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Software Guild is closed
This school is now closed. Although Software Guild is no longer accepting students or running its program, you can still see historical information and Software Guild alumni reviews on the school page.
The Software Guild offers immersive full-time, online, 12-week or part-time, 10 to 14-month coding bootcamps. Courses focus on .NET/C# and Java and do a deep dive into the language fundamentals, server side, data tier, user interface, and tools. Software Guild focuses on .NET/C# and Java because those stacks are stable, proven, and in highest demand in the enterprise. The Software Guild takes driven beginners, or more experienced students passionate about development, and prepares them to compete for jobs as professional developers.
Prospective applicants must fill out an application, complete an admissions interview, take an aptitude assessment, and complete Software Guild’s Introduction to Web Development. The Software Guild looks for applicants who are self-starters with high levels of motivation and tenacity who know when to ask for help, work well with others, keep positive attitudes in the face of adversity, love learning and problem-solving, and are excited to build cool new things.
Do yourself a favor, don't waste your money and most importantly YOUR TIME on this program. I will be reviewing online .Net program only. The in-person bootcamp might be good due to live interactions with the instructors and some accountability, but please STAY AWAY from the online program. Here is why:
1) They will make you buy a $700 laptop for $1500 (Dell Latitude E5470). I’ve owned several PC’s and before the start of online cohort I ask...
Do yourself a favor, don't waste your money and most importantly YOUR TIME on this program. I will be reviewing online .Net program only. The in-person bootcamp might be good due to live interactions with the instructors and some accountability, but please STAY AWAY from the online program. Here is why:
1) They will make you buy a $700 laptop for $1500 (Dell Latitude E5470). I’ve owned several PC’s and before the start of online cohort I asked one of the instructors, if I could save some money and use one of my existing machine for the course. He categorically said no, saying that “the Guild doesn’t want to support somebody else’s hardware”. I went ahead and purchased a $1500 laptop to find a mediocre machine with Community Edition Visual Studio on it, that I could have downloaded myself for free. Here I was with one more PC in my collection
2) Poor platform. The Software Guild claims that their instructors have had big experience developing for the enterprise, but the fact was that they couldn’t build their own decent educational platform. They use pre-build so-called “Moodle” platform, which lacked any functionality other than hosting pdf’s and videos.
3) Pre-Work $1000. Absolutely not worth it. It consists of very poorly written 2-3 page pdf’s. You will learn much more on platforms, such as codeacademy.com
4) They don’t keep promises. Before we started the program, we had an orientation session in which we were promised:
to be checked by a mentor/TA every week. My mentor Randall Clapper never did.
Flipped classroom Session every week
One-on-One sessions with mentors that you can schedule in advance.
And guess what. By the middle of the program, we didn’t have any of those
5) Busy staff. Assignments and quizzes were checked a month after the submission due date, so you won’t get your code reviewed on time. I had my assignments and quizzes finally checked after I dropped out (month later).
6) Unorganized curriculum. This was pretty much the reason I dropped out of the program. I had to read other books and watch video tutorials to understand concepts, because of low quality reading material and confusing videos. Why the hell I have to pay money to the Guild, if they can’t teach me right.
The bottom line is this. This program is not worth $10K. If you want to learn web development in online environment and don’t risk your money doing that, check out launchschool.com ($200/month). Really quality education! If you want to stick to .Net career path, buy good .Net books like Troelson's "Pro C#" and hire a mentor at codementor.io. It will be cheaper and more effective. If you have questions about this online program email me directly moisklad@yahoo.com and I will answer any questions, before you shell out $10K.
------Note from moderators: The following is consolidated from a separate review written on 1/30/2016.
Eric, you are in no position to verify me on this site. This is why there is a option here "Review Anonymously". I can prove to readers that I was indeed a student of the program by submitting documents that I still have or you can ask me any question related to online .Net program .Just let me know if I should do this. So please don't try to discredit my review, by doubting my enrollment with the Guild. Below are my comments to your answers.
OK. Will you buy back my laptop then? Or at least refund me the "premium" part of it? "a premium support package". Really? $700 laptop with premium support that cost another $800?
You guys charge $10,000 per student! It's your responsibility to find resourses to provide modern learning system for students, not the ancient one that you had when I was enrolled. You pride yourself to be enterpise level developers. Show students your skills by actually building something useful for students.
Can I get my $1000 back? Seriously your material really really sucks and not worth even $20!
Had sessions with Randall as well as a flipped classrom session with him. He was so bad at teaching, that nobody in class had any questions to him at the end of a flipped session. During my mentor sessions with him, I noticed that he doesn't explain how and why things work, he just tells you what to type on a certain line. That is a bad teaching
Nobody asked me about my opinion about flipped classroom sessions. I would've loved to have them. How did you survey student? Why I was never asked?
So I guess both employees that did my code reviews did not do it on time. They were Phil W. and Randall C. Knowing their names proves you that I was a student at the Guild. And it's your responsibility as a Chief Academic Officer to make sure they follow the rules. And I did request Operations manager to change mentor for me. Never happened.
Of course, because all those alumni are in-person students, whose face-to-face experience with instuctors is completely different from the online students. .
Guys, all Eric's promising words aside, bottom line is that their online program is not there yet for them to charge $10,000. $1,000-$2,000 maybe at most. Their in-person bootcamp might be good due do live nature of classes and there is some accountability, because you can tell things to the face.
I would suggest you to stay away from the Online .Net program until they guarantee 100% money back, no matter how late you request them . I strongly suggest you to contact at least 3 current students to ask them questions and don't believe if they say that students are not willing to be contacted. My mistake is that I contacted only 1 student and he was the one chosen by the Guild. Later that student dropped out himself. It just show how bad their online program is.
As I said before, if you have qustions about the program or need an honest feedback on the staff at the Guild, feel free to contact me at moisklad@yahoo.com. Good luck!
Eric Wise of Software Guild
Chief Academic Officer
Jan 17, 2017
Personal Background
I've been messing around with programming ever since I was the age of 14 (I'm 21 now as of writing this review), and I knew that being a software developer was always what I wanted to pursue, so it didn't come as a surprise when my trajectory shifted from completing a college degree to joining a code bootcamp after 3 years of taking classes that didn't benefit my degree, and pretty much setting myself up to be in college for way longer than I ...
Personal Background
I've been messing around with programming ever since I was the age of 14 (I'm 21 now as of writing this review), and I knew that being a software developer was always what I wanted to pursue, so it didn't come as a surprise when my trajectory shifted from completing a college degree to joining a code bootcamp after 3 years of taking classes that didn't benefit my degree, and pretty much setting myself up to be in college for way longer than I hoped for. I really wanted to just jump into my career as soon as I could considering the previous experience that I had. After some research, I had selected my top three picks for bootcamps that I was interested in.
The Software Guild really stood out to me because of the employment statistics, along with offering a .NET/C# course which I was also pursuing. After looking into the school, I learned more of the fantastic job prep skills that the guild offered, and at that point I decided to apply.
The Experience
Upon being accepted to the guild as an apprentice, I was given the pre-cohort coursework that is mandatory to be completed before starting, which is an introductory, online web development course that focuses in teaching you the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This is so that all apprentices are on the same basic level of web development knowledge before starting that section of the actual course, which is very beneficial to your success at the guild (especially if you really dive into it!). It took me a little while to get the pre-work done, but it was very worth the time.
At the start of the cohort, it is all fundamentals. If you are new to programming, or just object oriented programming in general, getting through the first half of the course WILL be fairly difficult. There's a lot of material to cover, and you have to make sure that you're pushing yourself to complete your projects on time, and to get all the help you can get from your instructor (that's what you're paying for, after all) in each course milestone. Even with my previous experience with programming, there were still so many new fundamental skills that I picked up, and the workload of the course certainly challenged me.
The next section of the course is where you'll be putting all that basic web development knowledge, along with your newly gained .NET/C# knowledge to use. In my opinion, this is the most difficult section of the entire cohort, since there is so much information that is being taken in, and each week moves by so quickly that it's easy to fall behind. However if you are to fall behind at all in the course, you can quickly get caught up if you are proactive and get all the help you need to get up to speed with the material you might be struggling in. I don't think that there was a single day that I was in class and didn't ask at least a handful of questions to my instructor on what I was working on or anything at all that I was curious about.
There will be many presentations, guest panels, mock interviews, and other very beneficial tools available to you as an apprentice to get you ready for starting your job search that I STRONGLY would recommend not to pass up. Take all the notes and soak up all the information you can during all these sessions.
Concluding Thoughts
Like the title says, joining The Software Guild was one of the best decisions that I could have made for my career. I was provided with skills that I wouldn't be able to obtain on my own time, and it has opened up so many opportunities for me, as well as given me tools that are applicable to not only my software development career, but many other sections of my life too.
The #1 advice I'd give to somebody looking to join The Software Guild, or any code bootcamp in general goes as follows:
1. Be ready to work. You'll be very busy with projects and staying on top of course material throughout the cohort.
2. Don't miss up on all the opportunities & additional help that you're offered from the staff & instructors! You want to take in as much information as you can that can benefit you & your career.
3. Just have fun. Find ways to make the course enjoyable for you.
Background: I attended UofL Computer Engineering program for a year before dropping out in favor of this bootcamp. In 3 months I learned more than I probably would have staying all 4 years at university writing tic-tac-toe applications.
Coursework: Having some (although very basic) knowledge of Java helped me with the first week or so of the coursework. Regardless, the projects you will work on are challenging for a beginner; do not be scared off...
Background: I attended UofL Computer Engineering program for a year before dropping out in favor of this bootcamp. In 3 months I learned more than I probably would have staying all 4 years at university writing tic-tac-toe applications.
Coursework: Having some (although very basic) knowledge of Java helped me with the first week or so of the coursework. Regardless, the projects you will work on are challenging for a beginner; do not be scared off by this, it is good to struggle a bit when learning to code. The instructors will guide you through the purpose of fundamental techniques so that you can gain a solid foundation of learning how to go about solving problems through code. This is type of critical thinking is key to having a successful career after graduation and definitely seems to be the focus of the program, rather than just writing code for repitition sake.
Post Graduation: I have been working as a developer full time for nearly two years now and continue to use techniques that I learned while studying at the Software Guild. This program has been incredibly useful propelling my career and the community is great even after graduating -- I still talk with friends I made in the program regularly and sometimes go back for Wednesday night board games.
I can only consider my experience at the Software Guild as the best career decision I have ever made. Because of the skills I learned at the Guild I have been able to excel in an incredibly challenging, lucrative, and fulfilling career. You are thrown into a very expansive and comprehensive curriculum with only a certain amount of knowledge and encouraged to struggle and learn from the difficulty. This was key for my success in the Guild and now in my career. The single best skill I learne...
I can only consider my experience at the Software Guild as the best career decision I have ever made. Because of the skills I learned at the Guild I have been able to excel in an incredibly challenging, lucrative, and fulfilling career. You are thrown into a very expansive and comprehensive curriculum with only a certain amount of knowledge and encouraged to struggle and learn from the difficulty. This was key for my success in the Guild and now in my career. The single best skill I learned was how to effectively research issues, problems, code, etc and how to find the answer I needed. I will say at some point I do wish I was given a bit more direction at the beginning of the bootcamp when I knew practically nothing and slowly given less and less as I learned on my own but nevertheless I was successful.
I had some previous coding experience through school but didn't want to pursue a bachelors so I decided to try the Software Guild out. I had a newer instructor so the first few days were a little rough around the edges but by the end of the program everyone was prepared for an entry level position and had the skills to continually learn new things. The course is really hard if you don't commit to it and use your time efficiently, several people switched to online because they couldn't keep...
I had some previous coding experience through school but didn't want to pursue a bachelors so I decided to try the Software Guild out. I had a newer instructor so the first few days were a little rough around the edges but by the end of the program everyone was prepared for an entry level position and had the skills to continually learn new things. The course is really hard if you don't commit to it and use your time efficiently, several people switched to online because they couldn't keep up.
They really do help you with finding a job, resume reviews, networking, interviews, etc. Basically the entire part after completion of the program. I found a job after about a month and the job market was slowing down when I was applying because of the holidays. (Nov - December)
I highly recommend checking the guild out if you are interested in a tech career. Also, you should probably research your job market when deciding which language to learn but it's not a big deal because they give you access to the other course at the end of the program. I learned Java but my job uses .NET/C#
Employed in-field | 91.7% |
Full-time employee | 87.5% |
Full-time apprenticeship, internship or contract position | 4.2% |
Short-term contract, part-time, or freelance | 0.0% |
Started a new company or venture after graduation | 0.0% |
Not seeking in-field employment | 0.0% |
Employed out-of-field | 0.0% |
Continuing to higher education | 0.0% |
Not seeking a job for health, family, or personal reasons | 0.0% |
Still seeking job in-field | 8.3% |
Could not contact | 0.0% |
How much does Software Guild cost?
Software Guild costs around $13,750.
Where does Software Guild have campuses?
Software Guild teaches students Online in a remote classroom.
Is Software Guild worth it?
The data says yes! In 2019, Software Guild reported a 47% graduation rate, a median salary of $60,000, and 92% of Software Guild alumni are employed. Software Guild hasn't shared alumni outcomes yet, but one way to determine if a bootcamp is worth it is by reading alumni reviews. 161 Software Guild alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Software Guild on Course Report - you should start there!
Is Software Guild legit?
We let alumni answer that question. 161 Software Guild alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Software Guild and rate their overall experience a 4.66 out of 5.
Does Software Guild offer scholarships or accept the GI Bill?
Right now, it doesn't look like Software Guild 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 Software Guild reviews?
You can read 161 reviews of Software Guild on Course Report! Software Guild alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Software Guild and rate their overall experience a 4.66 out of 5.
Is Software Guild accredited?
Kentucky Commission on Proprietary Education, Resident School License No. R-0470, Minnesota Office of Higher Education, OHE Assigned Institution ID: 1829945
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