Northwestern Boot Camps

I had a great experience with this boot camp. It was a grueling 6 months, but what I learned was worth every minute. The content was taught effectively and meticulously. Given this program is relatively new, there were of course a few aspects that could have been more organized.

The course requires two sets of homework, coding and career. While the coding homework was incredibly beneficial and absolutely crucial in the development of truly grasping the concepts, the career assignments lacked ingenuity. I would have appreciated more interview prep, rather than repeatedly updating my resume. Aside from that, I learned more during this program than I did in my time as a full-time student at UIC.

One of the major advantages here was the group work. We had to complete three group projects throughout the course, and those experiences were invaluable. Learning to work with others on new material forced us to learn skills that directly translate to office life.

If you’re looking to become a qualified developer in a short period of time, this boot camp is for you.

Participating in the Northwestern Bootcamp took my development skills to a new level. The curriculum is solid and covers a broad array of information. The real value of the program is the team environment. The student success manager and instructional team were incredible and made sure the class was professional / well run. They created a collegial atmosphere that made the experience truly enjoyable. For me, the connections I made with my cohort classmates are as valuable as the dev skills I gained. Highly recommend.

First thing I want to say that what I am today is because of this "Bootcamp". I wanted to join this course to learn advance coding as I already had some experience in coding. I had no idea how this course would help me. I enrolled based on the topics they listed they are going to teach.
When I went for my first class I saw the students are totally from different backgrounds and different experience levels. It was kind of intimidating for me as many students know a lot more than me but at the same time there were people like me who just know the very basics. But amazingly, The curriculum was design in such a way that each individual can learn.
They started with basic excerises to explain the concepts and then they had advance activities which every student has to do in group. So I particularly like to work in group, as I was not only learning to code but also learning how to work with the team as a developer.
No doubt its a intense course, But I signed for it. I had to work 30+ hours outside the class but its worth it. Its amazing that in 6 months we covered front-end, back-end along with 3 different databases. 
This bootcamp is not at all about the boring theoritical lectures. They introduce a tool to you and then let you play with it. Everything is practical learning based. We had to make 3 projects during the course which was awesome!!! Because I never thought I will be able to do that in just 6 months. I feel great!
For instructors, TA's and SSM, I would say they were the very strong pillars in my journey through out this course. They were very keen/interested to help me at any point. Apart from teaching, They are good mentors, coaches, moral boosters and good at pep talks too :-). 
They all do anything you want to succeed but its finally up to you that how much you want it. I wanted it and I get it!
Cheers to the Team!!!
 

Before I enrolled in this class I read a bunch of bootcamp reviews and looked into many programs. I rarely read reviews about anything because their inherent subjectivity, but this was a big investment for me so I thought I'd check around. I was surprised how dramatically diverse the opinions were from person to person, even those who were in the same program. 

I think it all comes down to expectations. Those who expected this or any bootcamp program to magically make them a developer have a bad experience because they find out there is no such thing as a magic pill. There is only hard work, determination, and tenacity. This program gives you plenty of the tools, resources, instructions, direction, material, and support to turn you into a competent computer programmer, you just have to do the work to get there.

Coding isn't easy, and becoming a full-stack developer is tough.  There are full college classes that only go over HTML and CSS alone but bootcamps try and teach you HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript, JQuery, MySQL, Firebase, Node, React, NPM, Handlebars, GitHub and more in just about the same amount of time. This material didn't come naturally to me and I would spend 30+ hours a week outside of class coding. But through good direction and hard work I was able to become a competent web developer. 

The teachers at Northwestern are amazing, the TA's are great, the material is methodical and well thought-out (maybe a little extra fluff, I'm looking at you Handlebars!), and the exercises are practical and challenging. Overall, looking at this as an investment, in terms of ROI, it was the most pragmatic educational decision I’ve made in a while. My undergrad cost four years of my life and $70k+, the only skill that I tenuously learned was econometrics.  This bootcamp cost me $10k, and six months, and I learned more tangible skills here than I can count.

Northwestern will give you the structure and resources to be successful, but your success comes down to you. You will get out what you put in.

This boot camp has been a truly horrendous experience.  To begin with, Northwestern has absolutely nothing to do with this boot camp besides lending their name and classroom space.  The entire program is run by a company called Trilogy Education Services.  Our current classroom learning has been so underwhelming (please read other listed reviews) that Trilogy sent the regional vice president into our classroom for an audit.  That should tell you right there how bad of an experience it has been and how poor our entire class is performing.  Two days later, I received a phone call from the vice president, who informed me that they would be extending some class resources for our boot camp as well as personally offering me the opportunity to retake the boot camp at no additional charge. It was made clear that this last opportunity was not extended to the entire class.  I find it highly suspicious and poor business practices to call individual students to work out private deals.  It makes me wonder what may have been offered to other students.

 For me, retaking the course is not an option.  If the course is so fundamentally flawed that I need to be offered to take it all over again, then obviously Trilogy is readily admitting that the course does not meet their own boot camp standards.  I do not see how going through the entire 3 month program again is expected to produce different results the second time around. So I will be leaving this boot camp with a certificate in name only and no real learning as promised.

So, if you wish to go to this boot camp, please be advised that it is Northwestern in name only, they have absolutely nothing to do with the curriculum nor career services.  The current full-time class is “graduating” with such a low level of skill and ability that they have to offer additional resources including retaking the entire course.  Finally, even when they realize they have a severe problem on their hands, their damage control business practices of calling students to work out personal side deals is in my opinion very poor way to do business.  

I loved it! I really needed the guidance of a bootcamp program to develop my coding skills, and I got that here. I'm not sure that the class content goes far beyond what one could get at an online course or tutorial, but the way it was provided and the supportive staff were incredibly helpful. The instructors and teaching assistants were real developers, so we learned from people who knew the course material and also had practical, real-world knowledge of what they taught. 

The career assistance during the course was great, but I particularly valued the post-graduation career advising. It was nice to know that I could still reach out to someone even after the course had ended and the job search had begun.

It was a very welcoming environment for people of all types, and everyone I met in the program was wonderful! I'm glad I had the chance to take this course.

The reason I chose the bootcamp at Northwestern University over any other bootcamp was that the part-time schedule meant that I could still keep my full-time job and the other reason was that the professors teaching the course are full-time professionals. I highly recommend taking going through the Northwestern bootcamp. It's challenging at times and you will spend a few all-nighters working on projects but if you keep up on the weeks that are not so busy, you will be fine. If your goal is to find a job after the program, be prepared to spend a good amount of time outside of classes studying algorithms and data structures. Overall, it is what you make of it. If you are going to spend the time and money to attend then make sure to utilize all the resources from the TA's to the career advisors, it really pays off.

Going into this program, I didn't know what to expect. I had some programming experience before, but it was in an academic setting so I didn't have a reference point for a professional development program. What I ended up experiencing in this program was a model that worked. The curriculum was reverse-engineered from what employers expected their web developers to know. The approach to learning was hands-on and project-based.

From the start to the finish line, we were running, putting forward 110%. An important factor of this program was that it's a boot camp. So it was fast, rigorous, and challenging. Even though I was able to keep up with little struggle, I was well-aware that my programming experience, albeit limited, gave me some advantage in keeping up with the material.

Oh yeah, and the instructor was one of the best instructors I've had in my life. He didn't just teach the material well, he motivated and pushed us to be the best versions of ourselves. This level of support made the program worthwhile to me. 

Of course, I came into this program hoping to switch careers after it completed. The career counselor was helpful and supportive in every step of the process-- from resume building to finding opportunities to mock interviews. He was good at what he did and made himself available to help students at any time they needed it (really, any time of the day or year). He helped me get the job.

The instructors and counselors made it clear that the more we put into the program and the job search, the more we would get out of it. When it came down to supporting us and advising us, they were there and really put in their time, attention, and care. However, it was on me to do my part by completing the projects, asking questions, and trying hard to get the job. Would I recommend this program? If you can do it (and don't doubt yourself), then go for this program. You will get something out of it.

For anyone, at any point in their student and/or professional career! (from zero background in coding to having experience) This is an amazing class because it's fun and very challenging. If you're ready to apply yourself and learn than this class will not only be a great experience, but even more, it will be great for your resume! TA's and Instructors are always there for you to help, not to forget, all the help form the careers team. The careers team is very very helpful! They coordinate hackathons, one-on-ones, your online presence, technical resumes, and more and more. A ton of companies come in to talk, meet and most importantly, the chance to network as well!!

I was fortunate enough to get a job while I was in this class, and a I know other fellow students who were able to interview. 

Amazing!

I found my Bootcamp experience to be highly undesirable. If you have technical knowledge of any sort in the realm of computer science/web development then this course is definitely not worth the money.

The program focuses only on front-end development and briefly touches back-end technologies but nothing close to providing enough information to work in a professional setting. You will learn the very basics of storing data, little to no python and just enough to connect your front/backend. There is no emphasize on best-practices that are necessary for industrial work. You are simply paying to be branded with Northwestern on your resume.

The program starts out by covering the very basics of HTML and some outdated methods of styling webpages such as "floats". The beginning of the course starts out very thorough explaining trivial concepts in depth but as the course progresses to complicated concepts, it becomes very "hand-wavy." There is a large emphasis on outdated technologies such as templating languages and engines. Things that are very popular for today's industry such as React/Vue/Angular are bushed over. 

Teaching assistants are recent graduates of the program, who for the most part are not concerned about helping students but finding different jobs. 

If you reach out to the program for additional information, be warned that they will spam call you once a day to attempt you to fork over your money.

The job assistance I found to be quite useless. It seemed to be a strong selling point for the program but if you've worked as a professional previously then the behavioral interview preparation portion will be useless. There are practice technical interviews which are useful. You can also go to meetups and get the same experience for free. Brand statements, elevator pitches, resume reviews were other subjects that were touched on but did not seem to cover anything beyond standard information you can find online. 

If you are driven enough you can learn the entire curriculum plus some additional content from freeCodeCamp, without wasting a dime. Udemy is also a great place that I found had much more valuable content. If you need the structure of a classroom then a boot camp is a great viable option. There are some fantastic boot camps out there, but this is not one of them. 

Agree with many of the other commenters on here - this thing is Northwestern in name only and run by a company called Trilogy Education Services.  Trilogy is all over the place with quality - our cohorts instructor seemed like they had just graduated from a bootcamp themselves and were not prepared to teach.  At the same time, another cohort had a great instructor but I wasn't able to switch to it.

I'm not confident in what I can build and I think I'm one of the stronger students in the class.  Our counselors keep telling us that the market is very good for web developers but I've checked with previous graduates and am not hearing good things for Trilogy grads. 

Also, Trilogy isn't sharing any results of how graduates are doing with students (or staff as far as I can tell).  Have heard very few success stories.

Stay far away.