Northwestern Boot Camps

Do not sign up for this bootcamp if you are assuming that the university name has anything to do with the quality of the material. 
You will be highly disappointed if you set your expectations this way. 
This is strictly a review of Trilogy Education Services, and their methods for building the camp with a ___ University name slapped on. 

I'm not going to say that this bootcamp was not valuable - there were positive takeaways and learning experiences -- BUT -- those positives came solely from the bonds I made with my peers and small portions of the teaching staff.

TEACHERS
The instructor choices were a mixed bag. We had one teacher who was highly knowledgable on the subjects, and struggled to point students in the right direction with the curriculum and pace supplied by Trilogy. The other instructor was a complete mess, with no pedagogical knowledge whatsoever, and barely grasped the materials of our program. The second instructor conducted themselves as if they had only just introduced the material, creating endless frustration and confusion on a weekly basis within my cohort. Red flags for miles.

ORGANIZATION METHODS
Trilogy's administration was incredibly disorganized throughout the entire process, frequently mixing me up with other students, unable to manage meetings and calendars, providing little technical insight throughout the career portion of their service, generally unable to keep track of their own system. You need to be a serious advocate for yourself, and hold each person on Trilogy's team accountable by tracking their follow-up, to make sure that you get what you need and deserve from the money and time you're investing.

ATTITUDES
Trilogy's attitude toward you and their work is entirely a "by your own bootstraps" mindset. They WILL play some psychological cards by saying your success is only on you (and for the educational determination portion of this experience, they're right, it is), but they WILL NOT be very helpful in managing the technological errors of their student portal, nor the pedadogical errors in their instructor decisions, nor the miscommunication errors of their internal staff.  
You WILL be investing a lot of your own limited time helping to keep them organized, and you WILL constantly  need to be verifying and re-confirming their conversations with you. It is possible to do well, with a lot of added frustrations.

THOUGHTS
The application process before the course began felt a lot like a fast-paced, high-pressure sale, and they were not able to answer simple questions about demographics and success rates. Their responses to these questions were naive and downright lies ("We don't like to view our students as numbers"). If you're truly determined to take this huge educational step with Trilogy, ask the tough questions before you commit. If any of their answers make you feel uneasy or unsure, know that there are many, many different coding bootcamps out there, and invest wisely elsewhere.

I'm respectively a medical professional with no prior analytic or coding experience. While working in clinical research for a few successful years, I got fascinated with the exploratory data interpretation and visualization methods. For this apparent reason, I correctly carried out my extensive search for various Data Science Boot Camp classes. Comprehensively, Northwestern Data Science BCS program steered my possible way as to how I can accurately apply their data analytics tools into my research career. Their practical understanding tactfully encouraged me to use the qualitative data point interpretations methodically. The BCS of Northwestern University with no reasonable doubt is efficiently designed and has made the learning process easier. The education team along with their concerned management are always there to willingly support my limited knowledge as to how I can tactfully recognize the data analytics specific codes. The talented team generously stimulated my possible path of questionable action and then to correctly apply to their terminologies. They undoubtedly assisted me to cruise through a challenging time during class work or homework. Northwestern BCS has indeed equipped me with practical tools whether it's merely their talented instructors or from the competent career service team. Their career service has directly provided straightforward strategies and exercises which are helpful to get gainfully employed into data science.

I decided to purse the career path of full stack developer due to my passion for technology and my interest in computers. I come from a mental health background as a fully licensed clinician that was ready for a major change in my life and career.  Even though I had dedicated all of my post-graduate career to social services, I needed  a change for my life. I took some free online courses that I felt were helpful in getting me more interested in programming, however without a structured approach to learning, I struggled to connect concepts and do something practical with what was being taught in those courses. I found positive reviews from Northwestern and was looking for an intensive program that would help prepare me for a career switch at an affordable cost in a high quality program.

I'm about halfway completed with the program and I've really enjoyed the intensity of the program and the sense that you are actually learning practical and useful skills for a potential employer. You quickly are building websites and web applications which helps connect the concepts learned into real world application. The program does a good job of stressing how intensive the program is, and I also can't stress this enough. This course is not a 'sit back and soak in the information'. The instructors are very knowledgeable and approachable and really do want to help and teach you. I ask tons of questions to instructors and teacher assistants and they are always eager to help. 

If you want to be successful in this program, be ready to dedicate a lot of time to learning. I found it extremely helpful to constantly try to stay ahead of the course as much as possible and not fall behind in understanding homework or concepts. The moment I recognize that I'm not clear on a concept, I'm utilizing the huge range of supports that the program offers to get caught up immediately. The pace is extremely fast and if you begin to struggle to understand a concept, it can start to snowball very quickly since the course does not back track often.  

I'd been wanting to learn programming for some time, but didn't really know where to start. I tried online sites like codeacademy and seemingly the only thing that stuck was doubt - Am I learning relevant tools, how on earth do I apply this stuff in the real world?  

Now I can confidently say there's no doubt in my mind. The instructional staff didn't just walk through the code like a robot, but took you through their thought process, demo'd their personal workflows, and brought in real world applications of the technology whenever possible. You could really feel the passion and enthusiasm for the material. Then there is a support admin staff that is constantly checking in with you to make sure you are understanding the material, and setting you up with tutors when needed. This created a warm learning environment which felt like we were all in it together and nobody was going to be left behind.

I graduated with a very marketable skillset and a great approach for continued learning in the field. Which is exactly what I was after. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience and would recommend it to anyone willing to invest the time. 

This Bootcamp is definitely for very beginners. My first 6 weeks of the program were amazing and I probably learned more in that 6 weeks than I did most of my college career. However, our instructors switched and we went from having an amazing instructor who would review before class and would sit one-on-one with us, to someone who just really did compare (they were an amazing and intelligent person, but the teaching style was not what everyone in the class had come to love and relearning a new teaching style is very difficult in a program like this). 
The big selling points are "Northwestern" (remember it is run by Trilogy still, it is just a course that was approved by Northwestern) and "Career Services". Northwestern was amazing. Career services were a joke. I created a portfolio, resume and cover letter and barely got any feedback about them, and the only reason I did get feedback was because myself and another student complained about never hearing from our career specialist.  
Another big issue I had was a kid in the class literally cheated his way through the Bootcamp (he copied other people's repo's on GitHub line for line), and that's all fine and dandy because he wasted his own time and money, but they handed him a certificate when he didn't earn it and we signed clauses in our contracts saying plagiarism would not be tolerated. 
I'm not going to say I didn't gain anything from this Bootcamp, it was a lot of work and very hard, but make sure you find the Bootcamp that's right for you and really apply yourself. Be the first person there and the last person to leave. I landed an unbelievable job and I'm not sure I could have done it without going to A BOOTCAMP. 
Shop around, ask the right questions, make sure you want a full stack program, etc. Then make your own choice. May the force be with you.

Overall, I would give the Boot Camp at Northwestern a solid A.  Our instructor was extremely engaging & knowledgable in the topics relevant to the current job market.  Additionally, he was a motivator who pushed us when necessary...the coarse is by no means a sprint -- more of a marathon.  Regardless, I feel great about the experience, especially when looking at opportunities for career transition in the Chicagoland area.  The Northwestern brand, also, carries a weight all its own, and should help land me on the professional path I've been working toward.

I joined the Data-Science bootcamp at Northwestern University because I was seeking a career change and excited for the next chapter or phase of my life. I already loved Statistics and the possibilities with machine learning and Data manipulation with different programming languages such Python & R thrilled me so much, I had a deep hunger for more knowledge and boy! did that get that from day one!

My favorite aspect of the program was the immense support from the boot camp team they truly want to see you succeed and fulfill your destiny and calling. They offered sound advice in regards to what you will experience in a real-time example of work and then we received great feedback on each of the assignments which meant that there is great potential to be on the expert level of each of the subject matter.

My advice for prospective students is to always strive for Excellence but also check your wellness status. You will excel when you feel confident in your craft. Always seek counsel from other experts, they will help you get on the right and comfortable path. 

Signing out,

Motols. :-) 

I really enjoyed the Northwestern Data Science Boot Camp. It is a great way to learn the technical skills needed to start a career in the tech industry. The instructors and TA’s are very knowledgeable and extremely helpful. I had recently graduated with a bachelors in Psychology before applying for the boot camp. I did not have any prior programming knowledge before starting the course, however, that didn’t stop me from maintaining an A. They do a great job teaching you the skills from the ground up. You for sure get out what you put into the class. I feel confident that this boot camp gave me the foundation I need to get into the industry. 

This course far exceeded my expectations.  The instructor was amazing.  I was a little concerned that I would not be able to keep up with the pace of the course while working a 50 hour work week. This is a very tough course, but the instructor does a great job of keeping you motivated and the instruction staff is always there to help you through any topics you are struggling with.  The program does a great job of getting the students to work together.  Just about any time of day you could message someone in the class for help or share resourses.  

Overall, I can not say enough great things about this experiance. The instructors knowledge and energy was second to none. The instructional staff  are all industry professionals. I spent a little over 2 years working with online courses and I could never put it all together.  This course brought it all together for me.  

I had an incredible and truly life changing experience with the Northwestern Web Development Boot Camp, most of which I attribute to my instructor: Mark Thompson.  I did the Full Stack Flex (part-time) program, and Mark's ability to keep us all engaged until nearly 10 PM at night after a full day at work was nothing short of a miracle.  Class was not only educational, it was actually fun!  It was often the highlight of my day.  Mark was so genuinely excited to teach that I found him doing push ups outside the classroom on more than one occasion. 

To provide some background: I have no coding experience.  I have an undergraduate degree in economics and applied math, and I work at MB Financial Bank where I spent 2+ years on the Commercial Finance side.  I'm currently still at MB, but now working with our Data Analytics team and plan to apply elsewhere in the future.

The curriculum, and the speed at which it's taught, is honestly soul crushing LOL.   This class will take over your life.  You will not have time to workout, or get enough sleep, or socialize, or do anything else you want to do, but it is possible to graduate!  Just know what you're getting yourself into.  It will be difficult to dedicate any more than 40 hours a week to your job. 

I attended the full time, January-April web development boot camp at Northwestern University and had an overwhelmingly positive experience. As a complete beginner to the world of technology and coding, I was concerned I wouldn't be at the right level from the start, or quickly fall behind as the course kicked off. On the first day, I discovered there was a huge range of backgrounds and technical abilities in the class. The instructional team did everything in their power to cater to those who were true beginners and those who were a little more experienced with additional steps and work during class if you were ahead of the game and more complex homework assignments that were optional for all students.

I came out of the class feeling much more confident in my skills than I ever thought possible, and excited about continuing to learn and grow as a developer. At the end of the day, I truly believe it came down to the instructional team. While the program itself (curriculum and career services) should also play a role in your decision when choosing a boot camp, I think it all really comes down to the instructor. We were lucky to have CJ, who was extremely passionate and dedicated to our success. She came in early, stayed late, and occasionally set up additional on campus reviews on the weekends. As a part of the Trilogy curriculum team, we knew she was invested in making sure we were learning languages and technologies that would be the most marketable for us when we completed the course. 

The job assistance portion could be improved as we were never connected with real employers, but they are helpful as far as behavioral interview prep, salary negotiation, etc. 

Overall, I had a great experience and miss going to class every day!

Let me get this out of the way: you get what you put into this program. You need to commit the time and effort in order to be successful, like anything else. Now, let me explain why this program made it easier for me to grasp the copious amount of information that is jammed into the short six months. The instructors and TAs. Both of my instructors and all of the TAs were so helpful. They went completely out of their way to help out anytime I needed it. Rather it be by coming in early and staying late or hosting off-hour live tutorials a few times a month. I cannot express enough how great this program is.  

My main instructor was Mark and the other instructor was Scott. Both of them were absolutely fantastic but my instructor review will primarily be about Mark. Mark is a maestro (or wizard) at coding. He is able to break down the most difficult concepts and explain it in a way that was easy to understand and apply to activities and projects. Mark constantly held off-hour online tutorials for anyone to join to go over the extremely difficult portions of the content.  He actually received the Teaching Excellence Award and rightfully so. The man is better than a majority, if not all, of my professors from my undergraduate program. Everyone wants you to succeed and will go out of their way to help you.

I am still in contact with the job assistance team that is offered through this program. Jobs were constantly sent over to me throughout the program and after. Having received many offers and accepting a new job; they check in periodically to see how I am fairing. Which solidifies my statement on how much they truly care. If you're ready to give 110% I would recommend this to you. 

I had a great experience with Northwestern Boot Camp. I attended a full time program this winter at the Downtown Chicago campus. My instructor CJ was extremely knowledgable in the subject matter and presented and explained the material very well. She, as well as both of our TAs, were very dedicated to the success of the students in the class. They hosted office hours daily and were available for help outside of the classroom whenever possible. The material and work load was challenging, but manageable as long as you put in the effort. Overall I would recommend this boot camp to anybody interested in and dedicated to learning web development!

I was hesitant to sign up for a full time bootcamp knowing the hours of attention needed to be successful in/out of class, so when I found out Northwestern had a part time option I went for it.

Interview process was fairly straightforward. If you have done any coding tutorials/research at all and show your interest in web development you will be fine. I was glad I had already come up with all my boot camp questions before answering my phone call from the trilogy recruiter, as the initial phone call is the start of your interview. 

Prework is basic enough to not scare you but gives a sneak peak into the basics of what you'll cover over the six or three month course.

If you are starting from zero as I did, I HIGHLY recommend studying as much as possible through resources like Code School and Udemy to gain as much traction as possible and be prepared for what is coming. Having some knowledge of the base concepts in each technology/language we were going to cover in the course absolutely helped in completing assignments and understanding the material.

My instructor was hands down one of the BEST instructors I've ever had in my life. The encouragement, support, and knowledge he had of anything we discussed was outstanding. He knew exactly when the class needed some emotional support and a pep talk and was honest about his own experience in job seeking and pushing through the discouraging and encouraging parts of entering this job path. My instructor took time to prepare review sessions during office hours, build applications from scratch, and recorded videos on his own if we ran out of time during official class hours. Just enough fun to keep my attention but serious enough to get the work done. It is obvious he genuinely cares about the success of every single student who enters his classroom. I cannot say enough good things about the instruction I had.

Research instructors and read reviews if possible to find an instructor whose teaching style works for you. Everyone is different, and having an instructor that fits well with your learning style is essential to being successful. 

Career services is the only part of the course that felt disorganized. The career services isn't necessarily anyone within your city (same goes for your tutor, if you use them--I had a fantastic experience once I got a TA directly linked to the Northwestern Triology program), and I think it would have been more beneficial to have interacted and built a relationship with one career advisor throughout the course instead of being passed around to multiple people. Comments on my online portfolio and resume seemed a little robotic.

Other than that -- amazing experience. I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a career change or to upgrade their current skillset. I am a little terrified to begin the job search but feel like I have a lot of people rooting for me.

I am so glad I took the leap and enrolled in this bootcamp. I went from truly having 0 skills to calling myself an intermediate level developer thanks to the amazing instructional team at Northwestern. The instructors are passionate and knowledgeable. The learning is fully immersive, so you aren't just reading articles or watching videos, you are coding real-life problems. The technologies taught are definitely on point with the job market. A bonus of the program was learning agile methodologies and actually getting that experience working on real projects with other students, to mimic a work environment. In the end I walked away with a strong portfolio, and more importantly, a passion for software development and knowledge of how to keep learning and growing as a developer. The Career Services staff are great also - now that I have graduated they call me weekly to discuss my job search and help me prep responses to interview questions. I feel that I got a great value from the course and will be forever grateful that I went to the Northwestern Coding Bootcamp!

My overall experience with NU's coding bootcamp was definitely a positive one. Not quite 100% what I expected, but I would recommend it to anyone looking to gain programming knowledge, and switch careers or expand in their current career. The curriculum was very useful, being a full-stack js program, and we were given a really valuable skill of how to go about learning things on our own. I believe we also got really lucky in our instructor who was part of the team that sets the curriculum for the program, who was able to gauge how we as a class was progressing and adjust the material accordingly. I do feel very empowered to go out and be a programmer after the program, and that is fully credited to our instructional team and Student Success Manager.

I completed the part time bootcamp back in October. 

I just want to say - you get what you put in. If you aren't going to attend or do not try to complete homework. . . indeed you are not going to understand anything and you are going to waste your time and moneny. That's your fault though - honestly if i can complete this bootcamp so can you. It doesn't take a genius to learn this. It just takes dedication and commitment.

If you actually use the resources that they give you - like the four teaching assistants, multiple tutor(s) or success manager - you shouldn't have to drop out. But everyone has their own reason.
 

Also some major points on why i gave the # of stars for each rating.

1. Job Assistance
   1. I completed the bootcamp 4 months ago and I still get messages from the success manager
   2. my peers were helping each other find jobs for the first month or two after the bootcamp ended
2. Instructors
   1. the Lead Instructors have 10+ years of experience as developers/software engineers
      1. the two lead's taught us tools outside the curriculum - like how to make a  webpack.config.js file from scratch and flexbot
   2. the TA's were either QA's, Testers or Javascript Developers - that also attended a bootcamp elsewhere(like devbootcamp)
3. Curriculum
   1. You can't complain about curriculum. . . It's pretty much the same everywhere you go. . .
   2. It was cheaper attending here - especially with the early registration discount($500-$1000)
   3. even though curriculum is the same everywhere - our lead instructors for the most part tried teaching us new material during office hours (half a hour before class)
4. Overall 
   1. You can not go wrong with this bootcamp.
      1. Price is a lot cheaper then other places
      2. Curriculum is the same as elsewhere
      3. Instructors are very experienced
      4. Job assistance is there to help - as long as you talk to them

After sitting half way thought the course, I realized why the boot camp is only 9-grand. In comparison to other top coding boot camps that are in the 12k to 16k range, the curriculum just pushed out example codes for students and the instructor just read off what the code is doing. I think my instructor probably personally wrote about 4 lines of codes during the four months that I was in the course.  There were many times where we sat in the classroom in an awkward 30-minute of silence, while we wait for the instructor to figure out his errors. For our technical interview prep, we did nothing that would help us through a white-board test. Instead we got into groups of four and came up with strategies on how to figure out what was Walmart's best-selling item. Never will I need to know that Walmart sells the most BANANAS ever again. It was completely useless and a waste of time. I decided to drop out, as it was not worth the time and fitting into my busy schedule. You can get the same learning in this boot camp, signing up for Team Tree House for 25 bucks a month.  Do some research on your instructor’s background before signing up for any coding boot camp. I wouldn’t recommend this program for anyone who already has some technical skills. 

I completed the first two months of this course and just dropped out.  It was the worst idea I have ever had and regret nothing more in my life than wasting 9 grand on this "course."  If you are an academic that desires deep learning do not take this; it is glossary at best. I will admit the instructor was wonderful, talented, kind, and empathetic; a truly talented educator with a great attitude. Sadly this wasn't enough to alleviate my frustration with the hyper compressed teaching method. You cannot learn Javascript in two weeks.   

The person who initially "sold" this course to me over the phone was rude and predatory; making me feel like the course didn't need me and that i had to rush getting them the payment or else. This is just a sales technique and please don't buy into it like I did. Everyone I dealt with through the entire process, except the instructor, was amazingly rude and unprofessional.

This program is designed to produce a robotic coding workforce with no interest in the conceptual or creative side of coding, which I naively thought wouldn't be the case.

The mindless indoctrination of a military boot camp bodes as salient here, just saying.