Northwestern Boot Camps

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.

I'm currently enrolled in the program and with a couple months left to go I was able to land a job that will have me using skills I learned in this bootcamp.

I personally would say that a statement like "you get what you put in" can be misleading, it does take a lot of hard work to get the most out of this program. The reason I feel that it can be misleading is because "you get what you put in" to me used to sound a lot like me having to learn on my own and a stack full of books trying to navigate blindly. 

NWB has so many resources available that really do help you succeed. You just have to take advantage of them. There are two tutors per class (aside from the instructor), there is access to office hours and there is an additional out of class tutor that is available for personal 1 on 1 sessions. Additionally, each class is recorded and made available to students. Our instructor Rich is amazingly detailed and really cares about how he teaches and engages students. Dartaniel was equally helpful in communicating with me to make sure that I was well prepared. 

Days are long and weekends are short but truly worthwhile if you want to change career paths or gain new skills.