RocketU

As with all bootcamps, you get what you put in.

Pros: 
- It gave me a structured schedule to force myself to learn. This led to reading a ton and learning ReactJS. 
- Worked on awesome projects with some great people. 
- Met people with diverse backgrounds. For my final project, the two other members came from very different places (A math major graduate and an entrepreneur from Hong Kong ). Also met some people that I'm sure I'll maintain contact with. 
- Web dev is interesting to learn and Django is an awesome framework.

Cons: 
- 12k is super steep 
- Instruction period was only 6 weeks and the instruction materials were BAD. 
- Not really any job support. 
- Besides Suman, who is awesome, the other instructors gave me bad architecture directions which led to a ton of wasted time. I ended up reaching out for outside help regarding ReactJS and waiting for Suman to show up when I have Django questions. 
- You can just Google or ask StackOver flow and get better answers. 
- No one there knew front-end best practice..... 
- When someone's attending a web dev bootcamp and they say they want to work on graph database or set up machine learning with Hadoop/Hive/what ever...I think the instructors have an moral obligation to curtail the students' focus. 
- While most are awesome, some students didn't seem to belong, they ended up wasting a ton of class time and patience.

Me and the other people who went through this bootcamp learned a ton, but we definitely could've learned way more if the instructions were better.

My time as RocketU was filled with ups and downs from day one, beginning with the change of curriculum. None of the students were notified of the change prior to arriving (Not very ethical of RocketU) and frustrated many. This resulted in many dropping the class in the first week. However, their overall goal to change the curriculum was with good intension. Instead of spending approximately 10 weeks learning frameworks and two weeks building a final project, it is crammed into six weeks of learning and six weeks building three different projects of your choice. This gives you more time to explore technologies and build projects working in teams – a skill required in any software job. As you can imagine, anything done last minute is not done properly. There was several times where we received instructions that were ambiguous and contained errors and spelling mistakes - a frustrating time for us all. Numerous times we asked for new material and instructions and never received it despite being told they are working on it. I certainly hope they have fixed this for future classes.

The full-time instructors are very friendly and genuinely want to help out but the downside is that they are are not very experienced. Majority of the time we were left alone with a student who had graduated from the previous cohort and often resulted in us being miss-guided and not shown best practices. There was no one in the class who was an expert in front-end development. Again, a huge problem since all apps require front-end development. There is a new instructor for the upcoming cohorts who we worked with briefly for about a week – I do question his experience and ability.

RocketU market themselves and being a bootcamp with ACCESS to 175+ startups. This is not completely true. Yes, the bootcamp is in a startup working space but you can’t just go for a chat to any of them. They are running a business after all. However, there are ‘lunch and learns’ which RocketU organize and they are often have someone from one of the Startups in Rocketspace come and speak to you about their specialty. The lunch and learns are a hit and miss – some are very insightful and others are a sales pitch for their product. 

From day one you are told that you are going to graduate the course being junior-medium full-stack developers. Depending on your prior experience you might be a very junior full-stack developer but if you are new to programing then don’t kid yourself. The course will give you a basic foundation but you will have to work extremely hard after the course to build up on your skills and to get a job in software development.

If you are considering RocketU, make sure you spend 2-3 months prior to starting the class learning Python and Javascript. For you to excel, you really need to do this. We were given pre-requisite work of about 80 hours to do before starting the class but it was not enough in my opinion. Especially focus on JavaScript since it is required for all front-end development and this area of teaching is lacking with the currently RocketU curriculum.

RocketU spends sometime trying to prep you for Interviews and demo/hiring day. We were told we would do mock-interviews prior to demo/hiring day. One student was lucky enough to go through this experience. The rest of us were only taken through this process afterwards (It’s not to late but too late for the actual day). The mock-interviews were also open to whatever you wanted to discuss. From my interviewing experience after the class, you will be asked technical questions and this is something that needs to be practiced in the class. The demo/hiring day is a good experience and RocketU genuinely does try to get you a job (even after the class they will send you emails about job openings).

They have recently opened up hiring days to alumni as well. This is a great feature for alumni but also put student graduating from the course at a slight dis-advantage to begin with since you have less experience.

Overall, I learnt a lot but I could have gained a lot more from the class if the above things had not happened.

I recommend RocketU to anyone trying to learn how to code and thinking they can possibly teach themselves at home.

Overall I'm happy for choosing RocketU. Having zero programming experience prior, I learned a ton in 12 weeks and ended it with 3 real full-stack projects now on my resume. The hard reality of attending any bootcamp is that it’s a lot to teach and learn in a very short amount of time. It’s ultimately up to each student to try to take as much out of the program as they can. I saw attending a bootcamp as only a first step to learn how to code. RocketU is still relatively new (I was in their 6th cohort) and yes, there were some ups and downs in this cohort as they were growing their staff and changing up the curriculum. There were regular check-ins/feedback sessions between staff and students though and I felt the team listened to feedback and made positive changes throughout the course. I see them making these changes to make it a stronger program for the long-term.

My favorite part of the program was being in a group setting. There’s something about struggling to learn something with others that helps me learn better. Plus I met some interesting people who I now consider friends. My second favorite part was the projects phase of the course (the whole second half) where I learned more by having to design, code, and implement a full project.

The overall experience was pretty terrible. For anyone looking into this bootcamp and hoping for interaction with the start-ups, there will NOT be any. The curriculum was worst than anything from Coursera. 12K is very steep for knowledge that you can Google. I had to teach myself numerous time, since most of the instructor have no front-end experience. None of the teachers really know Angular. There are numerous bootcamps around the Bay Area, I would recommend anyone looking into RocketU to go somewhere else. The positive reviews were all by people who worked for the bootcamp.....

They completely changed the curriculum a few weeks before my cohort started which makes all of the previous reviews irrelevant. They brought in a new general manager, and he seems to have no idea what he is doing. 1/2 of the class dropped out within the first week. As the bootcamp goes on, people are continuously dropping out because the quality of the material has just worsen. From talking to the previous cohort, only three people ended up getting hired. All the previous reviews complementing Yeti, guess what, they are no longer involved anymore. I had to drop out of this to join General Assembly because the people running it don't seem to care. I would really caution you before you join. unless your company's paying for you, I would turn to more establish bootcamps like DevBootcamp or General Assembly.

There are a few things that I love about this bootcamp. The instructors from Yeti are wonderful, they're extremely knowledgeable, truly want to help students learn and they have provide course materials that only years of industry experience can come up with. The students are simply awesome. We got along so well that I was very close to have an teary eye on the last day.... Like other reviewers have mentioned, Lunch and Learns. They are very valuable and also serves as another opportunity to reach out to potential employers.

If you are reading this, I'm sure you are concern about hiring rate of this bootcamp. I too did not find much info before. But I just want to bring up a few points. Sure, hiring rate is important, as it seems to be the 'return on investment'. It seems to me hiring rate is overly simplified way of evaluating a bootcamp. Mainly because looking for work itself is a fulltime job. It heavily depends on how aggressive a graduate is, how well this person do on interviews, whether his/her projects are all completed and deplyoed, whether this person is picky on which company to apply, etc. 

It boils down to how much effort you've put into the projects and job search. The bootcamp teach you the skills you need, network with the startup founders for you, you also need to put in the effort to learn and really PUSH yourself. There are quite a few of my classmates found work within a month of graduation, some even have multiple offers (the ones who look aggressively). 

All in all, I recommend this bootcamp. I had an amazing time and I've made some very good friends.

I recently completed the Fall 2014 Cohort at RocketU. Before joining RocketU I had tried another bootcamp in the area. After a few weeks I just couldn't keep up and decided to drop the program. I was upset and unsure whether I could learn to code but decided to keep trying on my own. I spent a couple of months going back through lessons on Codecademy, CodeSchool, and Treehouse. I was lonely working by myself and really wanted the camaraderie and structure of a bootcamp. Once I started looking around at different bootcamps I happened upon RocketU. I applied and, within a couple of days, I was speaking with Mimi, the RocketU Program Manager. I was a little hesitant since I hadn't heard much about RocketU and couldn't find much about the program online. I was also nervous about spending the time and money on another program.

Mimi invited me to attend Demo Day for the Summer 2014 cohort so I could see for myself the types of projects students created after just a few months in bootcamp. After the Demo Day, I was very impressed with the quality of work the students presented, the staff and instructors at RocketU, and the RocketSpace community.

The structure of the course, the material and the Yeti instructors are what helped me to become a successful student.  The course is structured into four 3-week components: Python & Django, front end development(Javascript, jQuery, Ajax, design work), working on a development team (Git, server deployment, computer science topics), and full stack (angular, Django REST framework). After completing a component, we would be given 3 – 4 days to build an app using the skills we learned up to that point in the course. At the end of the bootcamp we presented a personal project to our classmates, members of RocketSpace, and invited companies and guests.  

Class is held from 9am – 6pm and consists of lecture and coding alongside the instructor as well as several do it yourself exercises which you can work on with a partner or by yourself. A large homework assignment is assigned usually by 4:00pm and you have until the next morning to work on the assignment.  Class starts by having a couple of students present their code to the rest of the class.  The instructor will ask questions and may complete a mini code review of the presenters work. If the student was unable to fully complete the assignment, the instructor will help guide them through a difficult part of the assignment. Presenting a coding assignment prepares you for demo day by learning how to speak technically and demo a project.

Extra perks include Lunch and Learns about two times a week and breakfast every morning. RocketSpace events are free and there are at least two happy hours a week. Students have access to RocketSpace 24/7 and there is a gym located in the building.

I can’t express how pleased I am to have attended RocketU and to give coding another chance. I discovered that I really can code and I'm in the process of starting a new job as a web developer.