UCI Cybersecurity Boot Camp

Bootcamp Review

PROS:

• Learned a lot as a beginner
• Good classmates

CONS:

• Lack of quality curriculum/material 
• Lack of technical support
• Lack of transparency 
• Career support was not as advertised
• Overpriced

Details of each bullet point below:

PROS:

Learned a lot as a beginner:

As someone who was very new to the cybersecurity industry (and technology in general), I did come out of this bootcamp a lot more knowledgeable in different skills and technologies used in cybersecurity.

Good classmates:

I am aware that this is not the case for everyone, but having good classmates to study and learn with was truly a great highlight coming out of this bootcamp. We still stay in contact and study together to this day, which I am grateful for.

CONS:

Lack of quality curriculum/material:

This is a huge reason for my low rating of this bootcamp. Since week one I noticed grammatical errors and lack of professionally formatted curriculum, especially in the assignment documents we were provided and expected to fill out/learn from. This may not be a big deal to some, but as someone who was paying quite a hefty price for this bootcamp, I definitely expected to be provided polished and quality material. About halfway through the bootcamp, the curriculum and syllabus changed. It honestly felt unprofessional to have the curriculum changed in the middle of the course, as all the curriculum and material should’ve been proofread and professional to begin with. However, due to the poor quality I was experiencing, I thought that the new curriculum would provide a better chance of getting the quality material I thought I was paying for. I was sorely mistaken. If I thought the previous curriculum was unprofessional and poor, this new curriculum was even worse. There were so many holes in the curriculum that the instructors couldn’t follow the lesson plan properly due to having to improvise and try to fix errors on their own, which took valuable class time. At times we would have to skip parts of lessons because fixing the problems would take too long. The environments were rarely set up properly for us to go through and try to get that “virtualized” real world experience. Most of the time I was just trying to get through the curriculum enough so I could finish my assignments. However, this way of learning was not professional nor enjoyable in the slightest. 

Lack of technical support:

Due to all of the issues we kept running into with the curriculum, my class messaged our point of contact that was supposed to help with any problems we faced in class. This went nowhere as there was no better curriculum for us to switch to and there was no one to help correct and patch up the holes of the curriculum. So essentially we were just stuck with a poor, poor quality curriculum and no one was able to do anything about it.

Lack of transparency:

What I mean about lack of transparency is the fact that the online bootcamp description, as well as the sales rep I spoke to about this bootcamp, never once mentioned that UCI uses a third party organization to provide the curriculum for the cybersecurity bootcamp. I was super new to all of this bootcamp research, so when I came across this bootcamp at UCI, I assumed it was a curriculum provided by UCI, which is a partial reason I was excited to be a part of this bootcamp. However, I didn’t find out until far into the bootcamp that the curriculum was provided by a third party company. That was definitely frustrating due to the fact that I was expecting UCI provided/quality education and instead I was getting some other third party company I hadn't heard of until I was in the bootcamp. This isn’t the biggest con, but it definitely would’ve been much more helpful if they were transparent on where their curriculum and material was coming from, that way I could’ve done much more research on the company before making my decision on attending this bootcamp.

Career support was not as advertised:

When I was on the phone with the sales rep learning more about the bootcamp, I was definitely under the impression that the career coaches and career help after the bootcamp would help get my foot in the door of cybersecurity by essentially skipping the application process and getting me straight to interviews with employers, since they are partnered with so many companies. This was not the case in any sense. Yes they had career webinars and yes I did technically have a career coach, but none of those things got me closer to getting a job within the field of cybersecurity. My career coach was okay. However they were not nearly as proactive in helping me find jobs and find connections with employers as advertised, which was very much a disappointment. When me and my coach were scheduled for a meeting, they did not show up, and it wasn’t until I emailed them that they then cancelled on me saying they could no longer have meetings with me. Due to the lack of communication and notification beforehand, it was unprofessional behavior that was definitely not appreciated.

Overpriced:

For what I was getting, this bootcamp was definitely overpriced. Yes they covered many subjects, but the whole experience of learning it all was a lot more stressful than it needed to be due to the lack of quality curriculum/material and support. The instructor was decent. Definitely knowledgeable in the field which was appreciated, but they were a lot more chatty than need be, especially about personal matters. Overall, the amount of class time that was wasted on irrelevant stories and troubleshooting was definitely not appreciated nor professional. Especially for what I was paying. 

CONCLUSION:

In conclusion, this bootcamp was overpriced for the quality of curriculum and support that they actually provided versus what they claimed. There were times that I thought it would get better, but the further I went on, the worse the quality of the bootcamp became. The quality of the bootcamp curriculum was not up to the standards of what I was paying for, especially with the hiccups that my instructors would come across much too often when teaching us. It was as if no one went in to do the much needed quality control to make sure all the lesson plans and virtual environments worked properly/smoothly before it was deployed for our class to use. It felt as if we were test subjects to this curriculum, except we were unaware of it and were paying for it. (Yes I definitely thought about a refund but I was too far beyond the refund date for it to happen). All in all, I know everyone has a different experience with these cybersecurity bootcamps. My experience however, was unfortunately very disappointing and very much tainted the UCI reputation for me. Although I don’t regret my decision in doing this bootcamp (since I still learned from it in multiple ways), with the knowledge I know now about this bootcamp, I would definitely suggest different ways of pursuing cybersecurity than doing a bootcamp.

NOTE:

In this review I did not wish to speak ill of anyone that is associated with this bootcamp. If however, that is taken differently by the reader, I want to clarify that my intentions are purely to provide honest feedback on how my experience was. People I mention in this review such as my instructors, career coach and sales rep just simply did not reach my expectations for what I thought I would be getting from this bootcamp.

Congratulations on making it to the end of my review! I know it’s basically an essay, but I truly wanted to provide honest feedback (and warning) of how this bootcamp experience was for me and how this bootcamp may potentially turn out for you if you so choose to attend. If you choose to continue with pursuing this cybersecurity bootcamp, I hope and wish you all the best in your experience and definitely hope it is a better experience for you! I also highly advise you to definitely do your due diligence and thorough research (which is probably why you are here reading this anyway so good on you :) )