University of Richmond Boot Camps

Before starting this course, I was certain I wanted to be a web developer. I wanted to build apps, utilize data from various sources, create my own databases for user-created information, etc. I had experience from building wordpress sites and other template/hosting platforms, as well as a couple codecademy modules under my belt - enough to know there was a lot I did not know. If I was going to be able to build all of the things I was interested in, I would need a help piecing together the thousands of different resources online. A friend had done a bootcamp before and raved about the experience, so after reviewing UR's curriculum and seeing it matched up with what most job descriptions were calling for, I signed up.

Almost 5 months later, and I'm very pleased with my decision. It is a ton of work. You are frustrated or confused in class most of the time. You will feel lost for days/weeks at a time. The curriculum starts with the basics then adds layer upon layer until you are using current tecnologies, libraries, methods and conventions. The course is a simulation of roughly the past 5 years of Javascript, and the tech surrounding it, compressed to 5 months. I am constantly revisiting old classroom exercises because of the sheer volume of information presented is difficult to fully absorb in one pass. However, the instructors and TAs are well versed in the material and eager to help. You might feel lost, but you aren't alone in the wilderness. Our instructor has been in the field for 20 years and frequently talks about how each piece of the coursework translates to what you do in the real world.

The job assistance is a non-factor for most of the course. To date, their focus is mostly on helping you with your resume and online profiles, as well as some interview tips. There doesn't appear to be any process in place to help you generate leads. That being said, as I have looked at job postings and had questions about the descriptions/titles/companies/etc., the career services team is very responsive. There is a lot of great insight from them, but you have to ask for it. 

Sign up if you:

• are 100% positive you want to be a Javascript-based developer. The time and financial commitments are too large for this to be a trial run.
• have tried codecademy or freecodecamp or some other online tutorials, and you enjoy coding, but still can't grasp the big picture. The instructor/TA team pieces this together for you and they are worth their weight in gold.
• can self-teach when you are tired. The classes are at night and you'll be doing your homework in the margins of the day.
• can work in groups. The instructors, TAs, the person sitting next to you, your project group - you will be sharing a lot of time with these people.
• are a glutton for punishment that likes hard work. And lots of it.

Do NOT sign up if you:

• are looking for a line item on your resume that will "get you a job."
• heard web developers make a lot of money and think you'll have that handed to you.
• have to understand everything before you leave class for the day.
• don't like Javascript.
• don't want to do the leg work in your job search.

I am very happy with my decision to enroll in University of Richmond’s Cybersecurity Bootcamp. I have no previous experience working in IT so I was a bit concerned with making a career change. From the first week of class I felt like I had found what I was looking for, a program to set me up for an entry level position in cybersecurity. 
John Hui has been my instructor for this Bootcamp. He is very knowledgable on the topics covered and is willing to give real-world examples to help you learn. John is a master at giving you just enough knowledge to find answers on your own. Often a cryptic response to your question will lead you to an “Aha!” moment. This sense of discovery is very gratifying and pushes me to learn more. Truly an amazing teacher! 
During the course I learned many new concepts about Cybersecurity and got hands-on experience with all kinds of software. The syllabus will guide you through controlling a computer in the command line to building an entire functional cloud system and beyond. 
The course materials, assignments, projects, and career resources are a complete package. From the start, I feel I’ve had what I needed to succeed. Everyone with the Bootcamp has been very professional and more than helpful. Never did I feel like I couldn't ask a question. Even though I still have another week in the course, I am confident I have the skills to find my desired position. I would recommend this course to anyone wanting to break into the Cybersecurity field. 

The main purpose of starting at the University of Richmond Cybersecurity Boot camp program was to make a change in my current career. I needed a fast pace but well-rounded and structured environment where I could learn, but yet be challenged and leave being confident and ready for the new career path I will be embarking on, and I got that and much more. 
John added value to being in this program by getting me out of my comfort zone and showing the importance of challenging myself, and not being afraid of making mistakes. Someone once said, "a comfort zone is comfortable, but it doesn't bring change". John brought change to every class session from the first day of class until the very last class. On the first day of class, John mentioned how important time is in general, but also in this program, and I was determined to respect that statement as he is a role model of being on time and organized. This was a significant change for me especially because I knew that I might be inconsistent with keeping to time, but I was able to accomplish that goal. Other changes include the drive, zeal, and inspiration of knowing and understanding the subject matter before and after every class. I had zero knowledge about the cybersecurity field, but as we built on each class, I went from being nervous to being confident. That's how effective John's style of teaching is. it's phenomenal! John asks questions, he doesn't just give you answers because he wants his students to understand. He patiently makes you think for yourself, until you figure things out, but be prepared along the way to embarrass yourself in a good way when he begins to ask you questions (I've been there and done that, but I was excited when I finally figured things out). I have learned that questions make you ask more questions, which lead to an intelligent answer no matter how it comes out. John stands out as an excellent instructor because he enriches the curriculum with the excitement he brings to each class. He is always available and responds promptly to messages at any time of the day even outside office hours. John treats students according to each of their needs, as he takes the time to understand each student's personality to relate to them effectively. To summarize this all up, if anyone else asked me for a recommendation for John as an instructor, my answer will be: 
John fully understands what he teaches which transcends to all his students, it will be one of the best choices you ever made.

A year prior to writing this, I was in a 4 year computer science program and felt it was lacking what I needed. I wanted to know the concepts behind security as well as gain experience but without the fluff of a Bachelor's. A friend in the field referred me to this boot camp and upon review, I immediately signed up. In the course of a single semester's time, I have amassed knowledge that fills my resume and obtained skills that I see all throughout cyber job postings. While this program has been well designed and carefully thought out, I owe an exceptional amount of gratitude to the instructor, John Hui. This boot camp has given us the opportunity to master imperative skills, but John went above and beyond to teach us to be problem solvers. He starts the program teaching us, and ends it guiding us to teach ourselves. He has been not only instructive, but inspiring; a quality I wish I saw more in education. I am incredibly fortunate to have learned from this person, and I am excited to put his teachings and wisdom into practice.

Overall, a great experience.

I started the boot camp with experience in the field of data analytics and visualization. I worked as Business intelligence analyst looking to further improve on my technical skills and to better understand some industry technologies. I knew excel very well, adequate at SQL and was familiar with Tableau as I used these tools at work. These tools are adequate to get into the data anaytics space but my desire is to get into the Data science space without spending more time and money in a typical college setting. I needed to understand more than just the usual excel/sql/tableau experience I had. I wanted to understand better programming languages and concepts such as Python/R; Big data programs such as spark/Hadoop; Statistical analytics and Machine learning; advance data visualization along with understanding data structures in order to deal with unstructured data issues that many in the industry deal with. This boot camp helped me with that knowledge.

Please go into this understand that THIS IS A BOOT CAMP. This is to say that you WILL require much time needed outside of the classroom to do a lot of much needed self studying and catching up. A lot more than would be required at a typical college setting. There is a lot to cover so it goes by fast. Thankfully, that is mentioned many times before and during the start of the boot camp for anyone enrolled to understand what you are diving into. I did my research, I looked through the curriculum and understood what I was getting myself into and the knowledge I would gain from this journey/experience. And that is exactly what I received. 

I started this bootcamp back in November of 2020 and WOW! 6 months sure did fly by. It's really hard to wrap my head around how much I've learned in such a short amount of time. This bootcamp was more than I expected in so many ways. My instructor, Jonathan and my T.A., Ty were amazing! Ty was the go-to guy for questions or help on assignments. Jonathan did the teaching and he really did an amazing job explaining the concepts. That's coming from someone who came in clueless! I met and worked with so many amazing people in my class that I hope to stay in touch with now that it's over. I was assigned a tutor at the beginning of the course (you can change your tutor if you want) and he helped me in SO many ways. Shout out Mr. Itua! He went out of his way in his free time multiple times to help me on my homework assignments, projects, and really just gave me another perspective of the things that we were learning. Also, everything was through Zoom. All of the classes, presentations, tutor sessions. Not sure how that will change once the pandemic is over, but honestly that didn't affect me like I thought it would. I used to think I needed the in-person instruction, but really when it came down to it - I didn't.
Before the course, I had never coded anything before. I barely knew how to inspect a page. I was a kennel attendant at a doggie daycare. Even though I loved being there with those dogs every day, I knew I didn't want to be there for the rest of my life. I'm 22 and a college dropout (lol) and simply just didn't know what kind of career path I wanted to go down. My mom actually introduced the idea of the IT field to me because it has such a high demand and the pay is normally pretty great. So I started googling and I found this University of Richmond's page full of reviews and wondered if someone like me with no experience would excel in a program like this. If you're reading this right now and not sure if you think you can do it, take it from me... you can. I went from not even knowing what HTML was to building full stack web applications. The work IS hard though and you DO have to spend at least 20 hours outside of class to really understand the all of the different concepts and technologies they're going to teach you. And sometimes you still won't understand it all the way. That was probably one of the hardest things for me. Not knowing EVERYTHING. I always felt like I had to know it all to be the best at something, but in this field you can't think that way. I'm going to spend the rest of my life learning something new every day. LOL. Our course started out with like 25 or so people and we only had about 15 left at the end. I get it. It's not easy, but if you decide to do it, make sure you're ready to make that commitment. 
Google will be your best friend. Their Career Services gives you great feedback on your resume, portfolio, GitHub, and LinkedIn accounts for you to be employer-ready throughout and after the bootcamp! I presented my final project today (woo!) and have talked to a Career Coach one time already. She was nice! We will be keeping in touch every two weeks or so until I have landed a job. I already have an apprenticeship in mind that I'm going to apply for at the beginning of June, so I'm assuming if I don't get that I will be communicating with her more often. Not really sure how that whole process works, but we'll see. Wish me luck! I hope my review has helped you in your decision making, as I was looking for a review like this before I signed up. It turned out to be a great decision for me and I hope you decide to go for it too! Thank you, UofR!

This was most certainly a challenging course. I enjoyed the way Tim taught the course. To me personally, Jamie and Sara were the most helpful TAs over the course. Christopher, the Student Success Manager, was understanding and offered help when I needed to extend due dates, as well as marking attendance. The course taught me that there are always multiple ways to view a dataset, as well as visualizing it. It also taught me that assumptions should not be made when reviewing a dataset, as it can skew the way you are able to manipulate or even visualize it. I liked a majority of topics we reviewed, but surprisingly, did not enjoy the Tableau week. I'd highly recommend this course for anyone interested analyzing data and perhaps looking for a change of careers. 

This program also comes with tutoring services, which I thoroughly appreciated. My tutor, Niharika, was fantastic. She would explain processes, if I did not understand specific functions of language I was working on. Her help was invaluable, as she would review my code when I would get stuck or did not end up with the correct answer. She would even review my projects to make them better and would Zoom call if she felt that it would be easier to explain via actual conversion versus chatting via Slack.

SN: I have yet to fully utilize career services, but plan to do so in the coming weeks. They have reached out multiple times over the program, so I would say that it is an engaging service available to all who are interested.

John is my cybersecurity instructor and he is excellent.  He has in-depth knowledge of the subject matter.  He tends to moves fast through the demo, but he alway asks if there are any questions before proceeding to the activity or the next topic.  He gives great examples or analogies to help us understand the subject.  Lord knows he has the patiences of "Job" and he is never condescending.  He is always uplifting and cheerful.  He and Thor are very supportive and encouraging.  The course is fast paced, but overall I am enjoying the course and I have learned more in this bootcamp than I have working in the field for more than 10 years.