Full-Stack | Project-based curriculum

Holberton School is GREAT at first appearances. The first three months are a trap - they're good (the only good thing about the school) and they trap you into officially locking in your contract. Then, you realize you've made a mistake, but it is too late to get out by then. Once you've past that three month mark, the staff kind of forget you exist as they focus on the new incoming cohorts. Once you've past the year mark, the staff treat you like dirt. Job support? Forget about that! You're on your own if you've made it this far. The best part of it all? Holberton School goes OUT OF THEIR WAY to make sure that student complaints get muffled. Recently, they've kicked many alumni's out of the Slack channel as a way to silence our growing discontent. We've asked questions about the outdated curriculum, the student-driven second year curriculum, and the ISA discrepancies. All of our concerns were muffled by the school staff. Please avoid going to this bootcamp. You'll save yourself a ton of headache! 

I began with the good stuff :- The curriculum for fundamentals is acceptable, comparable to other bootcamps. Acceptable because in some subjects it is already lagging behind. - The checker is what you really interact with, there are the proposed projects.- The peers.The bad:- It's not a cutting-edge education as they promise, the content can be found elsewhere.- It does not have its own material to teach, its framework is limited to google searches for answers or solutions, i.e. the material is google searches.- There is no such thing as mentors at holberton. The technical assistants are students with a little more experience than the other students.- The engineers who are there to help are very few (one or less for compus) and have not developed the projects and their help is limited to googling (they do not have adequate knowledge of the projects ). - The manager of the franchise in Colombia (Coderise International) is lousy, with no interest in the students and pushing the payment as soon as possible even with manipulations like withdrawing the students before the end of the program to start making collections.- The staff does not know how the school works and only gives answers from the manual.- The advanced programs are not complete (or outdated) at the time of this review.I must give my review anonymously to avoid sanctions from the franchise operator in Colombia

READ THIS BEFORE YOU TAKE THE WORST DECISION IN YOUR LIFE!!I enrolled in Holberton school Bogota last year, everything was ok when I wanted to start doing the advanced program, they suddenly issue an addendum (a document to modify the original contract); since legally if you don't agree with the terms of some document you're not required to sign it. But Holberton wants us to sign it no matter what,  going against our will in order to continue with the course, in words expressed by them:  "we must abide by the consequences" so basically we are threatened constantly by them that they will take legal actions against us if we don't give in, even they are censoring us in the internal Slack when we want to express our concerns they simply delete our messages.At this time, several mates and I don't have access to the platform, waiting for this institute to restore our access to the platform that we acquired by signing the original contract, which sincerely is too abusive they shield themselves with so many abusive clauses that try to let the students defenseless. And not to mention this program is too expensive, they basically copy and paste resources and links from Google, Wikipedia, and Youtube, they don't create their own content, and now they are offering this program as virtual and if you are a person who takes education seriously you'd expect for that price to get on-site classes, good computers and labs to study but you don't get them and still pay the same absurd price.To wrap up, PLEASE DON'T ENROLL IN THIS SCHOOL, don't make the same mistake we did, we are now thinking about how to legally dispute this since Holberton and Coderise are being abusive in all means.

There are so many better, more honest alternatives out there.- After taxes that 17% is more like 25%.- They were operating without approval from the government. They allegedly committed fraud to get approval, by saying they weren't issuing ISAs.- No one is even sure whether or not our ISAs are even legally binding.- First 9 months has no-front end. That's not full-stack.- Year 2 Curriculums are all written by students, and not very educational based on what I hear from people who've attended.- I know a guy who went back to work as an electrician after getting expelled, and had to pay them back.- Another student has been job searching for a year while driving Uber. Still has to pay them back because he's making over $40k.- Witnessed Julien Barbier(one of the founders) publicly shame two students on stage for not finishing their end of year projects.- Seems like half of the students with ISAs never get coding jobs, but they never graduate. So Holberton claims a 99% placement rate for "graduates". Who knows what the real outcomes are.- I know 25+ students personally who have to pay back ISAs with no coding job.- If you successfully land a coding job, you have no idea how badly you got ripped off because you have nothing else to compare to.Here's the CBS news story about Holberton being a scam:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHgCGCVZGdEAnd the Bureau for Postsecondary Private Education's official Notice and Emergency Decision to stop Holberton from admitting new students.https://www.bppe.ca.gov/enforcement/actions/holberton_emergency_20200124.pdfAnd that just scratches the surface of how bad this school is. The worst part about it is, half the students who attended cheerlead it so loudly to protect their own brand that Holberton continues to trap people into a predatory ISA.

Holberton is not for everybody. It is rigorous and fast-paced. I began in September 19 with around 22 others in my cohort. In March 20 we are 12. The curriculum weeds out those who can't or won't keep up with the grueling schedule. I say this so that you take every review with a grain of salt. Since I am in New Haven, I have no real knowledge of the issues they are having, so I will not comment on that. I am beginning my third trimester next week 3/23/20, so I have not finished. Only one cohort (cohort 8) has finished foundations, or year one, so far. Of them, around half are continuing on with a specialization, while the other half are in the Career Track. Two students were hired by Sikorsky (manufacturer of helicopters and one of the larger non-insurance firms in Connecticut). Others went into the IBM apprenticeship. These are both top level jobs with world class companies. On the other hand, I think 2 or 3 students from cohort 8 have yet to find a job. From what I have inferred, it may be for lack of trying than anything else.So with that out of the way, I would recommend Holberton to somebody who is hardworking and keeps up on their work consistently. There are things I would change about the curriculum--the printf project should not be the first group project! The project is hard enough without having to learn how to collaborate on Github! There are plenty of nitpicky problems with the wording of many of the projects, since the curriculum was written by French speakers. Questions can be vague, but I think that's a feature not a bug. Other thoughts: Mentors. There may be a mentor attached to our campus, but I haven't met him/her. In fact, nobody on staff (save one, but we don't interact with him much) are programers. The staff is administrative, and weeks can go by without speaking to any of them.

"Bad business practices, illegal contracts, fake statistics, deceiving marketing”
They give out ISAs without approval from the government.https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/02/26/san-francisco-based-holberton-coding-school-facing-fraud-accusations-from-former-students/They committed fraud to get authorized as a school. Look it up on the BPPE’s website.They expel anyone who can’t keep up with their sink or swim methodology, or anyone who challenges their way of operating.The curriculum is all curated and half of it’s written by students.They drastically overpriced the program.The course changes every month, so good luck getting what you signed up for. Doesn’t prepare you for the job market. Most students have to teach themselves all the skills required to land a job. No actual mentorship or career coaching.If you get a job paying over $40k you still owe them. I know at least a dozen students who owe them back and don’t have coding jobs.Stay far away from this school. It’s not as perfect as it seems in their marketing.

I attended Holberton school from January to October 2018 after a close friend attended for free as part of their first cohort.  My review has a lot of negative and positive points but ultimately, my choice led to a successful career change, but not without a hefty price tag related to living jobless in San Francisco and signing over a large chunk of my income in the deal.  I wish I had done more research into alternatives before signing on, but it wasn't all bad.Because I was in the 5th cohort and based on the enthusiastic marketing I thought that the problems my friend experienced would be worked out, as they were in a new location, had many seemingly successful graduates and had expanded their staff.  Instead I found a rigorous but partially complete curriculum with a lot of typos they made the students responsible for catching and reporting.  I eventually gave up reporting errors to the staff because it was getting in the way of my project work.  It may not seem like a big deal, but when you don't understand the vocabulary and technology, poorly translated and misspelled curriculum makes the "Google it" curriculum difficult to follow, because you don't know when it's an error or just a term you're not familiar with.  The staff told me in one on one meetings that copy editing was not in the budget, but in the months since I left Holberton school, they've expanded to something like 8 more campuses.  In the end, though, I went from having a little command line and CSS experience to being able to get some stuff running in C, which impresses people who think all boot camps are front end scripting only.I got to know some of the students in their advertising posters and learned that they were using at least one of them with the caption "I am a software engineer" while they were still a student at the school, and the photos they used were taken by another student. Both of those students have successfully found jobs since then. When promotional photos were taken at the school they made up a reason for everyone to be on campus that day without telling us ahead of time that photographers and videographers would be on site.  Then they singled out the only students of color in the entire building and featured them prominently in advertising, but the actual student body did not reflect their claims of diversity. Every student in those pictures is now among Holberton's biggest critics. Other students told me they felt people of color were not only overlooked but often more discouraged than their white peers, and when I brought this concern to the student support staff, they literally told me I was experiencing "group think."  When I launched a campaign to have a sexist quote removed from the wall of the school, their response was to ask me repeatedly to remove the online petition and then they retaliated by speaking to the CTO of my company about it.  To their credit, they did remove the quote but feigned ignorance as to why it would be offensive.  Lastly, I am one of the students who came to Holberton with the most information about what I was getting myself into, but found through talking to my peers that they were led to believe certain things about the curriculum and the payment structure that were different when they actually experienced the program.  I got an internship through my company's connection to the school, but this only happened for a handful of the 54 people who started with my cohort, the rest were put into an extremely rigorous job hunting process that I think was devised to cover Holberton if hiring numbers didn't meet expectations.  If someone couldn't find a job, it would be easy to say, "Oh well that person didn't send out x number of cold applications every week and we expelled them). Other examples are the advertised 3 year payment period (it's actually 3.5 years whether you get an internship or not), the second year specialization curriculum (more marketing fodder than practical expansion on the roles students actually end up in and from what I understand not entirely complete).  The supposedly very selective application process was probably the biggest shock to me.  I spent a lot of time on my application, especially the essay, only to find out that the entire process is automated to the point that they never read, watch, or view anything you submit and they accept basically everyone who completes the application. some people in my cohort were accepted along with everyone in the room at their "group interview." But after making huge sacrifices to come to Holberton, often moving, borrowing money, quitting jobs, etc. many of us tried to stay the course anyway.  I tracked most of the people who completed the first 9 months and excepting the drop outs and people who were expelled, a majority of people *did* get some kind of tech job, but opinions vary on how much of a hand Holberton had in making it happen.Ultimately, as stated before, I got a job after going to Holberton but the tuition cost is twice that of my bachelor's degree.  I told myself in the beginning that this would be offset by Holberton being incentivized to make sure I got a job, only to find out that they accept everyone who applies and charge them the full 17% for 3.5 years if they complete even a fraction of the whole program whether they get a tech job or not.  I could have gone back to my pre-holberton job and still technically owe them the money, which I imagine was part of their business plan in the first place.

17% of wages for 3 years is steep for something you can get for $7-15k at an online or 3 month bootcamp.

Coaching and mentorship are scarce, and with unqualified people. A lot of their coaches and mentors are recent graduates in need of the job title.

The founder threatens to expel people for "insubordination"... ie questioning anything about Holberton.

They promise a "Full-stack" education, and give you back-end and low level. Little to no Javascript(3-4 days).

I have a friend who went to Make School and it sounds like what Holberton says it is. Make School gives you 2 years and a Bachelor's in CS, with actual mentorship, for around the same price.

Holberton hasn't been approved to operate as an institution for higher learning and there's an ongoing investigation by the Bureau of Postsecondary Education. It you've been lied to by this school you should submit a complaint.

https://www.bppe.ca.gov/enforcement/actions/holberton_emergency_20200124.pdf

Holberton School is the best programming bootcamp in Latin America. In my experience, I studied at the site in Bogotá, the first in all of Latin America. "Project-based learning is a proven, alternative learning methodology to the traditional teacher-led reading and memorization educational method" is the way the school describes itself. All this is true. Personally, I studied a professional career in Journalism, but at the end I wanted to move to learning software development. After evaluating several options and finally concluding that I was not going to be another 5 years in a university studying Software Engineering, I found Holberton School as the most suitable option in time, methodology and application to market times. I have spent the 9 months of foundations, and at this moment I have obtained a job with salary and personal compensation not imagined in my previous area of study. I will continue in a few months with the specialization, and I will tell you how it goes in this experience.

Holberton change the scenario of education, first of all, you don't have to pay in advance you pay later when you have a job in the tech industry, second, there are no instructors or professors you learn by yourself or from your peers as it is in the real world. The program is really demanding and needs all your energy and concentration to succeed. It only lacks a review of some useful web development frameworks at the end of the program to give students more tools to get a job easier but in general, it covers the topics needed for a software engineer.

Is the best school of software because you have learn a lot of things and you used every concept in the next project, and you start with C and learnt from the basis to the advanced topics in order to use that concepts in posterior python knowdledge 

It's a great experience from every aspect, helps you grow personally and professionally, not only teach you programming also teach you soft skills to have a better performance in real life, create very strong ties with your peers, can make friends for life, as far as academics has a good management of the content they offer and encourage you to take out all the mental potential that one has, in general has been a great experience, maybe one thing that is against it is that many people do not have the ability to devote 100% to this program because of its hourly intensity, before entering the program many people have to save a large amount of money to be able to devote to study, I also feel that they should manage all the sites in the same way, because there are very significant differences in infrastructure and other administrative and academic issues of each site.

I came to Holberton because I wanted an alternative to the slow and mundane learning style that I had in college. I'm currently on my 6th month in Holberton School and I've enjoyed it a lot. The program has reduced many learning barriers that I had in college. I no longer worry about losing a seat, I study at my own pace, I learn with a motivated community / peer to peer. The peer to peer learning style has helped me have a deeper understanding of the material that I was learning, everyone has shared solutions and errors. 

I've noticed a lot of comparisons of Holberton and Lambda, I personally choose Holberton School because of its two year course, with the second year being a specialization of your choice.  Soft skills are very important when it comes to working with big tech, communication skills are everything. Everyone has the chance to share their knowledge by whiteboarding, almost like we're teaching! The curriculum is challenging but very rewarding. I remeber the struggles I shared with my peers, and it's a joy looking back and seeing how far we've come in just 6 months. 

I'm more than halfway through my first year at Holberton and so far am very pleased with my experience. I enjoy the style of learning Holberton provides, specifically the self-motivated peer-learning. This type of learning might not work for everyone though. If you're the type of student that needs consistent feedback and direction then this might not be the program for you.

In fact, one of my gripes with the program is there's maybe too little feedback. I'm learning a ton, but would like some professional feedback on the code I've written and the projects I've completed. Since it's an accelerated course, expect to race through difficult concepts. You'll need to spend a lot of time studying on your own and researching topics to fully grasp the material. This is can be a good and bad thing.

Overall, I'm really glad I made the decision to attend this school. I really think Holberton is going to be a household name in 5 years. They're changing the game. I recommend this school to those who are interested, despite its shortcomings. It's a new school and I expected things to not be super smooth. Nevertheless, it's a great experience.

Holberton School is not the easy way to learn to code but nowadays I think it is actually the best option. The most valuable there is that they are teaching you not just how to code but how to learn whatever you want. The hardest is not the curriculum or the projects you are working in, the hardest is actually yourself because you will have to face the failure every single day and the voice in your head telling you to give up is getting louder while you keep learning. 
So, take the risk and the chance to challenge yourself with Holberton by your side!

First-year was a memorable experience. I got to meet really cool people at a nice new location. The curriculum requires you to complete 24 hours to a couple of days projects. I really loved the program because it was designed for you to learn, think and solve without teachers. But that depends on your learning style and it will definitely help if you have knowledge of computers and basic operating systems. I never got a chance to complete the second year because of getting hired by a company. To anyone that wants to become a Full-stack software engineer, I recommend this school.

The peers are awesome, you learn from everyone, and the most important you learn is how to learn. Also you improve your soft skills while learning english everyday.

Is a really good program to develop all your endemic an non-endemic skills .The projects are designed to feed and boost your hungry for knowledge. The framework is a remarkable way to polish your knowledge by teching othes and  letting others help you.

In holberton you define your future. Suitable only for the best.

Pros: 
- Convenient - Accessible easily from the Bart Station in SF
- Affordable - Getting trained to become a full stack software engineer and no down payment needed - Amazing! 
- Great facilities accessible 24 Hours a day with state-of-the-art equipment  - They even have a nap room to rest your mind
- Peers - Learning from my peers is and will be probably the best experience ever, everyone has something to offer
- Projects - The projects are extremely relatable such as building an Airbnb clone from scratch
- Learning speed - The speed of learning gets you to push yourself to the limit, no excuses if you want to get a valuable education
-  I was watching the movie Atone on Netflix and I was super happy that in 3 months I could identify the code the bad guy was using to detonate some bomb using a linked list. If you push yourself you grow fast!
- Fun for cheap - I have noticed that despite sf being expensive, you can have extreme fun quite cheaply since most events and hangouts are free or affordable e.g $5 silent discos
- When you get a job after Holberton and work in some cities, you might get a reprieve in the fees you pay, not sure which ones exactly

Cons:
- SF is expensive, you better have a plan on how to study and survive in SF the first semester
- Learning from peers need a bit getting used but upgrades your soft skills
- The spring semester can be quite cold for those not used to it, better be dressed
- Accomodation can be quite costly, its better to share in SF
- If you are planning to work and study full-time, that will be a stretch, chances are your grades will suffer
- You loose touch with most of your friends because of the busy schedule, its a tradeoff.