Software Engineering Certificate (Full-Time)

I went through the immersive software engineering program at Flatiron from April -July 2020. We had a very unique experience as we were the first cohort to go through virtual immersive learning at the Houston campus due to Covid. Even though I was concerned with missing out on quality instruction, I have to say that I was wrong. We had top notch instructors every step of the way who were more than willing to help us in any way possible. I will say, for me, the instructors made all the difference. There is no way that I could have learned all this material on my own in such an efficient manner. Our instructors were always prepared, challenging, and extremely helpful. They had been in the industry for a long time and knew the material very well.
 
We had five “Mods" that built on the principles that we learned in the previous Mod. At the end of each Mod, we had a code challenge that we had to pass within two tries to make sure we could move onto the next Mod. The challenges were tough but with enough preparation and practice, very possible to pass on the first try. I would say it is helpful to make sure to do your labs, ask questions, and attend every lecture. You will definitely get out of this bootcamp what you put in. So, making learning a priority will be the biggest determinant if you will succeed in such a difficult program. 
 
After bootcamp is over, you do have access to a career coach. My career coach has been wonderful and has pushed me to keep pursuing leads and opportunities. Even though covid is making the job search more difficult, I am certain the skills I have picked up during bootcamp will be a tremendous benefit for my career long term.

I graduated from Flatiron School's software engineering immersive program in December 2020.  Due to pandemic the program transitioned from on-campus to remote learning. We had to be on Zoom every day 9 to 6.  Our day would start with a group discussion summarizing yesterdays lessons, we would then move on to pair-programming, then there would be a lecture and then we would finish the day with working on labs.I came to the bootcamp with zero programing knowledge and in four months graduated as a full-stack developer totally confident in what I've learnt. Honestly I was a bit skeptical before I've started this program, I couldn't understand how one can learn so much in such a short time. But the program is super intense and the curriculum requires you to learn and practice new concepts every single day. Every new skill you are taught comes with it's own labs which require you to use the skill until it becomes second nature. I like that Flatiron teaches you not only specific languages and frameworks, but they teach you how to learn, which is a great skill to have in life in general and certainly an important skill for a software developer.A word about  instructors; the instructors we had were top-notch, super knowledgeable and helpful, and could explain complex, unfamiliar technical concepts in a way which anyone could understand. Our instructors were super supportive and they motivated us to keep going. The school's support does not end at graduation. Everyone is assigned a career coach who supports you for next 6 months and helps you during your job search.

Shout out to the Denver campus! Amazing team and program implemented in a unique and effective way. I know I have the tools and mindset to make coding a lifetime career and passion.

I want to preface this by saying I have no experience with other campuses, but I can speak confidently about my experience at Flatiron in Denver, CO.With some trepidation, I enrolled in September 2020. It is the best decision I could've made -- do you enjoy learning and aren't afraid to ask questions? Do you like to engage in theory and practice? Do you want to be taught how to learn effectively so you can apply to new languages you want to learn in the future? Do you want to join an incredibly diverse community full of supportive and caring individuals? This place is for you.

My experience with Flatiron is overall positive. I really enjoyed the course curriculum and the structure of course. During the 15 weeks it made me feel overwhelming but I did learn a lot from it. InstructorsInstructors are pretty good. Job AssistanceYou get assigned a career coach, who you would meet with every week to give you advice and new directions. There is also the Employment Partnership team, who is supposedly setting up interviews for you. I would say not expect to get much benefits from the career services. I attended the course on March 2020, right after covid-19 happened, I am not sure if that caused the job market goes down but the career services was not very helpful. 

Flatiron School is the best coding Bootcamp ever! If you do your part, you won't regret it!In the fall of 2019, I enrolled in their full-stack Software Engineering program. I attended their Brooklyn campus in Dumbo. They taught us how to build cutting-edge, full-fledged applications using Ruby, Ruby-on-Rails, JavaScript, React, and Redux. By the time I was ready to graduate, I was able to build a fully functional, full-stack application!Overall ExperienceIt was a very challenging experience, but very rewarding at the same time! Every 2 weeks you have to learn a new programming language, pass a code challenge, and build an application solo or as a team. There's a lot to learn in a very short time, however, they give you plenty of exercises and projects to gain a practical understanding of what you learn. At times, you have to do assignments alone, or in pairs. The school also has a lot of fun group activities that foster teamwork and camaraderie. It was an overall great experience that pushed me to grow not only intellectually, but also as a person! I highly recommend going to Flatiron School!CurriculumThe curriculum is very rigorous! Here's a breakdown of the process you go through in the immersive SE program:- 1st week, you learn Ruby- You're given a ton of assignments to do- 2nd week, you take a code challenge to test your understanding- - If you pass, you get to do a group project that you can present to your whole class. Very fun experience!- - If you fail, you have to do a solo project that ends up being scrutinized and you're grilled by 2-3 instructors in a room. Very stressful experience!- 3rd week, is for the presentation of the solo or group project.- - If you fail the solo project, you can't continue the program in-person, you have to continue the program online at your own pace.- - You technically can't fail the solo project, because you already passed the code challenge. Bear in mind that those projects will end up in your portfolio after graduation, so it's in your best interest to have great projects, whether you did the solo or group project.- The cycle repeats itself for Ruby-on-Rails, then JavaScript, then React, and finally Redux. Every 3 weeks you learn something new, culminating in a project where you apply those skills. - The last 3 weeks are for your capstone project that incorporates everything you learned from the beginning to the end of your time there. You have to learn at least 2 new technologies (tools, frameworks, plug-in, etc) on your own and add them to your project. It's a fun, stressful, and rewarding experience!- The very last week consists of you presenting your project to the entire floor of Software Engineering students. Many alumni come through to see your projects. Sometimes hiring managers also attend. - The last day is graduation day, the saddest day you'll experience on campus :(Important: For the immersive SE program, code challenges are not graded! You're evaluated based on your understanding of the subjects, not your grade. They assess your understanding from the mistakes, bugs, or incompleteness of your code or answers to the questions.InstructorsI found the instructors to be very knowledgeable of the subjects. They also were funny, witty, and approachable. You can talk to them about personal issues you may be going through and find them to be very understanding. All the instructors and coaches I had were AWESOME! They must have a very good selection process for hiring them. Most instructors are actually former students that become coaches, then instructors themselves. From my understanding, they're contracted for a year or two after which they have to leave to pave the way for the next set of student alumni. Job AssistanceAfter graduation, you're assigned a career coach, with whom you meet every week for the next six months or until you get a job. If you signed up for an Income Share Agreement (ISA), then you don't have to pay the tuition until you find a job, after which a percentage of your salary goes towards paying them back. The contract you sign guarantees that you'll find a job within 6 months, if you don't, then you don't have to pay them. As part of your money-back guarantee (MBG) agreement, you have to meet with your coach once a week, establish at least 8 professional connections or contacts, write a blog, and have at least 5 GitHub contributions (aka 815). Failure to do so results in voiding your MBG contract, meaning that you have to pay the tuition amount even if you don't find a job. In other words, failing to meet any of the weekly 815 obligations means that you will have to pay them even if you don't get a job in 6 months! This is very important to understand and stay on top of!They're affiliated with companies that hire bootcamp graduates. They have a unit called Employee Partnerships (EP) that send you jobs that they believe match your qualifications. 95 percent of all interviews, code assessments I had were through EP. They're a valuable asset in your job search! I personally had a very good coach! She gave me great advice and guidance on how to maximize my results for getting a job. I did my 815 as best as possible, attended virtual (due to covid) conferences, lectures, meetings, book clubs, study groups, etc. I made some great connections along the way. I finally found a job via EP, three and a half months after declaring my job search date. I found all of their claims to be true and I'm excited to start a new career as a software engineer! If you choose Flatiron School to start a career in software engineering, you won't be disappointed so long as you do your part in fulfilling all of the obligations that are asked of you! Best wishes!- JP

Oh boy...where do I begin. 

My recruiter was Madison Delaney and I would sometimes go weeks without hearing back from her. You can't call Flatiron and get a single person on the phone...always goes to voicemail. I'd constantly have to follow up, and it was overall an unpleasant, unprofessional start from the get-go. That should have been the first red-flag.

I payed for the in-person program and received the online program. Flatiron still refuses to refund the difference after months of going back and forth with them. No points awarded for ethically. Here's 600 other Flatiron students who are upset about the situtation that Flatiron still ignores and refuses to address publicly. 
https://www.change.org/p/flatiron-school-in-person-students-flatiron-school-in-person-students-partial-tuition-refund-effort

On another note, Flatiron's instructors always seemed busy. When in need of assistance, more often than not, you're told to google the problem instead. Why did you pay the tuition then...I don't know. Where is the money going towards...I don't know. 

Flatiron is quite big on asking for feedback, and I sure provided a lot of feedback during my time there. For the most part they don't seem to follow up on too many of them...or at least mine. 

The instructors are all very nice, many of them are hired right after graduating so they aren't as experienced as the lead instructors. You very rarely get any attention from the lead instructor and even other instructors, so you're on your own for the most part. 

The aloted rough schedule they advertise on their website is misleading and false. Your division of the day will mostly result with you being on your own googling answers and teaching yourself. There's a lot of BS in the schedule, like attendance for a half hour, surveys for an hour, "stand-downs" for an hour, "feelings" for an hour, etc... After doing the math, 16% of our day was actually entirely unaccounted for and pair programming was at a minimal percentage. I would have thought they'd be extra careful to not have any false advertising because they lost a lawsuit for $375,000 for having false salary and placement statistics advertised on there website.

Upon finishing the program, I feel cheated out of $17,000. The money-back guarantee sounds nice, but in actuality most people are either ineligible or opt-out and I'm uncertain why. Flatiron even leaked everybody’s personal data in a mass email and it doesn't look like anybody has received the money-back guarantee. 

CSS is not taught - maybe it's just touched upon. They do a decent job with Ruby and React, but discourage you from learning Redux. You can graduate this program not knowing CSS, a single algorithm, or have a personal portfolio page. That's a big red flag. 

Career services will follow up with you often which is nice, no complaints about that. They do leave everything up to you and it's mostly hands off on their part. 

I do believe that at one point in time they used to be good. I came into this program looking to love it, but they definitely left a bad taste in my mouth and that's wildly unfortunate. There are way better alternatives from my understanding - even just teaching yourself is a better alternative...you can do it, don't be discouraged! Udemy looks like they have some great full stack courses for $20. I'd do that if I could go back in time.

 I attended Flatiron School's full-stack software engineering immersive program from May-August in 2020 at the Denver campus remotely. The Denver instructional staff is top-notch and extremely knowledgable. They have created an extremely positive educational environment and welcoming campus culture. They don't make you pay $ to repeat learning Modules and they don't grade your projects which allows you the freedom to develop whatever interests you in each learning Mod. They cater to everyone's learning needs and let you choose the lessons each day depending on what you have questions on and what you are interested in learning more about. The Learn.co labs and coursework is also very well done and Flatiron School helps you create an extremely active GitHub profile and set you up well for professional opportunities. Multiple individuals from my cohort as well cohorts in front of mine and behind mine were able to get software engineering jobs just 1-2 months post program. I would definitely recommend Flatiron School Denver to anyone looking for a positive bootcamp experience and great career services. 

Flatiron School helped me develop my engineering skills due to their daily deadlines, constant pair-programming, and their lessons on working autonomously. I was a newbie to coding when I started the program so I was suffering from major imposter syndrome, but despite that, every single person in their staff made me feel so comfortable and provided me with guidance and positivity throughout the whole program. Being in this program also taught me how to learn and be more independent in terms of making my own decisions, not being afraid to try different solutions out, etc. After I graduated, my career coach helped me so much along the way and gave 100% in everything she did for me. I was awful at reaching out to random people/networking in general, but with her advice and applying different techniques, it became really easy and way less nerve-wracking! I am beyond grateful to everyone that contributed to my growth at this school, and would recommend it to anyone who wants to dive into a coding boot camp!

They won't do the job for you, you need to work hard on your own, but if you know what you want, go for it! I met a lot of interesting people and gained a ton of priceless experience. For 15 weeks I learned more then I've tried to learn online after work for 3 years. Flatiron school is not the only option, but it was my choice and I don't regret it.

When I started the Software engineering bootcamp at Flatiron I wasn't super sure about my decision to change my career. A lot of the stories I had heard about people going to bootcamps and changing there lives seemed to good to be true, and to a degree they are. Nothing about going to a bootcamp is easy and none of the payoffs are as insane as they sound. A bootcamp is not as intense a transition as some of these testimonials make it out to be. For me it felt like a pretty smooth transition from learning all about the skills and mindset required to be in this field, to job searching,  to landing a job and doing the work. Flatiron was exactly what I needed to accomplish this. I attended at the Denver branch in the RiNo arts district. Everyone said the Denver branch was special and by the end of the program I truly believed it myself! The staff and other students alike were so understanding of what we were going through and they were incredibly knowledgeable as well. Sure I learned all the skills I needed, but I don't think I would have been able to find the same success if the staff didn't introduce me to technical skills like, imposter syndrome, taking breaks, and supporting your peers. They showed me what I would be going up against as a software engineer in such an empathic and genuine way and I am really grateful. Of course, Flatiron is well regarded as a bootcamp and they also have a money back guarantee , which were factors that drew me in. At the end of the day, I got a job where I use my new skills and I make much more money than I used. Despite the fact the world went on lockdown a week after I graduated I was never worried. I knew with the skills, advice, and connections I had made at Flatiron it was only a matter of time.

I wasn't sure what to expect coming out of Flatiron School but I can now say that I have the skills to fully build and deploy web applications (if relatively simple ones). Beyond that, I am confident that I have the skills to learn what wasn't covered in the curriculum and keep up with the ever-changing world of technology. I am now more self-reliant and am a better learner, which makes a world of difference.

If you have no prior tech experience and are looking to make a jump in your professional life, Flatiron is the place to start. It was stressful and a lot of work, but if you have the time and resources to commit for 15 weeks I am confident that you will come out an incredibly desirable job candidate for a variety of positions across the tech industry. I was able to land a job on a government contract with a starting salary of $90K in less than two months of graduating, more money than I had ever envisioned making coming from my previous industry and employer. The people at Flatiron are incredibly positive, helpful, and most importantly, knowledgable. I cannot say enough good things about Flatiron and would highly recommend to anyone looking to work in the tech field. 

About me:- engineering background - not software, with 2 years of industry experience- 2 more years of experience in tech - not programming; so that puts me in the late 20s in terms of age. Take what you will from this info :)- graduated in 1/2020, job search is ongoing in 4/2020, with some reasonable leads- overall, I thought the coursework's difficulty was moderate. Some weeks are tougher, but most are reasonable. Although I have to say that some students with different learning styles do seem to struggle; it's not a matter of intelligence but rather, learning styles. If you do struggle to pass 2 modules, you get booted to the online program which I do not think is fair at $17k a piece for tuition, but thats just me.TLDR - Pros:1. sense of community, supportive environment2. really smart people (instructors, coaches, community leads)3. careers team seems to do a better job than your average career service at most universitiesTLDR - Cons:1. curriculum design. I'm definitely no expert programmer, but just speaking from a job-seeker's perspective, the lack of algorithm/data structure from lectures, is a major, major flaw.
2. the admissions and corporate side of things seem disconnected from campus - I say corporate, because you have to understand that Flatiron is at its core, a for-profit company; keep this in mind as you go through your program. Although I'd say it's not any worse than a midsized startup that is experiencing some 'growing pains'. This is not as big of a deal as the curriculum.3. questionable job-placement stats and the 'money back guarantee' is basically impossible to get. they do give you many low quality job leads (e.g. not engineering jobs, far below average pay, shady companies, etc); you either have to bite the bullet and take them, or lose your money back guarantee if you turn them down (more on that below)
Now for the long review:Overall, I really enjoyed my experience at Flatiron Manhattan, immersive software engineering program. Instructors and coaches were just the best - knowledgeable, great at communicating difficult concepts, and helpful for answering questions and concerns. Seems like they really got some of the brightest people there.There were regular community events, some open to the public, some just among students, which really helped create a network and a sense of camaraderie between you and the peers. There was a great sense of community, I woke up everyday feeling excited to go to the campus and learn. That was a major plus for me.Career coaches (at least mine, shout out to you, Laura Finestone) were knowledgeable and helpful. My coach helped me throughout my (still ongoing) job search and gave me some good advice. She was also very personable, and I enjoy our weekly check-ins even when there are no major updates on my end.
But let's be honest, you came here to see what’s not so stellar and whether or not you should take the plunge. Let me start by pointing out a couple of things that I think should definitely be improved.First and foremost, the curriculum design felt incomplete to me. There had been zero teaching of Data Structures and Algorithms throughout the 15-week program. I remember going to my first meetup after graduating. I, among other Flatiron graduates, were the only ones who did not know what stack, queue, or other basic data structures were; graduates from other bootcamps (Fullstack, Grace Hopper, CodeSmith etc) seemed to have a grasp on these concepts. Now several weeks after graduation, I'm still spending hours every day, learning algorithms on my own, and I personally find them to be a lot more challenging than the materials taught during the bootcamp. Look, I get it: we only had 15 weeks and they wanted to cram as much practical materials (Javascript, Ruby, React, etc) as possible, so we can start building good looking applications, and I really do appreciate that. But Flatiron's, or any bootcamp's ultimate goal, is to help students get jobs, and there hasn't been a single technical job interview I've been to, where algorithm questions weren't asked. In my opinion (and some employers with whom I spoke), having at least a basic understanding of data structure and algorithms is a big factor that separates bootcamp grads from CS college students. Sure, you can argue that these algorithms are rarely used 'in real life', but I think that having a grasp of them will allow you to write clean, efficient code, which is crucial for job search, and honestly important for just being a decent programmer. Same could be said about System Design concepts as well. Granted, this concept seems to occur less frequently on tech interviews, but having some sort of understanding of how to design production-grade applications that are used by many users, would be very helpful. Yes, you do learn enough from the program to make some great-looking, highly functional applications, but they are far from production-ready that serves more than 1 user at a time.Secondly, this is much less important compared to the last, but worth mentioning. There seems to be a disconnect between the corporate side and the campus side of Flatiron. My experience at the campus with the Education Team (instructors, coaches) has been stellar. But when it came to the admissions/operations side of things, which are handled by the Flatiron corporate, there were more hiccups. Again, this is not nearly as important as my previous point, as you only occasionally have to interact with that side of the business.Last but not the least, be aware of the fine prints of career services. There are certain things (frankly, a lot of things, too many to list) that will void your money back guarantee. As a previews review said, they will sometimes give you very low quality job leads, that are not programming jobs, with pay that are far below average (i.e. $50k in NYC when you've just paid $17k for tuition, living in one of the most expensive cities in the world), at a company that is sketchy at best. However, if you turn down such an offer for example, your money back guarantee is gone. I've seen quite a few "training programs" at shady staffing agencies that came through flatiron, which would pay you just $1k for an 8-week training, then you get $50-55k after the training, and if you leave the company before your 2yr contract you have to pay them $20k penalty, oh and btw, be willing to relocate anywhere in the country. Frankly, if your goal is to find just a job, any job, it's going to be relatively easy given the connections Flatiron has. But know that if you are hoping to get FAANG or brand-name tech company offers left and right after graduating, you should really really reset your expectations.Now, to the question you came here for - is Flatiron worth it? I would say, YES! BUT ONLY IF some changes can be made towards improving the curriculum to include data structure and algorithm. Honestly, if you have the discipline to learn on your own schedule, all of the materials currently taught during the 15 weeks can be learned online for free or maybe at a tiny fraction of the cost - and I do mean all of them. What you are paying so much for is the connections you make, the support you get from campus, the hand-holding from the instructors, and the job leads from the career services team. That being said, having to have a software engineering ‘lite’ curriculum is not a worthy tradeoff in my opinion. 

I took the software engineering course and it changed my life. Everybody there was very friendly and helpful. We all worked together to learn.

I graduated from the Immersive Software Engineering course in Denver 3 weeks ago, and accepted an offer as a software engineer at a startup last week. I had zero coding experience when I started, and now feel confident that I have a stable base of knowledge from which to learn more and work in the field. The Denver program specifically is an incredible environment that fosters cooperation, learning, and a culture of inclusion and acceptance. The head instructor, Kyle Coberly, is just as into education theory as he is into teaching coding, so the program is structured in a way that caters to students. It's not easy in any way, but there aren't unnecessary barriers, and the instructors are always willing to schedule one-on-ones, have extra lessons, and support different learning styles. Personally, I feel like this is the best thing I've ever done for myself. I was 15 years into a business operations career when I decided to change my life and pursue software engineering, and I haven't regretted it. 

My time at Flatiron was one of the best experiences of my life. I was constantly pushed and learning new things. Learning there was not rigid, like in a traditional educational environment, but rather it was encouraged for me to ask my own questions and pursue projects that interested me. Also, I was surrounded by such wonderful people who were also curious and driven. The networking opportunities that I gained from it were really invaluable to me, as someone who is brand new to the tech industry.

I was fortunate enough to find a job one month after I graduated. Within six months, I have learned so much, made some amazing friends, and doubled my salary. This experience has truly changed my life.

Before Flatiron I'd had several years of experience working as a front-end developer and previously paid for education at a community college and through Harvard Extension School. I had known of bootcamps for a long time and not had much interest or belief in them. But, I was hitting a plateau in my particular niche and within 48 hours of seeing a Flatiron ad on Facebook or Google, I was all in. For me, with mostly HTML and CSS experience, I could tell that this program would fill foundational gaps in my programming knowledge and teach me to use the hottest library in town: React.

The Good

The program really did provide me with everything that I hoped it would and brought me to a level I don't believe I could have acheived on my own. I had several interviews before landing a job, and in the final, live, 90-minute code test, I was tested on everything I learned at school and nothing that I had prior knowledge of. This was hugely gratifying because 1) it confirmed that I had been taught the right way to do things and 2) that any of my classmates who were making complete career changes could also have passed this test. It is not an easy program to get into or to complete, but if you can do it, it really means you have the skills to do it professionally.

Tuition

This will apply to any bootcamp, but really do the math on tuition options. The $15,000 price tag turns into something like $21,000 if you take their loan. On their income share agreement webpage it says "With Flatiron School, you’ll never pay more than 1.5x the ISA portion of the tuition amount." 1.5x is A LOT more than 1x and you're on the hook for 48 to 96 months (8 years), depending on the loan option you take. Read all the fine print.

Career Services

I felt that the career services were a little bit over-sold. I don't live in the city where I went to school, so maybe I had a different experience, but I expected Flatiron to actually provide more job leads than they did. I got a handful from them, but I live in Virginia and the opportunities were in places like Florida, Texas and Ohio.

Mock-technical interviews were handled by a third party and none of my classmates had a good experience with them. We all had our asses kicked by questions that were over our heads. I'm a good developer and I was rated a 2 out of 5 in this interview. A classmate, who was the first or second best programmer in our class was similarly crushed, and we all walked away feeling very discouraged about our abilities and hireability.

The career coaching aspect was good. My coach gave good advice and helped me plan answeres to questions that have been historically difficult for me. The résumé help is also very valuable.

Caution: The Money Back Guarantee

When you officially declare your job search after graduation, you begin working off a spreadsheet with specific requirements for networking and continued education. The requirements are signficant and if you do what they say for 6 months, you'll almost definitely get a job. However, if you miss a single checkbox for a single week of that 6 month period, you are out. There is a lot of legalise on their money-back page (https://flatironschool.com/career-services-commitment/) and I have no doubt that if I had followed the procress for six months and not been hired, they would have found some bullet point on that page that would take away my refund.

You're going to work hard after graduation. Think of this as a 25-week program and not 15. If you 100% follow their process you will get a job, which is great because if you 99% follow their process you won't get your money back.

Overall

Flatiron was definitely the right program for me, based on what I had to learn. (It may not be that way for everyone, so think about what you actually want to do.) I came out with the skills I wanted and made great friends. I expect that my 4 months at Flatiron will stay will me for the rest of my life.

The Flatiron School will change your life --- if you put in the work. They hire Incredible staff, support your learning with fantastic materials, and work alongside you after graduation to keep you motivated. The entire environment is designed for your success, but as with many things in life, nobody does the work for you.

A year ago today, I was a senior music composition major in college crying over my grad school rejection letters --- this morning, I signed an offer for a full-time C# position. This mind-blowing transition is all thanks to the incredible instruction I received from the Flatiron School in Denver.

If you signup and put in the work - you will be exposed to a neverending world of learning, and given the tools to explore. The skills you learn at this school make any technology and concept possible for you to master - only for you to shift into learning something else.

I would recommend this school to anyone who is very motivated to make a career switch. It will be hard, sometimes very hard, - but the outcomes speak for themselves.

This place is amazing. I had Joshua Miles as my instructor and he is the best instructor I've ever had. I learned an amazing amount in such a short time. Thanks to Flatiron, I will be starting a job with a better salary than I've ever had and a career that I really enjoy and care about. If you have the funds or are able to get loans for this program, it is VERY worth it.