Actualize

A number of my fellow students commented that in all of their previous years of schooling, nothing was taught as well as this course. We had a great balance of instruction and exercises to immediately implement what we learned.  As we worked alone or pair-programmed, two very dedicated TA’s were walking around, not to spoonfeed, but to help us figure out where we were getting stuck and why. I also took them up on their offer to shoot questions at them outside of class time. The cohesive environment made the night time hours more doable, and even enjoyable.

Besides for making us comfortable in a few languages, the curriculum is designed to lay the foundations for how frameworks or different parts of a web-application interact. Honestly, it WAS a bit of a shocker when Peter (lead instructor) told us a few weeks in, “By the way, your first job probably isn’t even going to be in Ruby.”  However, I was told by people in the field that it’s not necessarily the language that is attractive to employers, but the fact that you went through a serious, rigorous program and was able to pick up new skills quickly. They turned out to be right.  Last summer I was hired for a remote role in a growing company, and I’m working in Angular 2 and Ionic, both of which I didn’t touch in the bootcamp. Actualize’s curriculum has been tweaked since I graduated, so the staff is clearly trying to prepare the students for industry trends. Taylor, the school’s “job-guy,” was very active in helping us make connections and even set me up with a few interviews.

What puts Actualize on top is the built-in Apprenticeship that follows the course.  I had multiple interviews where developers were both impressed and envious when I described the real-world agile development and real interaction with clients that we had before seeking that 1st job.  

Best of luck in you quest.

Actualize was a positive experience for me! I had been coding on my own for a few years but needed the accountability of a formal classroom commitment to get become a marketable developer. Actualize helped me develop skills for the job market and also gave advice about how to job search. I really enjoyed the instruction and found the advice helpful.

Word to the wise: taking the course is not enough in and of itself, even though the material is sound. You must be networking and continuing to learn after you graduate. Ask specific questions about the networking strategies associated with the program and be sure that you are as committed to your search as you are to your studies. Finding that first dev job isn’t easy but it is extremely rewarding!

Actualize helped me make the transition to full time developer work and I will always be grateful!

I truly enjoyed my experience going through the Actualize boot camp in Chicago.  The instructors really do want everyone to succeed and are willing to work with students outside of class time to get everyone up to speed.  Its a lot of material in a short time span, but it is presented clearly and broken down in a way that is easy to digest! I would definitely recommend the course to someone who is interested in changing fields but doesn't have the flexibility to quit their current job yet.  Actualize made it possible to move my career in a positive direction without having to forfeit my paycheck in the process.

Before any of this coding business happened in my life, I was not a tech-savvy person, much less a coder. I graduated from college with a degree in Business Management and had a huge passion for interior design. I was the least expected person out of my circle of friends to become a programmer because let's face it - it's a skillset I never touched upon and rumor has it if you didn't come out of college with a degree in computer science, you'll never be good enough to compete.

That all changed when I learned about Actualize. I took a ride with my sister to Chicago from Des Moines, Iowa to an info session on design/coding bootcamps located in Chicago's 1871. There were four bootcamps that presented at the time: Evolve, Designation, Fullstack, and Anyone Can Learn To Code (Actualize). This was the link: https://public.1871.com/event/E617103747. My first impressions were so:

• Evolve Security: Cyber security seemed a bit out of my league from where I stand in coding (which is ground zero) so I ruled out Evolve.
• Designation: My sister attended Designation and there were hopes I could too, but seeing that they focused more on just UX design and no code, I crossed it off my list.
• Fullstack Academy: From a first impression, Fullstack coding bootcamp is full time and very intensive. They have strict guidelines and tests you must pass, and having just come out of college, I didn't want to learn in an environment where I'm all about the test score.
• Actualize (Anyone Can Learn To Code): Then there was Actualize. Jay Wengrow, the founder, gave a speech about how the company truly believes anyone can learn to code, and that it's just a matter of how hard you're willing to try and persist. Jay goes on to explaining that unlike other coding bootcamps, Actualize is a mentorship where instructors with excellent educational and coding background guide you along and there is an optional apprenticeship experience. Not only did Jay seem passionate about the bootcamp, but he also believes in his students. Diving into coding unknown is horrifying, but that all changes when someone walks you through each step of the way. 

So I decided that Actualize was for me. Jay gave some of us a tour of the classrooms and students in apprenticeship, and on that same day, I had an interview with Nick the admissions counselor, which consisted mostly of getting to know more about me and whether I'd be a good fit for the cohort (it's not intimidating don't worry). It really stuck with me how much Actualize really cares about the peers their students work with.

Fast-Forward: I went back to Iowa, and was accepted at Actualize; however as much as I wanted to attend the program, I learned that certain circumstances prevented me from attending Actualize in person. Jay and Peter still kept in touch with me in case my situation changes, but at that point the future was hard to tell. One day, Jay reached out to me and said they were opening their very first online course, exactly like the in-class, but live online. I was thrilled! This changed everything. I could actually learn coding through Actualize in the comfort of my own home. I grabbed the opportunity and started class June 2017. 

FF x2: I graduated as part of the very first Actualize Online cohort and simply put: I can code now. I can legitimately say that I am a web developer who knows the fundamentals of coding and how to make apps from scratch, and I can apply my skills anywhere, be it learning Python, or a new Javascript framework like React. I can say to an interviewer at a job that I've worked in a peer-programming environment and I know all about git. I can also put on my resume that I know how to work with apps using postgresql database and integrating APIs using jbuilder. But most importantly, I can say to anyone who questions our curriculum why we start out with Ruby and not Javascript, or why Vue and not React, that it is through these specific language and framework I managed to build a solid understanding in fundamental coding, and I am now a ball of clay, ready to be moulded. That, I think, is the true purpose of taking coding bootcamps in general. 

I will be starting apprenticeship in a week or so, and hopefully afterwards I can give you an update on how that goes and job hunt as well.

The coding world is always changing, and it's changing fast. Actualize has taught me that I came out this bootcamp knowing I can learn anything as long as I persist and work hard. It's not a bootcamp where you focus on the most popular language or framework; it's a practical one that handpicked the language and framework that is easiest to understand and build a solid foundation in. It is giving you the key to unlock the door to many more skills to come. 

I highly recommend Actualize if you have no background in coding or computer science and would like to pursuit a career in it.

Actualize is an incredible, fast-paced 12 week bootcamp. I have never experienced such an elite educational experience. 

From the pre-work throughout the in-person classes in Chicago, the instructores supported and guided us and were always available to come early or stay late to answer questions. Actualize has a unique education model that teaches, demoes, gives us the chance to try our hand at an exercise, and then goes over it again to ensure we are doing it correctly.

This was so incredibly effective; I never left class feelling unsure about the material, I always felt that I had a good grasp on what we had learned that day. Honestly, I would say the teaching here was better than my high school and college experience (and I had some pretty good professors in college!)

Programming can be extremely overwhelming and there is always more to learn but the Actualize curriculum fed us in bite sized chunks which made the learning experience a smooth and enjoyable one.

The part-time classes were incredible and allowed me to work during the day and learn at night; no mandatory homework kept my schedule from getting too overwhelming.

If you are interested in learning quickly and from the best, Actualize is definitely a great choice, I would recommend it without hesitation.

Prepare for your brain to get crunched, because it's a lot, but they will hold your hand the entire way. 

I spent most of 2016 debating whether or not I should quit my job to pursue a bootcamp. My interest in changing careers was strong, but the financial commitment and the extended loss of full-time income I would have had to undertake held me back for a long time. I was excited to learn about Actualize in summer 2016 because it allows applicants to keep a M-F day job, since classes are all day Sundays and 6-9:30 M-Th. This schedule allowed me to keep working and pursue development. I started in fall 2016 and finished in late January 2017. Then I started the apprenticeship portion in February 2017 and completed it in June 2017. I had a job offer in development in early June 2017, and I was able to talk about my experience in the apprenticeship during the interview for that job. All in all, Actualize allowed me to develop skills that led me to my new career, without having to go without the security of my full-time job. 

After my IT career started to plateau, I started looking around for resources that might help me get my carreer to the next level. I came into Actualize to learn how to create web-apps and to learn Rails, but came out with much, much more!

One of the most important takeaways was importance of planning for a project before putting down the first line of code. I may not have understood why I was doing that when I was planning my capstone, but it all came together in the end. Having a solid foundation to my app allowed me to experiment to it towards the end without having to worry about breaking it.

I agree what other reviewers say, this program gives you back as much as you put into it. Although this program is part time, to get the most of it you must be able to spend some considerable time outside of class to review class content (which is recorded). This is specially true if you feel like you are falling behind. 

Speaking of, the course at times felt like it was going at a neckbreaking speed. There were several occasions where I made a mistake and fell behind during class, but reviewing the class material at my pace always helped. Just be ready to invest that time.

Overall, if you are able to spend a bit of extra time outside of class to catch up, you should be ok. I highty recommend it!

Going into this program, I only had about a month of coding experince so I wasn't sure how well I was going to perform. The 4 weeks of pre-work definetly helped me get into ruby and it made me feel more prepared to start learning the more complex aspects of ruby. The 12 weeks of in-class learning were great, I learned so much more than I thought and at the end of the program I was able to build a full web app. I would definetly recoomend this program to people who want to get into a career in computer programming.

Thanks to Actualize, I'm now a software engineer.

And I'm not the only one. Everyone in my cohort who went for a new job got one. And that is pretty much the case in every cohort before and after mine as well.

I have so many good things to say about the bootcamp and the company as a whole, that I don't know where to start. I'll  explain my background and how I found/decided on Actualize, and then break my review down into four categories: Instructors, Curriculum, career support, and community.

My background:

Before attending Actualize, I had a varied educational background. I got my undergraduate in Psychology and was in a masters program for Speech Language Pathology. During grad school, I realized that I wanted to pursue a career in software engineering instead of Speech therapy, and by chance, I heard about programming bootcamps from a friend of a friend. I researched a few different bootcamps that I found on Switchup.org's website and applied to a few of them.  The process of applying to Actualize was great - the CEO, Jay Wengrow, interviewed me himself and invited me to tour the space. I observed Josh, one of the two lead instructors, and knew right away that I wanted to attend Actualize (then known as Anyone Can Learn to Code). I went to one of their showcases and talked to the other lead instructor, Peter, their admissions advisor, and some alumni that were there. I knew in my heart that Actualize had the highest quality education and best value of all the bootcamps I looked into in Chicago. And I was right. It was the best decision I've ever made.

Instructors:

The instructors at Actualize bootcamp are the absolute best. I had Peter as an instructor, but also worked a lot with Josh after graduating. They're both really funny and are great teachers. They had teaching experience before Actualize, and are both brilliant coders. Josh regularly stays very late after class to help his students to understand the material because he's highly dedicated to his students' learning. They're both very responsive to messages and make themselves available for office hours.

Curriculum:

The way the bootcamp is structured is: about one month of online prework, three months of in-class instruction, a showcase where you show your capstone project to potential employers, and at least one month of apprenticeship, as well as white-boarding, lessons on computer-science fundamentals, and job-training. Class takes place in the evenings and on Sunday all day so that you can keep your full-time job, and the apprenticeship is where you work with actual clients to build their apps and websites. NO other bootcamp in Chicago does this. It's what makes Actualize so unique. Your capstone is individual, unlike some other bootcamps which have group capstone projects. Individual capstone projects are awesome because potential employers know that everything in your project was built by you.

We learned Ruby on rails, Javascript, AngularJS, git, jquery, HTML/CSS,  SQL, API integration, and more. The curriculum is always evolving and improving, though;  for example, current cohorts are learning VueJS .

We learned how to make apps from scratch and add features to them. And we were constantly reminded to push our apps to github as we developed them, so when I graduated, I already had a large amount of work on github to show employers.

Actualize teaches programming fundamentals that can be applied to any language. Many of my classmates and also previous alumni got jobs coding in languages we never used in class, such as Swift and Java. That's because Actualize does an amazing job of preparing you to be an actual developer. You're taught how to get unstuck when you get errors in your code, and you're taught how to learn new technologies on your own. For example, we learned how to read documentation.

Career support:

And you're not just left on your own after graduation. They have a dedicated career-management director, Taylor Dorsett, who has the #1 most-viewed profile in Chicago; he was one of the best recruiters in the country, so Actualize hired him to ensure that Actualize graduates are able to find jobs right out of bootcamp. After graduation, you'll get weekly trainings from him and Jay Wengrow, the CEO, to learn how to network, ace interviews, do whiteboarding exercises, and pass coding challenges. The value you will get from all of this training is worth the tuition in itself. Actually, the increase in my salary from finding a job in software engineering has already paid for my tuition.

Community:

I have made friends for life because of the awesome people I met at Actualize. They are now the people I spend the most time with.  We grill together, have game nights all the time, and still participate in Actualize events and attend all of the showcases. It's a wonderful community of like-minded people who are all contributing positively to the tech community in Chicago. We attend meetups and continue to learn new technologies, either through our new jobs, or for our side projects. The network that Actualize provides is unbeatable. It not only changed my life, but it's changed my future. I would recommend Actualize to anyone interested in a career in tech. You will not regret it.