Bloom Institute of Technology

Let me start by giving some background. I have been an accountant for over 4 years. I was always passionate about coding and web development. I have been trying to teach myself how to code for several years now by going through tutorials online, MOOCs, blog articles and what not - just like some of you reading this right now. I was determined to change my career and that's when I found Lambda. What I learned in the past 4 years, I learned all of that and more within just a couple of months into the curriculum. It is amazing how efficient and thorough you can be with all that guidance and structure. I have not graduated from Lambda and I have already landed my dream job as a developer. I have come to a realization that it is not about how much you know, it is about how well you know something. I'm happy to say that "IT WORKS". Whatever Lambda is doing, they are getting it right. I was overprepared for my job interview and at the job I only needed minimal amount of training before i was assigned projects. It is a wonderful feeling going into a job knowing that you are going to standout. Lambda is not just about getting you a job they are actually more concerned about you keeping the job or go higher. We learn not just about computers but also about how to conduct yourself at the workplace and more. Right from Day 1 you will know that everything you do is ultimately going to get you your dream job.

    Lambda School was the most fun and challenging part of my academic career. Every day was a different puzzle that would unravel by days end and I would be better for it. Lambda taught me so many things that I use in my daily work life. 

    Lambda's curriculum as a whole is great in almost every aspect. I really enjoyed the teachers and the coursework. The only reason that I would call it 4 stars is that it was in flux during my time there. It has since grown to a now 30 week program which will be terrific for future students. 

    The job assistance is great. I had fun learning about how best to build emails, resumes, portfolios and a variety of other useful tools. I really enjoyed Lambda Next which is a program that was created to help you succeed in your job hunt post Lambda. The meetings really helped me focus on improving my public image with LinkedIn, AngelList, and my portfolio. Lambda Next is really useful if you put the work into it. 

   As a life experience this was one of the best. This school helped me to get a great job and an even better future. I would honestly recommend this to anyone who isn't afraid of hard work and is willing to dedicate themselves to it. It will amaze you how much more you will learn under guidance from good instructors. 

As an avid reader of fictional novels and a writer of my own, I've found something rather interesting. A great story follows the growth of the character; we laugh as they do, weep when they fall to the ground, then cheer when they get back up and push ahead - clearing all the obstacles in their path as they achieve monumental success. I never would have thought that this fictional arc would come to pass in my own life as well.

I came to Lambda School with nothing to offer. I was living with relatives working a 9-5 minimum wage job, with absolutely no programming experience to speak of. I took the assessment, got accepted, and started classwork on February 4th of 2018. I showed up to class that morning with a burning passion to learn, a massive sense of imposter syndrome, and a hot cup of coffee.

The first few weeks were hard, I hit the ground running and fell flat on my face. What was I thinking? I didn't have any programming experience, there was no way I was going to keep up with the rest of the class. I voiced this to my Teaching Assitant; he helped me up, brushed the dirt off my shirt, put my head on straight again and pushed my right back into the gauntlet. I hit the ground a few more times, but he was always there to catch me and throw me back in. After the first couple of weeks, I was keeping pace without breaking a sweat. The curriculum was getting harder, but I was getting faster and things were beginning to click for me.

Fast forwards 26 weeks, I graduated in August as part of CS8 - that passion I started with burning bright as ever after being used to construct the foundation on which I now stand. I walked through the hypothetical doors of success with my head held high, my confidence soaring, and a bright smile on my face as I plowed directly into a solid brick wall - aka the job market.

This is where things really shined for me, and it's part of the reason I am so passionate about Lambda School. They tell you about this monster when you're in school, the instructors give whole Q&A sessions where they talk about their first jobs - they were not joking when they said it was hard.

We were given access to an incredible resource in the form of Career Coaches - passionate and very experienced people with the soul purpose of helping you find a job with your new skillset. A mock interview and a quick resume building session later, I was eager and ready to go.

Now, as you'd expect from the average bootcamp, I was allowed to jump in head first even after being warned how cold the water is. Trust me, it's very cold. As I pulled myself from those frigid depths, I was greeted by none other than my Career Coach - towel and a warm cup of "Let's get you back out there" in hand.

The next month was trying; I felt my confidence fading, imposter syndrome setting in, but I never once felt helpless or alone. If I had a question, I could reach out to anyone in the school - instructors, career coaches, even Austen (the CEO). They answered any questions I had without hesistation, offered comforting words of support, and with the instructors - they answered my questions as if I was still one of their students. Try going back to your University and asking your instructor about a problem you're having in a personal project.. On their day off no less!

Fast forwards again to the current time, December of 2018. It's been exactly 1 year since I found out about Lambda, 10 months since I started my life as a programmer, and 4 months since I graduated. I haven't paid Lambda a dime of my money, and yet they have been unwavering in their passion to help me succeed.

I accepted an offer this week making more than I've ever made in my entire life, working as a Software Engineer for a company that I would otherwise not have known about, doing meaningful work that will be enjoyed by millions of people around the world for years to come.

Looking back on everything that I've been through in the past 12 months, I just smile. For the first time in my entire life, I have a niche, I have a very valuable skillset, and I get to wake up every morning excited because I get paid to be a programmer.

If you're on the fence, take my story and put yourself in my shoes. Everyone learns differently, and this might just be what you need to succeed. Don't think about what you have to lose, think of all that you have to gain and success will find you.

With humble beginnings come the greatest endings. This is my story.

When I first found Lambda School, I thought it was too good to be true. You hear this a lot because really, it seems too good to be true. The financing through an Income Share Agreement (ISA) puts all the risk on the school and none on the student. The people at Lambda genuinely do care about your success. The school was founded with an altruistic heart, but the ISA ensures that this always remains the case. Lambda only succeeds if you succeed. And for me, they lived up to their promise.

The curriculum is tough, for sure, but it has to be. It's nothing people can't handle, but it does require a lot of time, consistent dedication, hard work, and a balanced lifestyle. Every week, when Lambda surveyed how my week went (because they really care about making improvements and becoming the best school possible), I always answered the last question the same: How likely are you to recommend Lambda School to a friend? 10/10.

When I finished Lambda School, the team there did everything in their power to help get me hired. They worked with hiring partners, they coached me on how to apply to jobs successfully, they encouraged me to stay active as a developer and keep learning, they warned me about the pitfalls, the provided opportunities for mock interviews, the list goes on. In just under two months, I was hired making six-figures at an amazing place. I couldn't ask for more. I'm deeply grateful to everyone there. All of the staff treated me with deep kindness, and I made meaningful friendships along the way.

When you hear about a school that offers no tuition upfront for 6 months, you would tend to think it is either a scam, or the content is not up to par with a bootcamp that charges more.

This is absolutely not the case.

Lambda School has given me the skills to be a full stack developer, both technical skills and soft skills. I have just interviewed and accepted an offer from a company as a back end engineer, mostly because they were impressed with the skills I had coming out of a non traditional school.

Being one of the earlier students, I was able to watch the curriculum evolve to be better and better each iteration. We had to be flexible with the changes, sure, but it allowed us to develop adaptability while learning technical skills. The structure of the curriculum is strong now, with multiple experienced instructors, and enough assistants to allow one-on-ones for each student in the class. Sections are repeatable, so if you don't get it at first, you are able to repeat until you understand it. Each week called a Sprint ends in a Sprint Challenge, which is reviewed, and talked about with the student to highlight weak and strong points, and talk about the week.

The end of the program ends in a program called Lambda Labs, where you build a Capstone Project with 3 other students, led by an assigned Teaching Assistant. The project wireframe and idea is presented, and you have 4 weeks to bring it to life. At the end of the 4 weeks, you have  a Capstone Defense, where you are interviewed by both instructors and hiring partners on the course material, design decisions, and other web development related questions.

Recently released is Lambda Next, and it really is the key to finding a job. Every day is structured to help you land a job, with job applications in the morning, community contributions in the early afternoon, coding portfolio projects after lunch, and interview/ white board practice at the end of the day. It is a really amazing program, and definitely a key factor to how I landed my first Developer job.

In the beginning of Lambda School, there were a lot of kinks to work out, but each week, they have improved more and more. It is an amazing school that no one else is doing. There is a program for everyone here, including part time programs. If you want to be a web developer, Lambda School should be your number 1 choice.

In 2017, my wife and I earned a combined income of $23,000. We did what we loved but there wasn't much money in it. At the beginning of 2018, we were preparing to move states and move into the next stage of our lives. We were going to move back home, spend time with my parents and somehow, survive.

Some background: In January of 2018, I started coding again after dropping out of college (pursuing a CS degree), a few years earlier. I was ready to change my life. I started looking around and bootcamps were all so expensive. I was going to go the freeCodeCamp route but it all seemed so difficult to guarantee a job. I have a son and I needed something more solid before betting our whole life on it.

I heard about Lambda school. I really don't even remember how. I thought it was too good to be true. Or a scam. Or that the school would suck. But I was completely wrong. We're used to being shafted, so it makes sense that I would think that. But boy was I wrong.

Now the review:
Lambda was super fast paced. But the concepts of the school were taught so well, that I was consistently learning and growing. I honestly never felt like I was being destroyed by the code. I was definitely challenged but never overwhelmed. The pace was great, but what Lambda did more than anything else, is it allowed me to practice what I learned. Mornings started with a code challenge, then lecture. Then the afternoon was spent coding - applying what we learned in lecture. I spent time studying before going into  Lambda and it definitely helped. I put my head down and really pushed into the program. I did every "stretch" goal and worked my tail off to make sure that I got the concepts.

See, the thing about any school, is that you only get out of it what you put into it. With Lambda school, they're giving you an avenue to put everything you've got into the school. 

I'll be honest guys, I've probably had too much coffee to write this review. But I'm hyped right now. The reason I'm hyped is because I just accepted a job offer for 4 times my wife and I's combined salary. And I haven't even finished Lambda's program. Lambda school is so good that I finished the first half of the program and had enough experience to apply for and get a job. I went into the job, preparing for the worst, but after taking a coding assessment, I was told that I had the best coding assessment they've seen coming into the company. After that, the company asked me if I would be interested in applying for a senior level position. 

I was nervous about Lambda because I was afraid to take a risk on my education. I was going to have to quit my job, move in with my parents and go to school full time. It was a terrifying thing. And I've heard horror stories about bootcamps. I won't go into the deets, but I've had friends spend over 15 grand on a bootcamp only to be abandoned by them with hardly any knowledge to show for it. Lambda school is not this way.

Austen and the gang are constantly improving the program. They're making sure that students don't get left behind but that they actually obtain the knowledge that the program offers. Lambda school started a cool program called "Lambda Next" that basically keeps grads working on projects and applying until they find a job. I've never seen anything like it. The content is incredible. The instructors are incredible. The support is phenominal. If you told me what I was getting myself into, then I would've started at Lambda in November.

They're pumping so much money into the success of their students that there are only 2 possible futures for Lambda school. Future 1 is that Lambda School changes the face of education in America. Future 2 is that they spend so much money on the success of their students that they go bankrupt. Though, at the rate that Lambda students are getting hired, I really don't think Future 2 is a likely future. I was the fourth "Senior Engineer" hired within the past 2 weeks. 

Lambda School has changed my life. At my current income, I'm going to be paying more in taxes than my family's whole salary last year. I get it, it's not about money. But last year, there were tears in my eyes as I sold one of my most prized positions because my wife and I needed to travel to visit family for Christmas. Lambda school has made it so that I never have to do that again. Lambda's ISA is an EASY price to pay to have my life changed.

If you're on the fence, do it. Your life will never be the same. 

The course i intense but becuse they are teaching you technologies (javascript, react and much more) that carefully help you to manage the moving parts of complex applications , you are up and running and creating maintainable apps much faster than traditional java or C# apps. 
The online tutors are friendly, competent, knowledgeable and willing you to suceed . They use slack zoom and github to teach and interact. you projects are submitted and evaluated on github. They listen carefully to student feedback. 
I'm so glad i did this course. 

 

I used to work in clincial filed, when I decided to become a web developer, I did lots of research about bootcamps. Most of these programs are 12 weeks, with 9 weeks classes and last 2 to 3 weeks for career. I had 0 knowledge about CS when I made my decision, so I want to find a program that could teach me more about CS fundamental besides the web development techs. I found the Lambda School, and checked reviews for Lambda. There are 3 reasons why I chose Lambda:

1. 6 Months CS fundamental and web development

2. teachers care students (got this info from reviews before final decision, It is ture!!!)

3. Online classes. No need to waste time for cummute.

Lambda School has the best teachers!!! As a student, I learned from their lectures, I did my homework, and I am also benefit from code challenges, brown bags from Lambda School. I started from 0, but now I can create an App from scratch to deploy on heroku. 

If you want to make big change to your life and want to be a software engineer, you should start making plan from applying Lambda...

Often in the software development and engineering field, I have found it important to find resources that allow me to become a better developer. I have often looked for the right education platform that worked at the pace I do. High volume is important to retention, the more you do it the more you learn, at least that is what I believe. Lambda School goes through an intense course of learning that even an experienced developer can appreciate. It take many years to get great, Lambda School can help you push your limits and teach you the skills you will need to know to be able to develop efficient well thought out applications using some of today's more popular languages and frameworks.  

The fact that Lambda presents an opportunity to people who other wise would not have this type of option says a lot for what type of company it is. There is no hidden rules, hidden fees, "whats the catches" or anything of that sort. It is pure opportunity. If you want to be a better programmer they will make that happen. With anything else in life it is still about how much you put in. There is no magic wand to automatically make you amazing at development. but there is a school with instructors who spend an insane amount of hours to make it as easy as possible for you. I have gotten quite a few job offers and they started coming well before I graduated as I have not even graduated yet. The full stack side is amazing and throws you in the deep end but also throws you a float to make sure you don't drown. The instructors are amazing and it is literally the best thing I have done. I am able to talk to anyone with questions or etc about the school. 

OK, so I don't want this to just be a rant and rave about the other bootcamp I attended (and paid $10,000 for), but Lambda School was seriously 1,000,000 times better.

The instructors were experts and very approachable. In the other program I couldn't even talk to instructors.

Luis was awesome, Ryan was helpful, Sean was great if not a little standoffish, and Beej and Aaron are clearly incredibly smart.

I had help instantly whenever I needed it.

The curriculum was hard, but much more in depth. 

When I talk to students form other bootcamps I'm blown away by how little they know compared to how much Lambda School students do. Maybe it's that other bootcamps are all that bad, maybe it's that Lambda School's extra time and curriculum makes a huge difference, but I see Lambda School students graduating and getting jobs within days.

It's not perfect, of course, there were some communication issues around scheduling, but all in all it was a phenomenal experience, and one that I can't recommend enough.

As for my job search, I got a couple of offers quickly, but I'm still on the lookout, because I didn't love either of those comapnies.

I didn’t have any experience in programming or advanced computing whatsoever. And, my sole intention in joining lambdaschool was to become a programmer and get a job. I did not research anything about the bootcamps, and joined lambdaschool because it was online and cost effective.

Now, I am glad that I joined lambdaschool but I immediately regretted after the first class. It was way too fast for me. And, I think almost all of the coding bootcamps are paced like that to cover everything in three months. Anyone who has no background in programming is going to have hard time going into these courses, and lambdaschool is no different. Don’t be afraid to ask, instructors are amazing. They will answer anything and repeat any time you want.

I eventually caught up, but I had to work a lot to barely catch up. But, I am glad that I was able to catch up and thankful for wonderful instructors who helped me, and Austen for the support. 

I have been an anti-bootcamp person for a while.  (I have a fair share of friends that have taken them and came out not much better than they went in).  I was doing the normal FCC/Udemy courses and just not making it anywhere.  Have a problem?  Go google it and have a sparatic understanding of the question or get little to no answer at all and just randomly copy and past stackoverflow posts until your tests pass or code does what you want.  This is the overwhelming issue with self learning or these "pre recorded" video courses wether they are on Udemy, MOOC's, Udacity and even some of the expensive online bootcamps are just recordings being played back for you.

Then comes Lambda School, I took their free mini javascript bootcamp and was pretty impressed with the content.  Then they let us know about the upcoming Bootcamp and I was kind of interested and kind of not cuz it's still a relatively expensive bootcamp (I took the PT bootcamp as I have a full time job) but figured i'd fill out the form and see what they said/emailed/talked about.  Got a phone call from Austen and it wasn't just "Hey, do you have X amount of money??.  You do?  Awesome you are in the bootcamp".  We talked and he asked why I was interested, what my previous experience was, how the mini camp series was.  They actually made sure I was a good fit for the bootcamp they aren't just cashing checks and spitting students through the course.  I signed up and they gave me pre course work to be ready for the course 3 weeks later.

I took the PT bootcamp so it was mon - thur 6pm - 9pm and sat 9am - 6pm   I only bring this in because when i'm talking about what was being taught at the different stages it will vary if you do the FT or PT stuff.

Now I have no personal experience with any other bootcamp but from what my friends have told me/complained about with other bootcamps I knew I made a good choice right out of the gates.  We started with Data Structures, Hash Tables, Linked Lists, Graphs, Binary Trees and lookups.  Now this was tough and really challenged my brain but these were things that my friends were being asked about in their interviews and had no knowledge of from their $15k bootcamps.  Immediately i'm thinking awesome this is a great start.  Then we start ramping up and going over how to use these data structures, manipulate and do various other things that we will need through out the course.  The other amazing thing was there were coding challanges at the beginning of every class.  Really helped to drive home the ideas from the first week (as you can't learn all of that stuff and remember it from just a week or 2).  Then we go over React and the basics, followed with Routing and then we dive into Redux and Redux-thunk.  Now this in my opinion was almost worth the whole admission amount in and of itself.  I could not wrap my head around Redux or Redux-thunk.  I have had this same problem before and no course, article or anything else really cleared it up for me.  Since these are live classes not pre recorded I DM'd Ben and we got on a google hangout and we took 15 mins, LITERALLY 15 mins and I was able to ask direct questions and get direct answer and I was able to wrap my head around how to layout the actions, reducers and store which was HUGE.  Not waisting a day or 2 trying to tie multiple articles together to try and usually only gain an entry level understanding if that, was SOOOOOO amazing and SOOOOO worth it to just ask and be taught.  Along the way we were building a front end project with React to connect all of the pieces together.

Then we jumped over to node and the backend.  This again was a super huge benefit to have Ben the instructor right there and he even had some guest instructors teaching stuff which was awesome too (usually people in the field).  A decent amount of those guest speakers are not instructors with Ben so you will get that benefit along the way.  There isn't a whole lot for me to go in here but it was awesome to build backend servers with node, express, mongoDB and mySQL.  Along the way we continued to build a backend server and keep on building through out the weeks we were learning this.  After we had a lot of GET/POST requests working and doing various things for us we went over how authentication works.  Encrypting passwords and the right way to store the encryptions (not the passwords) and how to check if someone was authenticated and provide limited access depending on that, which we used web tokens to keep track.

The last month for us was putting all of the previous stuff together to see how you put the front end and back end together (which this again was another HUGE mind blown situation).  All of the other courses I have seen or taken were either FE (react/angular/vue) or the BE (node, express, templating language) and I never understood how the pieces fit together and that opened my eyes SOOO much.  After that you will never look at site the same again!  This time was really really cool cuz we were doing out own thing with minimal instruction (compared to the rest of the courses) or Ben would do a video, let us know what it was gonna be about then let us choose to watch or not.  This was awesome because the instructor was available for more one on one time and helping along the way.

Also for what it's worth I interviewed and received an offer 2 days after the course end while I was back home.  I was able to negioate an above average salary for both that area and the area I actually live in.  The fact that I could speak to CS style questions (hash tables, binary searches, linked lists and things like that) put me according to the interviewer "above the other people interviewing" and allowed me to negotiate a higher salary.

Here is the big thing, can you learn the same things and end up with the same salary as I was offered for free??  Yes you can but I have been trying for a 1.5 with FCC and various other courses and NEVER got close, let alone the CS stuff that is really hard to wrap your head around.  The money spent was the best investment in myself I have ever made.  I got direct access to the instructor during the lectures, a direct path to learning, a great bunch of class mates and an environment mean to help you learn.  Lambda School has free options know which make this an even BETTER option if you are willing to apply yourself and work with the team at Lambda School.

I hope this was helpful and if you are serious about becoming a "developer" I think this is a great option as the knowledge taught will put you more on the software developer side of things which in most areas equates to better pay/options.

 

I started this bootcamp as a senior business data analyst making $109,000, and graduated as a senior software developer making $140,400. It was the most difficult and best investment I've ever made in myself. My background and skillset before starting the program was in data analytics, data engineering and data science. I chose to complete this course because I wanted to gain the skills and acumen needed to deliver end to end, data-driven applications. This was definitely the right place to go - cheaper than a 4 year degree, and with more hands on practice. I also really enjoyed the the pace - since you only have 18 months to complete the course, there is slight pressure to move quickly, but not too much that you can't slow down and self-pace when you need to. Since I was working full time during the course, I was only able to complete lectures and classwork on the weekends - and I mean ALL weekend. Literally all I did for 12 months on Saturdays and Sundays was code from morning to evening. The curriculum is project-based, so you are ALWAYS hands on coding. I loved it because I felt it helped me learn new concepts at a very rapid pace. My learning assistant and career coaches were super responsive and supportive, my classmates were collaborative, and not only did I gain a software development skillset, but I am now a better data engineer. 

A note on tuition - I got a little creative to pay for mine. I found credit cards with high cash back rewards, and used them to pay tuition in 3 upfront installments (because I really didn't want to pay the high loan interest), then paid back the credit cards. Doing it this way saved me about $3,000 on tuition, and boosted my credit score. I would highly recommend if you can swing it. 

If you are considering this course - be prepared that you will not be handheld, and there will be very difficult moments, but it is 100% worth it.
Just remember to breathe, and believe in yourself. 
You can do hard things. Best of luck! 

Thank you BloomTech! 
PS - this is not a sponsored review haha. I just had a really great experience.