UW Coding Boot Camp

I would like to say thank you to the UW Full Stack Web Development program faculty and staff. You guys made it easy for me to succeed in the program and offer support throughout. 

I had one of the best instructor and TA’s I could have ever asked for. His teaching style was just what I needed. The TA’s were willing to help whenever they can and give resources so you can expand your knowledge.

To the Career Services department, Thank you guys for not giving up on me and pushing me to be better and giving your guidance. You guys are a blessing to me and truly appreciative of you guys.

Not to brag but I believe U.W has the best Web Development Boot Camp there is hands down. So glad I was able to be a part and experience the excellence.

Thank you.

As a recent business administration graduate interested in finance, I have always been passionate about learning how to unfold hidden opportunities behind numbers as well as being able to accurately analyze the outcomes. I knew that learning Python and being able to implement it to the field of finance is an essential skill to become more competitive in today’s job market. That’s why I became very excited when I came across UW FinTech Bootcamp course and immediately submitted my application. 
When I applied to the course, it was going to be in a physical setting at the University of Washington’s Bellevue campus, however, after Covid-19 precautions escalated they had to change it to online. I first thought the transition was going to be somewhat negative but I was truly impressed by the online platform and communication channels that allowed for perfect continuation of the learning process. 
My 24-week part-time FinTech Bootcamp experience was amazing that went over and beyond my expectations. Looking back to the first week of bootcamp now, I am stunned with the improvement I have made from a real beginner’s level. Of course, this is not an easy program, you will have to push yourself and get your hands dirty. You may even come to a point where you want to throw your computer out of the window… However, don’t worry because you definitely have everything you need under your hands to be successful as long as you have the desire and curiosity to keep going. Thanks to the great instructor Gerrit Hall, and exceptional TAs Samantha Brimberry and Matthew Danko, you are greatly supported. They were always on-hand, eager to help and provide support. Not one question went unanswered!  My learning experience was not only limited to UW’s staff but also the perfect environment in which a very diverse group of individuals from different age groups and industries were collectively discussing, collaborating and executing group projects together. This diversity added  to the uniqueness of my learning experience in the sense that I got a chance to be exposed to different perspectives from different industries.  Another very beneficial aspect of the UW FinTech Bootcamp was the career services offered. Our student success manager Jen Alexander has supported the learning experience and ensured we had what we needed to be successful in this program. Every week there were around 3-4 optional webinar sessions about different talks in the fields that you may be interested as well as interview preps, resume/cover letter editing sessions.  This 24-week FinTech Bootcamp was a tailored experience perfectly matching my expectations and goals. I highly recommend it to anyone who has a desire and determination to learn about Financial Technology solutions and Python programming language and many more resources to expand your skill set. If you have any additional questions, you can reach me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/erenturkmenoglu/ 

If you are looking to learn, change jobs, change industries, etc. - I cannot recommend this program more.
If this course is something you are considering and want to talk to someone that went through it - please do not hesitate to reach out to me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacksolaro/

A Little About Me:
Just a short 2 months ago, I was working in staffing and saw my growth opportunities in that space dwindle. I came to this exact site (Course Report) to look at reviews on the UW Full Stack Development Bootcamp. I found some folks on LinkedIn who had left reviews and reached out to them. They told me about their experiences in the course (all overwhelmingly positive), and it convinced me to take the leap and enroll.

I cannot express how happy I am with my decision to enroll in this program. Below I broke it into some sections and wrote some details on my thoughts:

GENERAL:

• My instructor was Joe Rehfuss:
  • Absolutely amazing instructor, not a single complaint
• My class was virtual:
  • Again, no complaints. It was over Zoom and that was almost more convenient for me
• You get out what you put in.
• Cost is cheaper than what I saw on other bootcamp sites (General Assembly, Flat Iron, etc)
  • That's not to say the program is cheap but it is worth every dollar

CLASS/HOMEWORK:

• Content:
  • Get ready to learn A LOT. It sounds scary but I promise anyone can do it! 
• Class Structure:
  • Really good balance of instructor demos and then breaking off and applying that concept in groups
  • Pace is quick (but there is a lot of support to keep you caught up). I kept a Google Drive where I took notes every day that I could reference back to

SUPPORT:

• You get SO MUCH support from the staff in this program
  • Instructors and TAs
    • The real MVPs, they put in 150% to make sure you succeed
    • with you every day during class and office hours
  • Student Success Manager:
    • Makes sure you on the right path to graduate
    • They help answer any general questions
  • Materials Advisor:
    • over the course of the program, you can submit resumes, portfolios, brand statements, etc
    • The material advisors provide feedback on the documents you submit
  • Career Advisors / Directors:
    • Meet with them towards the end of the program and after graduation and they help prepare you for entering the workforce
    • If you complete all your "employer ready" requirements, they can also refer you to companies in their network
  • Tutoring:
    • I think you get like two free tutoring sessions a week. Admittingly, I didn't take advantage of this but I've heard classmates discuss that they found a lot of benefit from this

Again, I can't recommend this course enough!

This was the first time I had taken a course that I truly enjoyed every minute of. Joe, Denis, and Clint were a hell of a great instructional team and worked their hardest to make sure that all of the topics were laid out and understood. Though the Full Stack Flex full time course was indeed rigorous and required a lot of time outside of class it was made easier by the team mentioned above, the other students in the class, and the tutor system. I thought the overall structure of the content was well laid out and flowed exceptionally well building off of itself. As a whole I would absolutely suggest, and I already have, to others to take this course who have any interest in Web Development!

This course lives up to it's title of "bootcamp". This is a difficult program! If you are like me and have no prior experience in web development or coding, you will struggle! You will question what you had gotten yourself into and if you will make it through the end of the course. However, through the late nights of hw, frustration, tears and struggle, you will learn so much! I look back at the tremendous knowledge I've learned. From the first days of writing bare bones HTML to the full stack MERN & SERN applications I am creating. I, without a doubt, have come a long way.

Due to the nature of the curriculum, I would recommend to any future students (without any prior web development or coding backgrounds) interested in this course to find a good balance of work and school. This full stack part time course is marketed towards potential students that wants to continuing working full time time hours and do school part time. For me personally, I determined 2 weeks into the program, that working full time and doing this course would not be feasible if I wanted to graduate. I ended up dropping down to just 2 days a week for work. Because of my lack of exposure to coding, I found myself coding anywhere from 5-10 hours a day. In addition to work and school, I also have a toddler to take care of. I am very grateful that my wife was very understanding of my situation. She certainly was my biggest supporter! To anyone with a full time job and a family that wants to take this course, be sure to have solid conversation on how to best balance everything. Your success for this course depends on a refined work, family and school balance!

For the course itself, you learn nearly 2 dozen technologies! Everything from the core foundation of HTML, CSS & Javascript to the backend and database technologies like Jquery, SQL, Mongo, etc. In the last few weeks of the course, you tie everything together into a React full stack application. You learn new content with each new class day. It's so fast that sometimes you don't have enough time to process it all in between class days. Where you practice these new learned things are on your hw assignments. You will have a hw assignment due every week. With the exception of project weeks. This course has 3 projects that are required to graduate. It is structured as a small-group project and you implement the technologies you have learned from the few weeks prior. For any future students, my biggest recommendations are to stay on top of your hw! This is where you'll get a chance to practice your newly learned technologies. Also be sure to turn them in on time. Do not get behind on hw as this will create a great deal of stress while attempting to turn in all the assignments right before the end of the course. All the hw assignments and the 3 projects must be submitted in order to graduate! I would also recommend going to office hours before and after class. Your instructors and TAs are your biggest assets when trying to understand the course material. I have spent many late nights reading documentations and stack overflows without any success of understanding or implementing the code. Sometimes you just need your instructors or TAs to put it into simpler context and examples that you can understand.

For the instructional team. My class was very fortunate to have Alex, Dan, and Marlon for instructors. These instructors have so much knowledge on web development and coding that it is truly amazing! They know the material and explain things very well. They were always very supportive and always willing to help with assignments and projects. They never just did the code for you. They always guided you towards the answer and explained how they came to that conclusion. I was also amazed at how patient they were when teaching the material. I certainly had days were I just didn't understand the content and kept having to ask questions or get help. I'm sure I came off as the guy that asked questions too frequently or maybe the guy who just didn't get it. But I never felt that way because they were always willing to help and acknowledged that the material is hard to understand. After all, they have endured the same struggles that we were experiencing at the time. We are all grateful to Alex, Dan and Marlon for the support and knowledge that they have provided to us.

Overall, this is a great course! Be prepared to put in some serious work. If you plan to take this course and have no coding experience, I would recommend getting a solid head start on the material. Find some time to learn the basics of HTML, CSS, and Javascript. This will give you a head start on the course material and hopefully put you in a better position to learn the later technologies of the curriculum. If you decide to commit to taking this course, be sure to really put in your time and effort. You will rejoice in the feeling of successfully completing this course. You will come out of the course with great amount of knowledge and you will be better prepared to enter the job market of web development and coding.

Good luck and happy coding!

Was a part of the part-time program which was a total of 24 weeks. We had our class over Zoom as our cohort began at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, but this did not change the level of support we got from the instructional team and success manager assigned to us, I can say that I finished the program confident about my skills and ready to start my job search. I would definitely recommend this bootcamp but be ready to also put in a bit of work yourself to achieve your goals. All the best! 

Was a 6 month coding boot camp to learn how to become a full stack developer. COVID-19 hit at the very beginning of it and the boot camp switched to online rather than in person. Everyone was super professional. The staff did everything they could to make the class just as fun and a great learning experience. I left college and joined this class with the last of my college money to go and gain the knowledge in full stack development that I could have learned in college for less time. That does mean it is a lot more fast paced but that is good in my opinion, It means faster to your new career.

If you're not already completely aware boot camps can be super tough, especially considering a "full stack" development boot camp. They do genuinely give you a crash course on everything. You're going to find yourself a few weeks in panicking asking, what in the heck did I get myself in to and then you'll kind of just grow numb to the information being thrown at you. The end will come quick and you'll feel like you don't even know what you've learned until you get the opportunity to look at old repositories and realize just how incredibly far you've came. Get ready and stay on top of things. I pursued this course while working 50+ hours a week in construction management, if I can do it, you got this.

If you're like me and you're reading every review out there, just take the leap, coding isn't going anywhere and it's better to catch the ship before it sails. 

Man, I don't even know where to start. I went into this class with a bit of knowledge as I was already in the IT industry, so I figured I would have a little bit of a head start on my classmates, but boy was I wrong! This class really goes all out and really packs in the information. You learn sooo much stuff in these 6 months, and I cannot stress enough that you have to go into this class wanting to learn. This class will not work well for you if you are being forced into it or do not have the time to put into it – you have to want to be here and you have to have time to study. There is just so much learning to do in these 6 months that you will be completely lost 6 weeks in unless you put in a lot of time studying time outside of class hours. But do not fear, they have plenty of great resources available to you! Use those resources! The TA's are great (shout out to Ben Vaagen) and the Boot Camp Support staff they have in their Slack channel are available to you 12 hours a day, 7 days a week are always ready to help you out with any coding questions you may have. They also provide you with a personal tutor if you request one. For awhile there I was taking tutor sessions 1 hour per day, 4 days per week, on top of my classes! Besides all of these resources, the professor is also available for "office hours" before and after class, and I found that to be very helpful as well at times. Also as a side note, my professor, John Young, was absolutely incredible. He was able to transition our curriculum from an in-person curriculum to an online only curriculum (thanks to Covid) almost seamlessly, and he was so friendly and when you spoke with him you really felt a personal connection - it really felt like he wanted me to succeed and he was almost as personally invested in me succeeding as I was myself. I cannot recommend him and his teaching assistants enough. Before you sign up for your cohort, make sure to ask who the professor is and try to get into John's class.

All in all I cannot recommend this boot camp enough. I know there are mixed reviews online, but with this boot camp you get what you put into it - if you actually put in the effort and put in the work you will come out of this class with an enormous amount of knowledge and you will know how to put it to use. I cannot say that today I am ready to go out and get a job as a developer, but give me another few months of learning and practicing and I definitely think I will be ready to break out into that field, which was the desired outcome of this course after all! 

I started researching coding boot camps because I was looking for a career change when my longtime career teaching in higher education started to become unstable. I had never done any coding before I started researching boot camps; I was a complete beginner. I am a University of Washington alum and I am also on faculty there, so when I saw that they had a boot camp, I looked into it straight away. I already trust UW, and after reading many positive reviews and seeing what they had to offer, I was sold. I was specifically looking for a part-time, in-person program, and this was it. 

Unfortunately, we only got to meet in person for a week and a half before having to shift to remote learning due to the pandemic. Somehow, even though it was unusual, the experience was still fantastic. We learned SO MUCH in a short period of time. It was intense, as promised (they liked to use the phrase "drinking through a fire hose"), but I never found it too overwhelming. A ton of support is offered to the students--there are office hours before and after every class where the instructional team is available to help, we were given one free tutoring session per week with a dedicated tutor (meaning, you work with the same person for the whole boot camp--and by the way, even if you don't think you need a tutor, GET ONE! They can help you learn even faster!), and we, the students, were encouraged to lean on each other for help as well. 

My instructor was John Young, and he is incredible at what he does. He's extremely knowledgeable, he's engaging, funny, and you know from the very first day that he truly wants every student to succeed. My TAs were Ben and Abdul, and they were awesome too--endlessly supportive and patient.

Career Services is also a big deal in this boot camp, and I have found everything they do (from free workshops to one-on-ones with a Career Director to reviewing job search materials to ENDLESS online resources) to be extremely helpful. I see a lot of folks online who put down boot camps because they think they can just learn coding on their own, but Career Services is something you can't really just do on your own, so that alone is a reason to do this boot camp.

My recommendation for anyone who is reading this because they are undecided about UW's boot camp is DO IT! It's totally worth it and will change your life!