Software Engineering Career Track Prep

TL;DR: Curriculum is basic YouTube videos, I’m a college graduate who didn’t get a job after a year, they will try everything they can to prevent you from getting the refund, the refund occurs in 12 monthly installments over a year period. 
I enrolled in Springboard's software engineering bootcamp in 2023 and completed in 2024. They sell you on a "job guarantee" in which you will get your money back if you don't find a job in 6 months. The curriculum itself consists of basic and often outdated YouTube videos. 
Their “mentorship” was definitely lackluster. It’s what you make of it, but your mentor is not going to get you a job at their company and is probably just trying to make some cash on the side and would probably rather be somewhere else.
To be eligible for their job guarantee (and the refund if you don't find a job), I had to apply to a certain number of jobs per week and make a certain number of connections. Per the contract, they extended the 6 month job search period to one year, which I was fine with. 
After one year of applying, I did not get any jobs and had less than a handful of interviews. Springboard slow-walked approving my refund for several weeks, encouraging me several times to extend the job search period (why would I do that?), and then the kicker: approved the refund but said it would be paid out in 12 monthly installments over the next year. Yup—after applying to jobs for a year, they told me I’d have to wait another one before I could receive the refund. Some job guarantee! After complaining, they offered me to fill out a financial hardship form that they review “once a month” and can’t promise I’ll receive anything faster. 
Overall: there’s much better bang for your buck out there. I don’t know a single person from Springboard who has gotten a job. Try some other bootcamp… or go to nursing school. 

My credentials: I am a Bachelor’s degree holder with prior experience with a non-technical background (aka beginner). I’ve been doing lots of webinars and short courses. However, this will be my first time doing a self-paced Boot Camp. In this review, I will provide my feedback as objectively as possible. Here are a few things I like about the course (pros). EASY TO FOLLOW The video recording is easy to follow for beginners like me (they dumb it down for non-tech people). They broke down the program into short multiple videos so you can absorb it better. At the end of the session, you will be given an exercise/test that you have to submit. This is important so you can get practice and understand what you're learning. ACCOUNTABILITY Another thing that makes this course effective is the "accountability" part. They will assign you a mentor who will check your progress every week. This ensures that you're making progress constantly. If you like to procrastinate (like me!), then you’ll be forced to comply with their requirements to make good progress on the course. I really like this part just because we are too busy with everything that it’s easy to brush off things like this. Also, I paid for it so It’ll be a waste not to finish it :D GREAT SUPPORT & COMMUNITY If you feel overwhelmed with the lessons, you can also ask for help from the community or other experienced coders (yes, they have a Slack where you can ask questions and some moderator might give you some advice). I also find their support team very responsive to your inquiries. Here are some things that need to improve on the course (cons) : PRICING: Pricing is higher than the average BootCamp. I've seen bootcamps more affordable than this so this may not be the best choice considering the price. Also, beware that they charge a lot if you go with the installment plan (56% more). MUST FINISH WITHIN 9 MONTHS: One challenge that I have is juggling my daytime job and studying at night. They would advise you to have at least 15-20 hrs/week to finish it on time. I find this very challenging for people who work like me. Trust me, I did 3-4 hrs/day and almost extended the course. LACK OF MENTORING: This can be personal (& may depend on who your mentor is), but I didn't feel a lot of help from my mentor. While the course is designed as self-paced, there are situations where I needed my mentor's help and he would get back to me in more than 48 hours. Here are my suggestions (things to improve): Perhaps give more time for full-time workers to finish the course. It might also help if you can update some parts of the videos (some codes are no longer working). Overall, I'm really happy with the course. With the learn & apply concepts + accountability, this is enough for me to get some basic skills in coding. Their customer service is superb too! Again, this is a good beginner program to grasp the concept of full-stack development with JavaScript. If you find this review helpful, I would appreciate it if you would use my link: https://www.springboard.com/invite/OR0PT

Springboard's bootcamp is top-notch, and the support is fantastic.The curriculum, designed by Colt Steele, is amazing. He's a great teacher, making complex concepts easy to understand and even fun. The course is thorough, with no shortcuts, and having a personal mentor is incredibly helpful.The career-focused units cover networking, LinkedIn, resume building, and mock interviews. Any issues I had were quickly addressed by the advising team. Highly recommend!

I started Springboard's prep course to pass the Software Engineer Career Track TSS. I had a problem with my first mentor and they immediately helped me to change and I met with Calvin. He was super helpful and patient. He was working overtime to help me to understand the JS problems. Now I will start my Software Engineer Career Track next month!

They were great. The Colt Steel is one of the internets best teachers. He has this dri humor that makes him easy to learn from. The staff is very supportive and my mentor was one of the best people who went above and beyond . I would highly recommend this school for software engineering 

I came into this course with no prior coding experience. Colt does a great job going through the foundations of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript which helped me feel prepared for the Career Track program. The final practice tests really set me up well for the final Technical Skills Survey. So glad I took this course!

This is a review of the software engineering career track prep course, so not the full boot camp. However, because of the prep course I am way more prepared to dive into the full 9 month program. It was the perfect introduction to the video learnings, practice problems, mentor calls, student Slack community, and more that is part of the full boot camp. Colt Steele's teaching style is very clear and understandable, even for beginners. The practices were also very insightful. Overall, I had a very positive experience going through the prep course!

My experience with Springboard's Software Engineering Career Track Prep was very positive. The lessons are structured well, and typically comprise of downloading the code used during the lesson, watching instructional videos, and then completing exercises at the end of each section. The videos were entertaining, easy to follow, and didn't waste time (they were the best coding tutorial videos I've seen). The exercises were not overly challenging, with the exception of only one that did not align well (the final CSS exercises). At the very end of the course, plenty of practice problems were provided for the Technical Skills Survey (TSS) that were extremely helpful in passing it.The prep course offers weekly mentor calls and a Slack community, where people will actually respond if you post. Both my mentor and the community were great resources when I got stuck on something. The TSS and the practice TSS questions were challenging, and did require me to use resources outside of Springboard to be able to figure out. If you have no prior coding experience at all, I do think you might need to spend extra time studying for the TSS than what the course suggests.The prep course's goal is not to get you going with a career, but to get accepted into the main Software Engineering Career Track that Springboard offers. It covers extremely basic HTML, CSS, and Javascript, but only Javascript matters for passing the TSS. If you put in the time and effort, you will be able to pass the TSS and get accepted into the full course by going through their prep course.

I really enjoyed the self-paced model where I could go through the lessons at my own pace. I had been a web developer about a decade ago, and have enjoyed getting back into coding and learning some new skills. I have a friend that went through the program last year, has a great job today, and I'm excited about how Springboard will help me advance in my career!

The Software Engineering Prep Course was excellent.  It was short, sweet and to the point.  I had 6 mentor calls, where we practiced algorithms.  My mentor was an active Software engineering manager.  He gave great insights into the type of methodologies managers like to see in applicants.  

I tried learning software development on my own but it was slow and inefficient. I thought I would try the prep course to feel things out and was blown away. The course is unbelievably well laid out and understandable. I started with very limited exposure to coding and just took my time with the content.  I struggled briefly with the final assessment because they really challenge you. I appreciate the challenge and studied/practiced what they provided and managed to pass the next time. It felt so good to solve the problems on my own. I feel much more confident going into the career track now.

This course was very beginner-friendly. I came from a background and career in education, and found the course format and instructional materials to be very easy to follow and learn from. The course gave me a taste of what it would be like to commit to a full program, while also preparing me for the technical skills test I needed to pass in order to gain admission to the full program. It is self-paced, so if you work full-time as I do, you can work on the course when your schedule allows. You get a weekly live check-in with a mentor who is a working professional in the industry, which was great. The excellent instructional videos by Colt Steele are the cornerstone of the curriculum for this prep course. There are plenty of opportunities to practice your skills with low-stakes exercises and assignments along the way, all of which help prepare you for that test at the end. For my money, this course was an excellent value.

I did Hack Reactors prep, and I also did Springboards prep! Springboard did a better job of explaining the concepts and gave me better understanding of all the programming languages (HTML, CSS, JavaScript). Hack Reactor did not review HTML nor CSS, and they also did not have a 1-on-1 mentor to help with any questions. I was lead here from a guy who attended and graduated from both schools, and he told me to go with Springboard over Hack Reactor! I think Colt Steele is really good at teaching Software Engineering! I plan to continue to learn from him. I also was able to move at my pace which really helped me remove the pressure of getting done in a certain timeframe! 

I discovered Springboard's Software Engineering Career Track thanks to Google's disturbingly accurate sponsored ads, as I had purchased Colt Steele's web development class on Udemy. After deciding I needed more than what Udemy could offer, I started to make steps to apply...only to realize I needed to know JavaScript to go into the actual bootcamp. As such, I signed up for the prep class, and thankfully, it is well-designed and instructive in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript basics. Both my mentor and student advisor have been wonderful to work with, and I've made some solid connections via the Slack community as well. If I spent time on my own, I probably could have passed the TSS without the prep class, but I'm thankful I did it all the same.That said, I've heard people feel like the prep class is a rip-off because of the $490 deposit. If you are *only* taking the prep class, for some weird reason, then yes, it doesn't make financial sense. The $490 deposit, at the time of writing this review, is refunded a few weeks into taking the full career track bootcamp. So if your plan is to go from the prep class into the bootcamp? You're good. But the prep class isn't meant to be taken on its own.

I was debating on whether or not to go with Springboard for my bootcamp experience. I was looking at other bootcamps and decided that I wanted to try out Springboard's style of teaching and signed up for their Software Engineering Career Track Prep Course. After completing the prep course I can truly say that I am going to be signing up for the full career track. The ease of the user interface and the straightforward teaching style of Colt Steele surpassed by expectations. I thought that by learning mostly through videos that I would not be able to learn as competently as an in person bootcamp but I feel that it prepared me more by letting me go at my own pace. The mentors and the ta's are an excellent resource for when you are feeling stuck on a specific problem, or if you just have a simple question that you need answered. Overall I really enjoyed the introductory prep course for Springboard's software engineering  career track and I cannot wait to embark on the full track in the coming weeks.  If you are hesitant I would advise you to reach out and speak to one of their admissions counselors to clarify any questions that you may have about the in's and out's of the program.

I loved this course! I was a bit nervous to do an online course (For accountability, I prefer in person courses, but nowadays with COVID, everything is online), but the one-on-one mentorship was great! My mentor was an actual industry person, with lots of great experience. He answered all of my questions (about the curriculum and the industry in general), he gave me great resources to enhance my learning and he was always very encouraging. The Springboard platform is very easy to use. The videos are easy to understand and short (so you can focus on one topic, master it, and come back to it if need be). Colt Steele teaches most of the videos and he is super easy to understand and I was able to code alongside. This course is a great way to try out software engineering and see if you like it! The combination of the online learning and the mentorship are a great way to start out!

Finishing up the Software Engineering Career Track Prep and loved it!  Videos were good, loved the layout of the site, and most importantly the mentor conversations.  Makes all the difference!

They obviously don't care about the prep courses. Mentor didn't help much past referring me to learn code for free on other websites. Curriculum is confusing and disorganized. Only had one project that wasn't really linked to anything we learned and barely any exercises or checks for knowledge. Mentor didn't give feedback for project at all kept saying he would email it, kept deferring it to later. Had a medical emergency and no one responded to reschedule our last meeting. Pretty cold. Emailed advising they don't answer.  I have nothing to show for this course except an emptier bank account. Freecodecamp.com and Codecademy.com/ taught me way more than this waste of time. 

Just know if you need in depth help: customer service is a disconnected set of customer reps and a new person helps you each time. So every time you email them, someone else replies and if it isn't solved in first go, you need to repeat yourself. That will be a bigger deal if you need a whole bootcamp. The mentor was very encouraging and helpful he was definitely my favorite part of this course. Glad to have connected to him because he gave some stellar resources. The curriculum was no short of an unhelpful trainwreck. The narrator speaks fluently with industry jargon, explains none of it, talks and does the tasks within the videos very quickly. If you want to follow along there is constant pausing that becomes cumbersome and annoying. Some of the topics are so disconnected and dry that you can definitely use it cure insomnia.He doesn't really tell you what or why you are doing the tasks, most of it looks like random junky exercises that have no real world connection so I have a hard time understanding how it would even connect to the design itself. He simply isn't a teacher. He is a quintessential tech bro that is recording himself talk and giggling at his own jokes, rattling off phrases about things you ought to know but didn't teach. The intros are random phrases strung together of rules sets with no terms of definitions. This is basically a sink or swim course and I've actually learned more for free off of youtube and freecodecamp. True bummer! My mistake not researching the course beforehand. What an expensive lesson to always review ratings beforehand!

The Springboard Software Engineering Career prep is not worth it. You can learn all you need on free code camp or other online sources. I spent 490 dollars on this course and all it was videos. The instructor Colt Steele is great, however, there needs to be WAY more practice problems after the videos. There are 3 units HTML, CSS, and Javascript and the course itself should take about 6 weeks. Only one assignment is looked at by a human being, which is fine, however, it would be nice if the company provided additional practice problems with answer keys.  You also get a mentor call each week but lose access to the mentor once you complete all the course work. I will only get about 2-3 calls with my mentor before completing the program. My mentor told me that they would provide me with additional work/practice problems, however, that never happened. For $490 dollars, my expectations were significantly higher. I would not recommend this program and I would be wary of taking their career path program. Also, if you are not a motivated person unless you get grades, or have accountability in the classroom, DO NOT TAKE THIS. I am very motivated and was able to complete the course in less than 30 days. I'm sorry but Springboard is a money scam. Please do your research before taking any classes, there are so many resources out there for free. I really wish I could get a refund.