UT Austin Boot Camps

I'm close to finishing the Cyber Security Boot camp at UT Austin (around 2 more months) and I wanted to write a quick review on the course. So far, I've really loved it. It really does teach a wide-variety of topics while pushing each student to find something they really enjoy. You'll cover everything from Windows System Admin to Wireshark to simple bash-scripting (all skills which make you more competitive). The content also challenges you in every aspect such as technical skill, focus, critical thinking, and efficiency. Lastly, the content and lectures are interesting. However, be prepared; they are intense and you will move at breakneck speed (the homework assignments can be tough as well). Gotta be able to keep up!

Besides the curriculum, the resources you have are pretty awesome. Our instructor is a well-known veteran in the field and sometimes it feels like a privilege to be able to learn from him. He regularly takes time to answer questions and we all have a good rapport with him. The teaching assistants are great as well. Most of them have taken time out of their day to help me when I'm in a pinch. For instance, recently, one of my TAs spent a good chunk of their own time looking for resources to help me prepare for a GRC interview. I would highly recommend this course to anyone who has the drive and the desire to be a cybersecurity professional.

Lastly, just some advice for those that want to take this course: Try to understand exactly why you're learning what you're learning. Attempt to understand the application of the content and its impact. Also, make sure to have some extra content to work on alongside the course. Whether it's working toward the Network+ or studying a applicable programming language such as Python or SQL.

While I can't compare the course to other camps, given that I obviously only took the one, I have to say that the UT Austin boot camp was very educational for me. I feel ready to take on a professional web development job, and while I did have a little bit of coding experience beforehand, it certainly wouldn't have been enough to do what I am able to now. In just 6 months, I've gone from being able to change the color of some text on a webpage to being able to create an entire website from scratch, including interactive and visually pleasing elements.

They really emphasized the user experience and mobile-first design, both of which seemed a bit odd at first. Yet, as I continued, it made complete sense: if the site is hard to navigate, who will use it? If it looks bad on a phone, how many people are likely to come back? I also enjoyed my instructor, TAs, and classmates, and I now have several good-looking websites to show for my efforts -- many of which I built entirely from scratch!

In short: I definitely recommend this boot camp.

After assisting as a non-IT implementation team member during a software transition for a Police Department, a spark ignited leading me toward cybersecurity and this botocamp. During my six months with the instructor, TAs, and fellow students, my passion only grew and love for the fellow CS student/future CS professional became profound. Not to mention the connections and one-on-one mentoring from all UT Austin Bootcamp staff. If you are thinking of taking this course, do it! Rip that fear-ridden bandaid off! Yes, it is like drinking from a firehose. Yes, you will be less than confident in your skills at one point. Yes, you can do this. You will suceed and a new career is waiting for you! 

Hi my name is Greg. I want to say when I first started this class I had no knowledge of cybersecurity or anything, I literally came in this program knowing nothing and I will admit I was scared. I was scared I would fail, I was scared to take the next step to even achieve anything at all but being here I learned alot I gained so much knowledge it’s crazy.. the courses go fast so you have to pay attention but luckily they upload the videos after so you rewatch and relearn. This was my greatest accomplishment.

The UT Austin Digital Marketing Boot Camp is an excellent program for anyone looking to hone various digital marketing skills. While my undergrad degree was focused on Marketing, I really only learned traditional basics. As we all know, the world has shifted to most operations being virtual and marketing relies on us keeping up with the trends. This boot camp provided in-depth overviews of many of the digital marketing concepts I came across in my job search, but had little to no familiarity with. The course is structured well and the instructional team is phenomenal - these folks are very energetic and eager about the topics they discuss and even go out of their way to provide additional information outside of the course slide decks. Each member of the team brings their own experience and expertise, and it is a blast to learn from real-world professionals and their personal experiences. I certainly feel more prepared to make my move into the digital marketing world after completed the course even half way! Topics covered include WordPress/Web Design + Development, SEO, content/social media marketing, Google Analytics, and more! These are the hottest topics in digital marketing and the course sets every student up for success. I would recommend this course whole-heartedly to anyone who either wants to dive into digital marketing for the first time or brush up on the most important skills!

I started this program six months ago with basically zero knowledge of anything related to web development and graduated with the ability to create my own software and speak the web development language with tech professionals.

If you are willing to put in the time (20+ hours a week at least) and actively learn throughout the program, I am convinced that any motivated person could graduate from the bootcamp and land a job in the field. The bootcamp will not be easy, it will be a lot of work, it will be frustrating at times, but it is extremely rewarding and will allow you to learn all the skills you need and more!

PreparationThere are a few things one can do to succeed in regards to preparing for the rigorous schedule.  I participated in the part-time program and was initially overwhelmed by the pace.  Familiarizing yourself with the core principles of coding.  I don’t know that this is as language specific as you might think.  The ideas and strategies you learn seem to be applicable for any of the most common of them.  We went deep into JavaScript thankfully.  You receive a broad sweep of all there is to the structure, syntax and functional aspects of the wackiness, JavaScript brings.  Coming in with a cursory view of the language would serve you well.  Which would lead someone to ask, ‘Why then do I need the Bootcamp?”  I’d honestly say it’s not essential but, so necessary.  For me, there’s no way I would individually push to this extent.  If you are that determined, then maybe you are well along your way to being the developer you want to be.  I was unaware of what I could learn and therefore found the success of pushing beyond my comfort zone fulfilling.  Having a cohort to work with was an excellent mock work environment.  The team aspect made it feel less lonely and isolated.  Forming instant networks, I plan to nourish as I move along as a developer.
ContinuationYou will be pushed.  You will be exhausted and you will consider yourself a fool for torturing yourself in this mental battle to grasp the concepts at this breakneck pace.  However, the weeks will pass and once the program reaches the end you will feel so much better about yourself.  At least, this was my experience.  Fortunately, I found some great people to code with, cry with, cuss with and ultimately become better with.  The routine for my bootcamp was online classes twice a week, with a challenge project due by weeks end.  There’s ton of support with knowledgeable instructor, TAs and a chat feature where you can pose any question to on call staff to handle those moments when brain fog hits.  The Bootcamp is broken into thirds, if I had to name them simply I’d call them Basics, Concepts and Operations.  With the latter being the actual application of the knowledge gained from the previous two sections.
ResilienceThis course is by no way the only way to become a developer, obviously.  What it is though can be summed up as a GREAT start to learning the process of becoming a developer.  The practices can be replicated with some dedication to the development of the newly found skills.  You essentially learn how to learn developing.  There is a huge amount of trust that you will eventually get some concepts that float way over your head at times.  I found that was when some extra pushing was needed.  You may feel you are already at your limit but with some additional effort you will begin to learn more than you thought was possible. 
CompletionNearing the end of the Bootcamp will bring you some needed confidence and satisfaction for having set a new limit to what you can accomplish. When the ‘Imposter syndrome’ hits, and it will, push past it.  I received great advice to not compare myself to others but, rather compare myself to the me from 3 months prior and enjoy the rush of what I have gained from learning something new.  I offer the same advice to you life time learner.

After graduating with a BA I was looking for a structured way to learn JavaScript, to say this boot camp delivered would be an understatement. Make no mistake, it was difficult. There were weeks when I was very concerned I wouldn't be able to push through, but because of the instructional team and abundance of resources available in this program, I made it through. This course challenged me to grow and learn things I never would have attempted on my own, or if I had it would have taken ten times longer and been way more frustrating than it needed to be. I am so proud of my growth over the past six months and my peer's growth. That may have been the best part, being in an online classroom setting where no question was silly and everyone wanted you to succeed. Even now, after finishing, I still have those connections, which makes me feel confident going into my job search. I am so proud of myself, and I am so proud to be an alumna of this fantastic program!

As I went through undergrad as a communications major, I found myself being more and more interested in IT, networking, and security, especially after taking an introductory MIS class. After interviewing for an nnternal audit position at a Fortune 500 company, I found myself leaning more towards more technical analyst job positions, rather than communications facing fields. To help myself transition into a more technical mindset, I hoped to take more MIS and business courses, but UT's academic regulations restricted me from delving into them as much as I wanted to. 

Around my senior year, I found the bootcamp online.The bootcamp seemed to put a strong focus on learning the most current technologies and giving students real-life experience instead of focusing strictly on test-taking (unlike most of my undergrad experience). Because of this, you could take away exactly what you wanted to from the bootcamp. If you were interested in Incident Response but hate Forensics, you could spend hours improving on one while putting in the bare minimum learning the other. I felt like it was a worthy investment, so I applied, was accepted, and started in October 2019. I graduated early from UT in December 2019, and continued to take the bootcamp through April 2020 while working a part-time job on the side. 

Taking the bootcamp turned out to be a fantastic experience that exposed me to so many things - new technologies, new knowledge of the field, new projects to get on my resume, and a wealth of resources for professional and career development. Eventually, I ended up landing a job in tech/security that I was very happy with, and I'm very satisfied with the bootcamp for helping me on the journey to land that job. 

My favorite aspect of the bootcamp was how it sets you up to be in a cycle of learning, taking the learning and applying it to small homework assignments and in-class projects, and then using the projects to help build up your professional profile. I also really enjoyed how the TA's and instructors almost always made themselves available to give their advice and personal insights. The class was small and often felt informal, which was a refreshing, down-to-earth experience. The career services were also structured very nicely in a way that gets you working on your resume, portfolio, LinkedIn, and interviewing skills as you get closer to completing the course. 

I'd like to give huge props to Matt Hales, our instructor for the majority of the course, Heather Hans, our career director, and Brett Payne, our student success manager. All three of them stood out to me in terms of providing great personal insight, investing themselves in the success of the students, and being genuinely knowledgable about what they were talking about.

There were a few cons, but they did not outweigh the pros, in my eyes. However, I think they're worth mentioning as feedback. Our schedule changed several times during the first few months of the course, and it was never really documented anywhere, so there were a couple of times where I'd show up to class not really knowing what I was about to learn, which was frustrating. Our first instructor, while a great teacher, sort of abruptly left when he got a new work opportunity, which felt awkward (our new instructor was excellent in taking over and supporting us, however). There aren't true hard deadlines on the homework assignments, so if you're a procrastinator, you might not benefit from the course as much as you could be. The lectures weren't recorded consistently in the first half of the course, so if I wanted to review the demos that our instructor ran in the class for my own reference, I simply couldn't. Additionally, it was sometimes difficult to access other resources, like a solution file for a class activity that simply wasn't where it was supposed to be. Lastly, the feedback you get on homework assignment is very limited, so you have to ask for specific feedback from the teachers if you want it. I don't blame the instuctors for all of these issues, but I do think this is feedback that the bootcamp should use to make sure their students have a smooth experience from beginning to end in future cohorts.

The price of the bootcamp is also hefty, but there are indeed a lot of resources you get to use and keep indefinitely after it's all over. It comes down to how willing you are to put in extra hours studying, documenting your learning, improving your professional materials, and asking questions to your instructors, career advisors, and student success managers. Overall, having landed a job that I'm thrilled to have in a field I knew nothing about 6 months ago, it's easy for me to give the bootcamp a positive review, despite some of the issues I ran into.

UT Austin Data Analytics & Visualization Bootcamp Review
I just completed the 6 month part time Data Analytics & Visualization Bootcamp and it was a total adrenaline rush the whole time! I really enjoyed my interactions with the instructor, the TAs, and the material we learned in just 6 months. The curriculum was quite broad, ranging from basic Excel skills to introductory Python to a deeper overview of machine learning than I expected (this is dependent on the instructor and the program as they update their material over time). I really enjoyed learning all that I did and the homework assignments and group projects were a fantastic way to really cut your teeth on the material (that I spent many nights staying up late for merely because I could not let something go before going to bed). The bootcamp is a great way to broaden your skills should you go in with a clear goal in mind.
What do you learn?I would split the class into 3 parts as it currently is:

1. Basic Python & SQL - learning basic Python skills, data analysis and visualization using pandas, APIs, web scraping, etc. Some SQL training using Docker and Postgres (you may use MySQL depending on instructor). I will also lump Excel in here since it was a pretty short section right at the beginning.
2. Basic web dev - you learn HTML/CSS/Javascript in this section. Enough to put up visualizations on a webpage and how to set up a basic website/application but not as much as the Coding Bootcamp (i.e. Web Dev Bootcamp) of course. This section is a bit weirder to people as it’s not so much analysis as it is learning the web dev skills to put up your analysis on a webpage which can get people lost sometimes because it is so different from the previous section of the course.
3. Advanced topics - this one seems to vary a lot from class to class. My class focused on basic machine learning skills (i.e. supervised learning, regression, NLP, Spark, etc.) and a bit of Tableau and R as well. Can get very advanced if you have had no experience with data science topics. It’s amazing what my cohorts learned and created by the end of it though.

What are the program’s strengths?

• In person classes. Sure, you had to show up 3 times a week and be in class but it was very helpful to go over exercises with classmates and TAs learning alongside with you face-to-face. I personally think it is more motivating too because you have to actually be somewhere and learn for a structured amount of time.
• Networking. Due to the face-to-face nature of the classes, you get to interact with people that may be working in the field already and get to know them. It is a 6 month long class after all and getting to know people over that time period makes for a stronger connection than online classes with Slack/message boards or someone you might meet at a meetup once a month or so. Definitely easy to take advantage of and possibly get referrals or refer them yourself as I did.
• Diverse topics. Before the the bootcamp, I kept getting rejected from jobs because my skill set was not broad enough and I had to keep saying no whenever an interviewer asked me if I had any experience in “X” technology. The bootcamp filled in pretty much exactly what they were asking for while I was searching and I could finally stop saying no.
• Portfolio creation. The homework assignments are like mini-projects and the group projects take a couple weeks plus they give you experience with working on a team. This made my Github go from nearly empty aside from some training exercises to something I could show off to an employer or give a talk for and something I was comfortable with someone going through it to see what I am now capable of.

What are the program’s weaknesses?

• Very structured and fast paced. This is true of all bootcamp programs. It may be part time but you still have to make time for it after work. It’s not as flexible as some online program you can drop in and out of at your convenience. If you miss even 2 classes in a row without reviewing them, you are very far behind due to the amount of material you cover (you don't need to master every single little thing of course but some skills compound on each other). So be sure you have the time to dedicate 6 months of effort for this program.
• Hard to keep up if you do not have some technical experience of inclination. Sure, it’s possible to start from nothing and build yourself up but it’s much harder and I think people who didn’t have that background were more likely to get less out of the class. I think the class works better as a crash course or multiplier of skills rather than a gentle introduction to them (but you are supposed to feel some uncomfortableness when learning something new anyway so that is natural). The initial skills assessment test is too easy to pass. I would suggest at least being comfortable with certain prerequisite skills before starting the course (outlined below) in order to maximize your chances of success (success being defined as being employer ready).
• Costs. Not really a weakness per se but something to consider. All bootcamps cost a pretty penny, especially the in-person ones. Although it is much cheaper than other in-person bootcamps in the Austin area which is nice to know.
• Not enough time spent on visualization analysis. A lot of programming that can get heavy at times but we never really compared what types of visualizations are appropriate for what and that would be a more helpful section than something like the VBA scripting in my opinion.

Prerequisite skills to learnYou can learn these skills on the fly during class but it will reduce a lot of frustration if you play around and become familiar with them before the program. I really do think you can learn it in the month before the program starts honestly.

• Moving around in a terminal. You don’t need to write full on scripts but moving from folder to folder and knowing what simple shell commands do would help a lot. If you’ve only ever used a GUI and have never touched a terminal before, you’re going to be have to ramp up faster than usual after the class starts.
• Git/Github. Just enough to know how to add, commit, pull, merge. You will have some class time to learn it though but it will be less intimidating if you learn basics first. Also, being comfortable with the terminal goes hand in hand with this.
• Basic programming skills. Do you know how to create a loop or if statements? Are you familiar with classes? You get to do some of it in the Python course but it helps to understand the underlying principles so that you are confident you can do it in some other language like Javascript too (because you will end up doing that).
• Basic SQL skills. Just be able to do basic queries and how a SQL table is structured. Helps to be able to think in terms of SQL when working with data.

Job assistanceThe program offers resume reviews and interview prep. I can’t comment on this too much though since I got a new job halfway through the program and stopped using it at that point. I did do a few workshops at the start of the program though and they did seem helpful and there were people from across different cohorts all over the country and at different stages (pre-bootcamp, midway, already graduated, etc.). The coaches gave helpful feedback and seemed to be open to reach out to for help but it was hard to make time during the program due to time constraints so it may just be a better thing to pick up after it in my view. I think it needs to be pushed more though. It felt a lot more like some side thing from Trilogy as opposed to the very attentive university itself. This is a crucial part though because the hardest part of building yourself up for a new job isn’t going through code errors or making a machine learning model work. At least you get guaranteed feedback for those skills, which is not always so true when job hunting. It is to know how to speak to employers and pitch your value, to know how to network for opportunities, and generally how the application process works (or doesn't work) in the first place. 
What is the class structure like?The class meets two times during the week and once on the weekend. There are usually two classes (Monday/Wednesday and Tuesday/Thursday) that then combine in the Saturday class. Each class you get to go through activities with the instructor and then do a student exercise right after that to practice on your own or with a partner and ask each other or a TA questions as you try to figure it out. It’s a very active learning environment. The lectures are accessible so that you can review them later and you have access to the activities anytime. You have homework to submit each week reviewing the skills you learned and a TA will review and grade them. There are 3 group projects in the course: a Python data analysis, a web application data analysis, and a final project that involves machine learning. Each are about 2 weeks long and you get to present them in class to show off your work and practice how you present them to possible employers.
Was the class worth it?Yes, as long as you have a clear goal in mind and do enough research to know what the bootcamp actually offers and that it matches your goals. It’s not a quick, overnight path from zero to being a data scientist but it can help you get started on that path while making you useful as a data analyst (which is just as well since data scientist is not an entry level role at all). It is first and foremost a data analytics class (hence its title). I had a couple years of data analysis/ETL development going in and wanted a fast way to build up my skills with certain technologies (because I was spinning in circles for a long time) and a usable portfolio which is exactly what I got. Make sure you can answer the “why?” question clearly before going in and it will help you have a better chance at succeeding at your goals.