UNC-Chapel Hill Boot Camps

Our instructor mentioned on the first day that the people who do best in the class are usually those who spend the most time outside of class studying and doing homework assignments and projects. Although it is true that with this course you get out of it what you put into it, there is a great deal of support from the instructor and the teaching assistants. You aren't left alone, and if you are struggling with a concept they will work hard to make sure you really understand the subject matter. For example, they don't just help you debug, they will explain the underlying reason for the bug (often not at all obvious) and make sure you have the tools to better find bugs in the future.

The most pleasant surprise for me in taking this course was how much the instructor and TAs loved the subject matter and wanted us, the students, to really understand it.

The curriculum is intended to prepare you for real programming work. It does teach you how to create a full website, from the front-end to the database.

I worked full-time while taking this course, but I had some advantages in having past experience as a software developer (and with computers in general). I think that if computer programming is completely foreign to you, it would be better to take this course without working full-time at the same time. But if programming and computer science aren't completely foreign topics, it's possible to work full-time and take this course. Either way, be sure to get plenty of sleep.

My overall experience with the boot camp was a great one. It was a lot of hard work, but I learned a ton in a very short amount of time. More so than the knowledge learned, the confidence built from working hands on to create apps with course technologies and experiencing first hand how much can be learned with enough focus and dedication was the greatest takeaway from the course.

Additionally, working with the other classmates and the networking that spawned from that was of huge benefit.

Finally, the instructional team for our class was excellent. Nick, Ryo, and Leo saw us through many challenges, and I felt that their enthusiasm for the course materials and our growth as students was a big help during more stressful sections of the course.

When choosing a coding bootcamp three major criteria should be taken into account: does the staff genuinely care about student success, is course content valid for career aspirations, and does the course's curriculum effectively leave students with skills needed to be effective in a professional environment? 

The Coding Boot Camp at UNC Chapel Hill delivered on every level.  Course management was engaging and took time to engage with students and their career aspirations. Course instruction was very knowledgable on topics covered in class and presented the course information effectively. Teaching Assistants went out of their way to support students whenever assistance was required.

Personally, I was fortunate enough to land a full time position at a local SaaS company before the course ended and felt more than prepared by the course.

I have nothing but positive feedback to provide from the course and recommend it to anyone considering enrolling!

I wish I had waited before writing a cautiously positive review after graduating January '22. There were various moments during the onboarding process and even the class itself where I felt like this was going to significantly change the course of my life. I passed the class with an A average and I felt well-versed in a majority of the topics covered mostly in part because the instructors, TA's and tutors were patient, kind and helpful. It's been almost a year since I graduated and I still haven't even had a single interview for a position. My wife was working two jobs while I took time off of work to focus on this course. We changed a lot about our personal and professional lives to make this change because we thought it would be one that would pay off in the long run.I even worked with career services and attended multiple free events hosted by 2U that gave me no new insights on what to expect in real world applications. My one-on-one career counselor meetings felt like I was visiting the DMV over Zoom where the only thing I learned was the STAR technique for interview processes which I could have found with my own research.For the amount of time, money and effort spent on this course, I was hoping for a better payoff. There's enough free resources out there on the subject these days. If you want to learn these things, save your money and do it yourself. It'll be just as stressful but at least you won't have the shame of wasting twelve thousand dollars just to constantly dread the, "how's the job search going?" questioning from family and friends.

The instructional team is excellent. The instructors do a good job explaining complex subjects and are there for you to either help with your code/homework or just hear you out and share their experiences. The success manager is also kind, friendly, and willing to listen to students. 
However, before enrolling in this Bootcamp, just know the curriculum comes from Trilogy. I strongly recommend reading reviews on Trilogy Bootcamp (especially on Reddit), and you can make your own opinion on it. 
The curriculum is outdated, and you will spend half of the course learning Web Development from the early 00s. (For instance, writing code with vars, jquery, etc.)
They will only teach you React (one of the most wanted front-end libraries) about four weeks before the end of the Bootcamp. Learning Redux, for example, is very important, and I saw that as a requirement for many job postings. But they don't teach you that.
With that being said, I know a lot of graduates don't feel ready to find a job because they spent half of the course learning Web Development that is no longer used.
Projects 1 and 2 are nearly irrelevant to your job search due to the fact that they use outdated front-end technologies that companies don't typically utilize anymore. 
 A month after graduation, only one person in my class had a job because they already had experience with a technology that we did not even learn during the Bootcamp.
The Career services are a complete joke. They take three weeks to give you feedback on your material. On demo day, there are hundreds of students to present and not enough industry professionals to watch the presentations. Some people didn't even have the chance to present their project because no employers were in their room to see it.
The amount of money you pay is absurd compared to how much instructional time you get. Classes last only 4 hours a week and 2 hours of office hours. 
I would recommend shopping around on other Bootcamps if you have no prior coding experience to try and see if you can get more hours in class. 
Pair programming (another milestone that companies love for candidates to have) is almost unexistent. While in class, you have about 12 minutes to solve each challenge in pairs, and sometimes just installing everything you need for the exercise can often take half of that time.
I spent, give or take,  40 hours a week on Bootcamp material,
and it is very disheartening to see on job descriptions that much of this time could have been spent learning more modern technologies.
While I understand that Vanilla Javascript is the foundation for modern frameworks, some of that could have been covered during the pre-work. The curriculum could have been catered to what matters the most to industry professionals.
In summary, please do your research before signing up with any university whose curriculum comes from Trilogy.
It isn't easy to know what is important for job searching when you have no prior coding experience, so hopefully, my review will help other students. I recommend reading job descriptions of the career field you desire to see what is in demand and then find a Bootcamp/program that teaches that material.
 And last but not least, try to choose one that will provide more instructional time each week.

Great Experience! Even though it was stressful at many (most) times, the support from the instructor and TA's where outstanding. They were always there to help. Even if you were completely lost, they made every effort to get you on track. Over the corse of 6 months, everyone really did become a bit of a coding family. 

This was a fast paced corse, and an excellent opportunity to add a whole host of new skills to my resume. My goal was to be able to add on to an existing skillset and be able to get myself better prepared for a possible career change. As intense as the corse was at times, it really did go by very quickly. I went into this with absolutely zero coding ability. I still have my work cut out for me, but things are not nearly as daunting anymore!

I'm truly looking forward to implementing my new skills and see what it brings!

I did not have the experience that many bootcampers have expressed.  I expressed concerns many times while taking this course.  The standard response I received was "Don't worry it will all come together in the end".  Although I spent many hours studying and researching topics, it did not all come together in the end.  I would recommend spending $10.99 and purchasing the Udemy course Web Developer Bootcamp by Colt Steele.  When this course is complete purchase the Advanced Web Developer Bootcamp by Colt Steele for $10.99.  There are many courses on Udemy to learn Web Development.  When you finish Colt's classes you will have a very clear understanding of Full Stack Web Development and save thousands of dollars.  One final note, everyone who attended the UNC Coding Bootcamp in my class received the Certificate of Completion, even those who had many classes absences and did not complete all the assignments.

I waited until I was close to a year removed from finishing the program so that I could write I very honest and not emotional review.

I will preface this with I had an amazing experience and I landed a great job at one of the top companies in the Triangle. Trilogy's strength are great and their weaknesses are terrible. One of there weaknesses is their non-existent acceptance criteria. Most people in the class did not complete there pre class assignments and I would say 10-20% should not have been allowed in for the simple fact that they had such little experience that they were so far behind from day 1 and they never had a chance to catch up. It was not fair, they were set up for failure and wasted their money. For the people that were prepared we hit the ground running from day 1. The amount of learning that takes place is in incredible. My Teacher and TA's were amazing. They cared about our success and they worked very hard. I still keep in touch with all of them. The other co-hort going on at the same time did not have as good of a teacher and TAs and they had a much lower success rate. I thank God that I got the teachers that I did. Our Student Success Manager (not to be confused with career services) was great as well.

Trilogy does give you a very fair expectation of how much work this class is going to take and how much time is necessary in and out of class. I would say maybe 25% of the capable students actually put in the amount of time Trilog suggest 20-40 hours outside of class. There was a huge difference between those students and the ones that didn't. I put in on average 30 hours outside of class with a Full-time job so it is possible. The curriclum was great other than you spend 2 weeks learning .net and C# impossible and a waste of time. Also, the part of class where you are learning while doing the final projects is also impossible (testing and algorithms) because the final project is expected to be in React which nobody had a grasp on so everybody is giving all their time and effort into completing that.

The two biggest negatives outside of the lack of acceptance vetting is that students who did not put in effort and did not complete there projects or homework assignments (but did turn them in) graduated with the same certificate that people who busted there ass did. Not fair to either group.

The career services did nothing for me and I tried to engage and work with them. They also never gave anyone an honest expectation of how much work was going to be required after class for them to find employment(continuing ed, interview prepe, resume / portfolio / networking). Our career service person was also negative and was never completely forthcoming. At one point she was encouraging me to learn PHP and word press "becuase there is high demand there" which was here being lazing and pushing blame back on me. She also told me I should expect a job for less that half of the salary of the job I ended up taking because "low starting salaries" in my area. I would say out of the 40 - 50 people in my cohort I am one of 3 that I know of that found full time role as a developer in 6 months. A few got lesser roles still in IT or partime / contract and To be fair there were several people that got promotions at there current employer and I am sure the knowledge gained from the program had something to do with that. YOU WILL NOT BE HIREABLE upon completing the class, but you will be on your way if you continue to put in the same amount of work you did while in class. 

My conclusion is I LOVED the class, but if you do not have a little bit of a self taugh background and the drive to put in 40-50 hours a week into this during and after the class you are wasting your money. If you expect career services to do anything other than send you crappy jobs listings to apply to (that often don't match the skills from class and all you classmates are also getting and applying to) you are wasting your money.

Be honest with yourself before spending your money this is not a silver bullet and there are no short cuts.

I started the bootcamp in February of this year, but even before that there was a lot of people reaching out and making sure I was fully prepared for what was ahead of me.  From career services to instructors, everyone was extremely outgoing and helpful, I never felt like them helping me was not a top priority. The course itself was extremely challenging and almost 100% hands-on learning. I had tried to pick up programming in the past, with little to show for it, but after only 6 months in this bootcamp I've learned more than I thought was possible.  I have nothing but good things to say about this program and have already recommended it to friends so that they can experience what I have as well.