horizons is not just any other bootcamp - it's a community. The program and the people in the program have definitely changed my life, and they continue to do so. What more could you ask for? 

Full review here: https://mikareyes.tumblr.com/post/163309869682/horizons-faq-from-a-current-horizonite

Horizons was one of the best educational decisions I ever made. I studied traditional computer science in college. I am an entrepreneurial person motivated by product and people, and I was frustrated that after studying CS in school for 2 years, I still could not easily build my own web and mobile applications. Horizons fixed this in 3 months. I build websites all the time for fun/ projects/ anything now, and I have a mobile application in the iOS App Store. I am also developing a user-facing, social web application in my free time. None of this would be possible without Horizons. If you here words like "Node.js," "API," "node modules," "framework," "back-end," and "SQL" all of the time, but you are still confused about what they mean, you need to do Horizons. I am so much more confident in job interviews after the program, and I am able to code whatever I want in my free time.