University of Richmond Boot Camps

I came into this course with many years of IT experience focused primarly on hardware and IT service delivery.  I had no prior expirience with web development or related technologies.  

This course is loaded with content and organized in such a way to make it possible to learn the material within the timelines.  You will be regularly challenged as you work through the lessons.  You will be relieved and proud of what you are able to create, only to have the achievement surpassed the next week.  In the end you will have obtained a good working knowledge of the technologies, feel confident in your abilities as a developer, and know how to learn new technologies going forward.  .   

The course will require a sustained personal commitment from you.  Your level of success will relate directly to the time you give to the lessons and homework.  Be prepared to rearrange your schedule and invest most of your free time in learning.  You will get out of it what you put into it.  

You'll have all the help and support you require along the way.  The instructional staff is real-world knowledgeable beyond the curriculum and are able to fill in the gaps which help you understand the concepts.  The combined classroom and independent study format provides structure and accountability.  Everyone involved in student support throughout the program is very supportive and professional. 

My personal assessment is this experience is extremely positive.  Great instructors, great support, great classmates, and I have lots of new skills.  

If you're on the fence about taking the dive, just do it. This is a fantastic program, and well worth your time and money. The instructors are awesome, and they are actual professionals in the industry. They geniunely care about you and your success. The TAs are very knowledgeable and supportive, and will devote a lot of their time to help you with homework or to understand a specific topic. The Administrator is there for anything you need. Needless to say, the support system you'll have as you learn is phenominal. 

As for the course itself, it is fast paced and challenging, but rewarding. You will find yourself just starting to grasp one topic only to quickly move on to the next, but if you stay disciplined, and use your resources and support available to you, then you will succeed. 

Coming out of this course, I have a broad range of skills that are in high demand. I feel pleased with my decision to take this life changing step in my life and this course has built a solid foundation for the start of my new career path. 

Students get the opportunity to present their final projects at a science fair-like hiring event, and I can only tell you that it was one of the best experiences I have ever had, and I feel like I made a lot of great connections.

It is a serious commitment for six months, it requires at least 15 to 20 hrs of own time to analyze class activities and complete homework. The class activities and homework helped me to a great extent to understand the concepts. Even as a QA analyst worked in an IT environment for over an 8yrs, it was still challenging. It is a constant fire hose of information, but I can assure you the six months is not at all enough to master all the technologies but it is enough to understand the basic concepts to build on it. Unlike learning all these technologies over some online tutorials, there is always a human available to interact and consult your doubts. I am glad I joined the boot camp. I am very happy with my progress. It is well worth the time.

I came into the course knowing a little HTML and CSS and I graduate tomorrow feeling confident and excited about continuing to learn. The UR teaching staff and Student Success Manager, Yuri, makes sure students are properly prepared to make web development a life-long journey. It will challenge and frustrate you, but you'll enjoy wins as you will have "a-ha" moments quite frequently. They will teach you how to troubleshoot and absorb the languages and technologies - truly setting you up to be able to learn anything you set your mind to. I will miss the cameraderie of the class, but I am excited to apply what I have learned now in real world situations!

The U of R Coding Boot Camp is a humbling experience. I already had a web design certificate and thought I was more or less ready to jump into the workforce. This boot camp showed me just how wrong I was and how much I had yet to learn. I’ve learned so much in the last six months that I chuckle to think how naïve I was before it. The curriculum is consistently challenging, and right as you start to think “Maybe I’m getting the hang of this,” you’re whisked onto the next unfamiliar concept. It requires more than casual attention to keep up, but even with a full-time job, it’s not impossible with the right work ethic. Thanks to the great instructors, T.A.s, and staff, this boot camp has built up my portfolio, allowed me to forge supportive connections with fellow newbie coders, and helped pave the way for me to break into the I.T. industry. Highly recommended!

I originally signed up for this class as a backup for if I did not get a job that I wanted. As fate would have it, I ended up with both.

I have dabbled development in the past, but nothing improved and gave me the skills needed to be a web developer like this class has done. It is difficult, it stretched me to my limits, but I learned. The teachers and the TAs are there you help you, they offer time before and after class to answer your questions and help guide to towards what you need to know. If you take this class seriously, you will learn so much.

Starting from the application process with this bootcamp I have had great expriences..  The emrollment process is somewhat challenging with a technical interview and test.  The weeks leading up to the start of the camp require roughly 40 hours of pre-work that sets you up to get started the first day.  The camp is instensive but with good reason.  Learning to code it more then memorizing, it requires a mindset of curisity, always open to learning new things, knowing you wont master them right away.  You're streched in ways you didn't know were possible and build bonds with classmates and TA that support you every step of the way.  The campus is historic and a pillar in the Richmond community, for that the certificate will be well recieved in the community.

So you're considering the U of R web development bootcamp? Awesome! As a soon-to-be graduate (in two more days!), I hope this advice will help prospective students determine whether or not this program is the right fit for them, and get the most out of their experience if they decide to take the leap.

First and foremost, like all the other reviews say, this is HARD. It's so life-changing and rewarding BECAUSE it's so hard. But you have to be mentally and physically prepared for a 6-month endurance challenge. Real talk: I spent 6 years in a super-intense Ph.D. program before coming to this bootcamp, and I think this was an even more difficult experience. You will be pushing yourself and there will be growing pains as you learn challenging new skills in a very intensive, short time frame. Your friends and family will wonder where you disappeared to. You will worry where you, and your brain and sanity, disappeared to. You'll get tired and discouraged. You'll feel like you can't catch your breath and can't possibly keep drinking from a firehose of new information every week until the end. At times you will wonder if you're good/smart/whatever enough, maybe even think about quitting...

DON'T.

Because the flip side of the previous paragraph is, this bootcamp is PHENOMENAL. You'll have a ton of fun. The instructors and staff are knowledgeable, caring, responsive, kind, and helpful. You and your classmates will bond intensely during this experience, and you'll emerge with a built-in network of local tech buddies. You'll learn about yourself and your abilities, and you'll be stunned at what you're able to accomplish over the weeks and months. I toyed with the idea of doing a bootcamp for several years before taking the plunge, and I'm so, so, so very glad I finally did.

TL;DR: Be brutally honest with yourself: am I ready to commit 6 months to one of the hardest and most all-consuming things I've ever done? If the answer is really yes, go for it! Put in the time and effort, enjoy yourself, and you will be richly rewarded with knowledge, skills, connections, friendships, confidence, and a bright career outlook!

I had minimal exposure to real-world coding when I enrolled, and from the first hour of instruction, the whole class was in the fast lane. You MUST commit the time necessary to be successful in this course, and that means rearranging your life for 6+ months. It's totally worth it.

Recommended: If you're not sure this is for you, spend some good time going through courses on udemy, freecodecamp, or other no cost / low cost instruction sites. If you enjoy the challenge of those experiences, and are ready to commit the time, then this course is an excellent choice.

I'm graduating a few days from now. I'm amazed at how much I've learned and the breadth and depth of the skills that I've developed because of my time in this course. I came to the class with no experience with any kind of coding. I'm leaving with a great understanding of CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Node, React, Express, and more. I actually understand how to use all of this and was able to do so for my final project.

My biggest fear was that I wouldn't be able to learn it, or that this would just be an introduction and the real work would happen after graduation. While I'm sure that's still partly true, I feel fully prepared to demonstrate to employers that I have the skills, right now, needed to be valuable in the web development space.

It was hard. Really hard. And worth it. Really worth it.

I had very little experience with coding before I started this bootcamp and I was worried about going back to school after being out of school for so long, but the support that is available for students is amazing. I'm so thankful for my instructors and TAs. They were very responsive and available whenever I needed help and beyond just the academic support, they and Yuri, our student sucess manager, were emotionally supportive. The course is fast-paced and information packed. There is just too much material to internalize, process, and use on my own so feeling stressed out becomes second nature. However, I can't believe I've come this far in 5.5 months and have created full-stack web applications. I'm excited about the possibilities that await after this bootcamp and would recommend this to anyone who is looking for a life changing experience.