Chegg Skills

I am really happy that I joined the Bootcamp. Prior to coming to Thinkful, I enjoyed courses on FreeCodeCamp, Udemy, Codecademy, Watch and Code, Ray Wenderlich, and read some books. The courses with an online community were the best ones.  All these are excellent resources, for the dedicated self-learner. in hindsight, I probably would have learned more, if I was more active in the communities. I did learn a fair amount but I was not focused enough. I found many a rabbit hole.

After a long time of deciding where to focus, I decided to focus on Javascript and React. Again after a long time checking where to study I picked Thinkful.

Having been in the Bootcamp for 3 months now, I initially discovered that after using Bootstrap before coming to Thinkful, and then asked to  code the HTML and CSS  from a design I realized that did not know as much CSS as I thought, don't get me wrong Bootstrap is a great framework, but by learning the fundamentals of CSS I understand more how page layout works.  Another thing I discovered in my first mock interview is why it is really important to be able to explain concepts and that comes from a good understanding. Yes, I found I need a lot of work in this area, but I feel I am on the right track.

The next amazing thing I discovered was working with a mentor. I found that pair programming really helps me think more and not just look up answers. I got really lucky my mentor makes me think. Now I am writing code in ES6 using models and I  feel I have a better grasp of debugging and reading code. Slowly getting better at reading documentation.

Also, I think it's really cool that there Q & A sessions, Slack and Workshops available pretty much several times everyday. 

The curriculum has been great, but some things that I think would be more helpful would be more CSS projects where no frameworks allowed. Also, I think that more time spent using dev tools, for learning how to debug and also for learning to read and understand code better, would be very helpful. 

I can't  comment on job assistance yet but I have a good feeling so far.

Thinkful is an awesome bootcamp. The mentor community is of great help. I was blessed to have Derek as my Program manager. He is a very supportive and amicable person. He understands that real people can have real problems in life and that they can need some time to take a pause in the course. Thanks again Derek :)

Moreover, all the mentors are highly qualified. If anyone put their 100% efforts in the program and of course live and breathe code during bootcamp days then they will definetly land up in job.

Way to go Thinkful. You guys totally rock ...

My experience with Thinkful was great. For context, I completed this course 2.5 weeks for personal reasons; I did it for 40-50 hours a week. The curriculum was really well done, barring a few points that weren't covered very well before we were asked to do it. Their approach is to give you a reading, simple practice drills, then small projects to work on. There is also the big capstone project we work on at the end.

My mentor, Nicholas, was very helpful and experienced, which helped me a lot as well.

I was on the fence about whether I should join a Data Science Bootcamp or study on my own. I am so glad that I did this bootcamp through Thinkful because it gave me a very clear and focused direction over self-study. I quickly found a data science job directly due to the projects I built in the bootcamp, after only about 3 months in, before I even had finished the bootcamp! The online component of the bootcamp was really nice as I could fit it easily into any spare time I had throughout the week, and the mentorship component was amazing because I could bounce all of my ideas off of a professional data scientist as I progressed.

When I did find a job, it was also valuable to continue to have access to a data scientist to get additional insights related to my specific job. 

Great job, guys! Keep up the great work!

In May of 2017 I was laid off from my job, working as a system administrator for a healthcare company. My last month of working there I started considering becoming a web developer. I was using Tree House and YouTube to learn, I thought that it may not be enough to get to where I want to be.  After I got laid off I decided to take this time to pursue a career in web development. I signed up for an Intro to JavaScript meetup not knowing that it was a web development boot camp that was hosting it.  I learned a lot in that one night and started looking more into the company. I was still a little skeptical about it because it was all online. So, I went to a couple schools around DC and attended their open house. One of the schools I wasn’t sure of when a woman started chasing me out of the door when I was leaving so that I would schedule a meeting with them….

So, I decided to sign up for Thinkful’s trial. During that trial period, I learned so much! I decided that the cost for it was all worth it. The mentors are also great and very knowledgeable and want to help you learn.

The Thinkful curriculum is great but you have to be willing to put in the time to learn!

I'm a complete beginner which was probably stupid on my part, but after the first month, it's all starting to make sense.  Tho I suggest going through some basic JavaScript and Jquery before you start and the first month will be a breaze.  My mentor is a huge help to me.  With his help, i've been able to think of bigger and cooler designs for my first big project.  Just do all of the lessons and try to figure out as much as you can on your own but then ask for help when you need to and you'll do great.  I was excited to learn about web development when I started but it was all unknown to me.  But now I'm starting to genuinely become passionate about it which is essential for success.

This program is great for people with an interest in programming code fo websites. It takes you step by step and allows even those only mildly familiar with coding to be successful. I had two college courses in Java and a computer literacy course as my only background and i have been having a fairly easy time of things. I was at an advantage due to my prior exposure but the way they lay things out was easy for anyone to follow and more importantl there is an amazing community of people willing and eager to help you through tough spots or just challange you to think of coding in a different way.

When I first thought about going to a bootcamp at 19 I was nervous that maybe employers would ignore me because of how young I was, that was not the case. If you are 18 even i'd give this school a shot even without the money back guarntee and I did and was successful. 

The thing about Thinkful is that the curriculum isn't perfect and could definitely use some improvement but it's not bad and goes into much greater detail than Treehouse on many things but yet it is still their weak spot.

The instructors and staff at Thinkful are top notch, my mentor worked for harvard and was a windows genius who taught me not only many things about code but also life, they are incredible people(and so were my peers) . Another thing I love about Thinkful is that they try to help you in any way they can and whenever I needed extra help I was granted that as my success in the end was key despite the fact that they didn't have to pay me back because the guarntee didn't apply to me because I was 19. One thing I think needs practiced and stressed more is CSS exercises because most of my classmates had barely any knowledge when It came to creating custom layouts.

The job assistance program was helpful in brushing up my Linkedin and Resume as well as staying productive during the job search but ultimately it was the connections I made at hackathons that lead to me getting a job. 

Just turning 20 a few months ago I get an average of 3 job offers a week from tech recruiters, without Thinkful i'd probably still be working in a factory.

I wake up every morning to get up and do what I love at a company where I am cared for and I truly make a difference, it's really a dream come true.

The flexible program at Thinkful allows students to go at their own pace. The benefit of this is that if you have oodles and oodles of extra time all day, you can finish months early and save yourself a few bucks!
 

Initially, I was given a mentor who was pretty exclusively a Ruby dev. When I became more sure that NodeJS was my preferred choice, it was simple to just email my program manager and switch out for a different mentor. The whole process was intuitive.

The only reason I can't review their Job Assistance is because I got my first job before graduation. Never underestimate the importance of a portfolio, even if all the projects aren't entirely as polished as you'd like. It's proof that you can code something.

Thinkful is a great community to be a part of. The other students and the mentors are all very supportive and they want you to suceed. If you don't get a job in six months, they'll give you a refund. What do you have to lose?

I was enrolled in one of the earlier iterations of Thinkful's Full Time Web Development Bootcamp. It was a decision that had changed my life.

I graduated college with a degree that I didn't know what to do with. Similar to many people, I caught word of the ludicrous field of software engineering and as an attempt to pursue that lifestyle without wasting another 4 years in school, I started researching bootcamps. I looked into several different bootcamps(almost all of them at the time really) until I settled on Thinkful. It wasn't just because their price was extremely reasonable compared to their competitors at the time, but they also did the best in terms of reassuring me that they were truly invested in my success during the initial informational call.

I decided to give them a chance and it was easily one of the best decisions of my life.

Overall Experience - After I signed up, the onboarding process was nothing less than exceptional. I had a video chat with the program manager and was given an extremely detailed overview of what was expected of me, what was in store for me, as well as what they are going to do to ensure my success. The student support is fantastic. It was extremely easy to reach out to any one in the administrative staff whenever I have issues with anything at all. When I started feeling like my learning style didn't quite mesh with my mentor's teaching style, the support staff immediately jumped on to find the a different mentor to help me overcome my obstacles. Overall, I could not be happier with my learning experience at Thinkful.

Instructors - Every single instructor I've interacted with via private mentoring sessions, Q&A sessions, or specific tech workshop sessions have been extremely professional. Even if a student is not directly under their mentorship, they are often available for any students to ask questions over slack. Students will never feel like they're stuck due to the availability of instructors as resources.

Curriculum - The only reason I rate the curriculum 4 stars is because they were still slowly developing and perfecting it; I'm sure if I were to fully revisit it again, I'd give it a higher rating. After my graduation, I noticed that they've started incorporating more computer science topics such as algorithms and the concept of time complexity. I'm sure these will help students to bridge the gap between becoming a tech vs a software engineer and make them much more valuable in the job market.

Job Assistance - This is probably what most of the people actually care about. After graduation, I was put into the career placement program where I had a session with my career success manager once a week for tips, guidance, and assistance. This is the part of the program that I appreciate the most. If it wasn't for their constant support and encouragement, I probably would not have been able to endure the harsh reality of the job searching process as a fresh bootcamp graduate on my own. They are constantly giving me leads to opportunities, helping me with research, and connecting me to more local mentors in order to help me expand my network. This is where they show that they are truly vested in your success and Thinkful does this in spades.

I went into Thinkful as a complete programming novice. After a lot of hard work, I have a full-time job where I am a part of the back-end lead for the Start-up that I am working for as well as a part-time job acting as a mentor for my local university. There's been a lot of new bootcamps popping up since my time at Thinkful; I can't speak for all of them, but I know for a fact that if you're determined and willing to put in the hard work, Thinkful will definitely get you to where you want to be.

I had been working in the non-profit industry for several years and while it was fulfilling, I learned more recently that my real passion was in technology. Fast forward, after a bit of research, I settled on Thinkful's Flexible Web Development bootcamp. I chose it for a few reasons:

- It was all online, so I didn't need to quit my full time job. This helped me get started right away since it was less of a financial burden.

- They didn't have any pre-requisites. It was ok to come in ground zero.

- They had a job placement guarantee if you finished the curriculum within 6 months. This sealed the deal for me.

Starting the program felt smooth and reassuring - you're taught HTML, CSS, and the basics of Javascript. Once you are past that though, things are much more challenging, and at that point, things feel a lot more urgent. I was paired with an amazing mentor who helped me prioritize my work, keep me on track in the curriculum, and make sure that my projects were up to high standards.

I would say that the most valuable part of my experience with Thinkful was my mentor. He had a great ability to understand the problems I encountered in my projects and was able to explain things to me in a clear manner. He was always ready do demonstrate real world examples of concepts that I was learning. And most of all, he pushed me real hard in each of my projects, which ultimately, helped me find a job very quickly after finishing up the program.

I definitely recommend this bootcamp to anyone who is looking for a career change like I had. They don't just teach you how to code - they prep you to become a professional web developer. This means helping you with producing high quality projects, putting together a portfolio, prepping for interviews, and navigating towards getting your first job as a developer.

I started this program coming from a counseling and marketing background, and had started to learn on my own before realizing I wanted to pursue a career in web development. I had chosen Thinkful because of the flexibility - I didn't have to fly out and live across the country to learn, nor did I have to be online for a certain window each day. I was able to freelance and have other responsibilites on the side while still trying to devote as much time as I could to web development. I was placed with a great mentor who I video chatted with for an hour three times a week. He knew exactly what I needed to focus on to be successul in this field, which was very helpful coming in with no experience of the industry. The part that scared me the most when I decided to change career paths was the fact that I had to stop and take some time to go back and learn before moving foward. Investing in yourself is something you must do and can be very rewarding if you push through with the help of your mentor and the rest of the Thinkful community. At the end of the day, I felt better off for having chosen this program because although Thinkful is there to help you when you are stuck, part of being a web developer is getting stuck constantly and figuring out on your own what to do. The fact that there is no hand holding, however, is what will make you more successful when you try to get a job. For me, I was able to land a product manager position for a software company - so I'm still able to code and manage a team of developers, but can apply my past experience from other industries into my work. If you are willing to devote the time and effort, you can change your career path a lot quicker than you might think.

Thinkful was a life changing experience for me in terms of education. In the full stack boot camp, you learn industry best practices and cutting edge technologies. You not only build out a portfolio of full stack applications but also build your professional network.

I came into this boot camp with prior programming knowledge. Despite this, I learned many new things everyday. One big thing I learned from Thinkful is that as a developer, you never stop learning. Since technology is changing everyday and so vast, there are technologies and ideologies that you can learn everyday. So to anyone interested in bootcamps, I would say to expect to learn everyday and be excited to learn. 

I was able to land a job 2 months after graduation as a web developer with the knowledge and skills gained from Thinkful's boot camp.​

I would definetly recommend Thinkful because of they teach industry technologies, provide mentorship, have a dedicated career center, have a great professional network, and have a job guarantee. 

tl/dr: Thinkful is the best bootcamp on the market because it offers an organic, effective student oriented learning experience, with freedom to explore.  Others are formulaic, soul-less dev factories.

The following review is long and personalized because this stuff matters.

As you might be doing right now, I once put a tremendous amount of energy into selecting best bootcamp for all the obvious reasons... I wanted to learn programming, I wanted the best outcome upon graduation, I wanted to avoid wasting ~10-14k.  Top of my list were 1.) Full Stack Academy Remote, 2.) Hack Reactor Remote, and 3.) Thinkful (as a fall-back option).

Before I explain in detail the rationale for my original thinking and the what the actual outcome looked like I will share the most important lesson I learned from the bootcamp experience:

Imagined expectations about an experience can differ significantly from the reality of that experience.

My key takeaways from that lesson:

          1.) You never really know what something is like until you personally live through that experience

          2.) Marketers/Brand Managers/(Even Hiring Managers!) whose main goal is to sell you on something,                  work very hard to preemptively fill that gap - the one between imagination and reality.  

Fortunately, for bootcamp buyers, we have Course Report, and people who are willing share their actual experiences.  I'm doing that today because... spoiler alert!... I like Thinkful.   

Prologue

Once I seriously decided to pursue a full-time bootcamp in early 2015, I took the admissions test for Full-Stack Academy. I failed the test.  My preparation had been reading Eloquent Javascript. Again, in hindsight, if you want to learn programming at any level you can't just read, watch videos etc.  You must practice until you succeed, with the measure of success being ~20% getting a working and error free program, and ~80% having fluidity (or fluency) in both recalling necessary programming syntax and generating solutions for a particular problem.  I would recommend CoderByte.com as a source of these practice problems, but many of the practice problems there marked 'Easy' either require or give their solutions using Regex (which although ultimately easy, learning right away as a beginner is either a brilliant move or a distracting detour).  My source of practice problems was the Full Stack Academy BootCamp Prep course in Lower Manhattan, where I got my initial exposure to both live learning and quality practice problems.  In hindsight, I cannot recommend it for the money it costs.  The best things about it were that I received access to quality javascript practice, and I got to study with real live people, albeit unfriendly people.  Instead, to prepare for any bootcamp, I would recommend attending a local MeetUp of beginner programmers who are likely to be more relaxed and more inclined to share selflessly.

Applying to FullStack Academy, Hack Reactor, and Thinkful

After FullStack's Bootcamp Prep, I applied to Hack Reactor, and flunked their entrance exam because I got nervous on the test.  The combination of pressure + tentative and superficial grasp of the many nuances of the javascript spec = bad result in programming.  Programming challenges for bootcamp admissions shouldn't really exist, but they do because it is baked into the business strategy of the "Top BootCamps", to accept the most advanced incoming students, and churn out the most "advanced" programmers who will boost their stats on the highest average salaries.  From a student's perspective, this is bad practice.  It layers an unnecessary pressure-cooker environment on what will already be an overwhelming intense learning experience.  Yes, you can read on Medium about one kid out of Hack Reactor who was able to grab $100,000+ plus salary by gaming the hiring system, but the reality is if you are coming out of a bootcamp with < 1 year's experience you are a junior dev, period. You can certainly move the needle up a bit and be a competitive junior developer in the marketplace, but not going to Hack Reactor or FullStack certainly doesn't preclude that either.  So next I re-took took the Full Stack Academy test, and gritted my way through it.  I was given a positive signal about my recommendation for their full time program.  In casual conversation with the interviewer, he tipped me off to a little FYI that would bring about the most fortuitous turning point of affecting my future bootcamp experience. He said, paraphrasing, "You should be aware that at FullStack Academy you will be subjected to periodic assessments where if you fail the program managers will make a determination if you should be held back (and join the next cohort) . . . WHAT!? Now I'm thinking, "So I hand over $14,000 in cash to be taught programming, and they can effectively set my career back 6 MONTHS (to the next cohort) while still holding my cash, because I missed a 'return' statement in my 'if...else' block???” This may be my own mental exaggeration, but I do struggle with conceptual comprehension from time to time and I’m not always capable of gaining absolute testable competency according to someone else’s predefined schedule.  And generally this threat was credible because previously at the FullStack BootCamp Prep course I witnessed the exodus of 1/3 of the class on the second day after the prior day's opening assessment.  In a business context I have no doubt they wouldn't hesitate to steamroll my life and my career, if they thought I might "underperform" according to their metrics in the job seeking phase, just to be able to print a higher average salary on their marketing materials.  I sent a message to the Full Stack admissions department, naively expressing eagerness, but making it clear that being summarily dismissed from their program for a bad assessment was unacceptable to me and I was promptly rejected.  (Hack Reactor gave me the same warning regarding assessments).  

Thinkful

Meanwhile, I had kept Thinkful coals burning after a few exploratory exchanges.  I liked the people I was talking to but had a difficult time getting past my own preconceived notions about the quality of their program respective to Full Stack and Hack Reactor.  Their marketing simply didn't grab me like the others did  Still, I took the plunge with Thinkful and I’m very glad I did.  Thinkful contained none of rigidity that the other programs had telegraphed.  They’re just very reasonable. They want you to succeed and work very hard at designing effective learning materials and offer a surplus of live instructional support to make that easier for you.  They put forward a curriculum that is up to date on the fast-moving javascript world.  

curriculum

Thinkful teaches the M(ongo)E(xpress)R(eact/edux)N(ode) stack. The challenge of the topics accelerates very quickly .  The curriculum (and your Thinkful BootCamp life) is focused on a well-designed dashboard page that gives you access to everything you are going to learn for the next two weeks. Daily subjects to be learned are linked to here in the form of well-written learning modules.  The modules themselves have 99% of the information you'll need to learn the topic at hand, whether that is Javascript Fundamentals, Node, Mongo, React and everything else. I customized the presentation of my learning module page with CSS and the Chrome extension StyleBot because I preferred to read Serif font, and completely hide the sidebar unless it is hovered on. The best part about the learning modules is that they very expertly balance presenting the most relevant parts of the topic that you will need to know to gain confidence, and shielding you from the insane depths of some programming API's.  For example, Mongo the database, and Mongoose the ORM on top of it - Thinkful scrubs the worst and most arcane bits of the official documentation and offers step-by-step instruction.  The modules alone are worth the price of admission.  

the instructor

Joe was our primary cohort instructor for the bootcamp.  He is a seasoned programmer and teacher, is intensely dedicated facilitating understanding, developing course materials and infrastructure, and has a wonderfully English sensibility around learning.  You just feel smarter after speaking with him.  

mentors

They help put Thinkful over the top of the Bootcamp pack.  I'll admit that it sounded a bit cheesy at first to have a mentor, like I'm going to be saddled with a Mr. Miyagi / Danielson    - esq relationship.  Well, ignore that, because you don't know how valuable it is to have senior programmer assigned to work with you 30 mins daily on video chat and close to 24/7 on Slack to answer any question you have.  This is the curious mind's dream. My mentor and I, besides talking about the day's lessons, deep-dived about operating systems, computer science, the wacky Javascript Type System, what it's like to be a working developer, and much more.  He even turned me onto Planck's Constant when somehow we meandered upon my 20 year curiousity about what is smallest measurement an object could be in the universe.  Never get that at Full Stack I assure you.   

pair-programming

Thinkful, with their full-time program imposes pair programming like all the other bootcamps.  It is an imposition, but a valuable imposition.  You will get frustrated working with your partner but you'll get frustrated with your future coworkers too.  This exposure gives you an early opportunity to learn how to handle yourself in these relationships.  Theresa, the program manager at Thinkful, helps guide you through managing these relationships masterfully resulting in added value and reduced stress about working with other people 1-on-1 for 6.5 hours each day learning new and challenging material.  She gets it.  

other-students

The cohort was composed of a good mix students from all backgrounds.  The number of people was enough to get a strong diversity of perspectives/personalities and not too many to get lost in a crowd.  Regardless of who you’re working with, learning can be more memorable or ‘sticky’ when working with other people because the knowledge becomes embedded in the context of a relationship.  

t.a.'s

The t.a's are brilliant additions to learning environment.  They are not ex-students, they are working professionals who live in another timezone (Europe).  Alex, is the most dedicated instructor I've ever met, he will help you solve any problem.  Siddhath, can also solve any problem.  They are friendly and helpful, and essential.

projects

There are many projects throughout the 4 month bootcamp and range from one day to three weeks with the average being one week.  The projects offer a great opportunity for deep learning because they give you time when you don't need to cut new ground on the learning side. The exceptions to this are the ‘flex-week’ where you can pick any new technology you want (I chose GraphQL) and the final project called the Capstone.  For the Capstone our team decided to develop and Ethereum application.  I'm speculating but I imagine it's the first and only Ethereum app every developed as a Bootcamp project.  Kudos to Thinkful for letting us do it.      

being remote

For learning programming through a bootcamp I can't imagine not working remotely.  There is no commute, so you maximize your productive hours.  You can make yourself comfortable as you undertake this uniquely intense period of your life.  It was really nice to hunker down for the entire winter indoors just and emerge in the Spring as a learned programmer.  The daily workflow is the following: For me, I live on the East Coast, I woke at 8 am, and worked on the previous day's curriculum for an hour, then switched to previewing the current day's lessons.  At 10 am, the cohort met in a video chat room called Owl (some codename Thinkful's proprietary solid video chat client.  It's way better even than Google Hangouts) with Joe, our instructor on screen welcoming us to the day, and proceeding to deliver a 45 minute lecture on the day's material.  Then, we break into our programming pairs, (assigned and curated by Theresa according to responses from daily feedback called Reflections)  and work on the learning modules until 12:45.  At 1:30 we get back in the video room for a recap on the morning where we present any challenges or questions to Joe in front of the group.  After that we resume with our pair programming exercises, with the addition of the t.a's for help until 5:30.  The day then concludes, (sometimes with your head spinning), then you can relax until you meet with your t.a. who will help help unspin your head if you haven't yet stopped it from spinning.  

Multiply this experience by a rough average of ~120 days interspersed with the above-mentioned projects and you are a full-stack developer with an unlimited ability to pursue anything as a software developer.  You'll have built impressive things as a web developer and be capable of building even more and better things.  They guarantee you land a job. I've chosen to try to make it as a freelancer but that's my choice.  I'm sure I could land a job as a junior developer now, and most tellingly for me those supercilious timed code challenges that once struck me down with fear, and still stand as proxies for programming aptitude are no longer intimidating.  I don't sweat them now.     

I'm currently just over 2 months into the flexible full-stack course and I'm loving it so far. I've dabbled in working with the web since 1998 but never dived deep until now. There is a lot to learn in a short amount of time but having a mentor to keep me accountable with the program has done wonders for keeping me on track. I have already learned a ton and am doing things I have never gotten into before such as the backend/server and database stuff. Very exciting.

I dropped one star for curriculum due to the fact that it is currently undergoing some changes and some things seem inconsistent or incomplete. If there are any issues, I usually ask someone or my mentor and figure it out quickly.

My one concern, and this probably goes for any bootcamp style learning, is being able to retain knowledge since you move through the course so fast. With that said, I've been doing pretty good but find myself reviewing a lot of past topics when it comes to doing challenges and projects.

I have nothing but good things to say about the time I spent doing the Front End Deveopment program at Thinkful. The program gave me a solid foundation for what is relavent in web development today. The course work covered basically everything that I ended up doing at my first job as a junior Front End Developer. Also the support from my mentor Marius was invaluable! Despite not being in the program anymore I still talk to him to this day and his friendship/ mentorship alone is worth the program cost alone. On top of helping me learn some of the tougher concepts of Front End Development he helped me prepare for my first Front End Development interview and gave me crucial career advice that has helped me tremendously. He also gave me a ton of advice on managing my first freelance client as well as my first large personal web app project. Acquiring a great mentor who has years of experience made my learning curve much smaller when navigating through the field of Front End Development and I can't thank him enough for that and Thinkful for connecting me with him. 

When it comes to the actual course work the projects get more difficult as you progress through the course and it is self-paced which is super nice. My advice is take your time and throughly understand the concepts that you need to learn and don't try to remember everything little thing thats what google is for. Depending on what you are paying you can meet your mentor multiple times a week over skype (or something similar) and get feedback/help on any difficult topics you are working on. I believe this is crucial for constant improvement with a manageble amount of frustration that comes with learning how to code which is difficult but much like everything else you are only as good as the amount of time and effort you put in. I worked Full time and dedicated 20-30 hours a week to coding and focused on throughly understanding the topics and got a job by myself before the program was over. With that said I cannot comment much on the job assistance but I know a guy who was in my co-hort that got a job through Thinkful's connections so I know it does work. At the end of the day getting is job depends on knowing your stuff and proving it in an interview and a nice portfolio not only the job assitance of Thinkful. 

Before I started Thinkful, I was 4 years out of college and not happy with my professional life. I decided it was time for a change. I decided to look into online coding bootcamps, and after doing a lot of research I found Thinkful. My overall experience at Thinkful was excellent. My mentor, Mario Mol, was fantastic. He was very supportive and was able to break down complex topics in a way that made sense. The React/Redux knowledge I gained through Thinkful was crucial to me landing my current job. The Slack community for Thinkful is very supportive as well, there is a great community of students and mentors that are always willing to help you with whatever problem you run into at any time of day!  

After I graduated, I was put in the career services program. My career services mentor, Jennifer Best, gave me great advice on what to look for in a job, how to network, and revamped my resume. I now have a job I look forward to going to daily thanks to what I learned through Thinkful! 

The flexibility that Thinkful provide is awesome, and really enabled me to work hard but not to disrupt my life. This kept me happy and motivated! The material is well paced and (now that I'm employment I can verify this) really contemporary with what's going on in the industry. Thinkful really care about the students, and I was never pushed too hard or made to feel inadequate in any way- real positive encouragement from my mentor and all of the support staff.

If you decide to go with Thinkful you won't be disappointed, but my advice would be to make sure you seek help when you need it. The trouble with remote learning is that it's harder for staff to notice when you're struggling, but I promise you it's a safe environment and you won't be made to feel awkward. I feel like I maybe didn't speak up enough, and as a result felt a bit directionless at times, but never for too long.

In April 2016 I quit my job as a barista, and in September that same year I accepted a job for twice as much money with BBC. I can't argue with the results.

I arrived to US as an international student and applied for asylum in 2014. I was working as a pizza maker, server at different places until at the end of 2015 I found out about Thinkful. I enrolled to Frontend Web Development Courses and finished at June 2016. I haven't have any coding experience before. This courses not only taught me programming skills, I also learned how to solve different problems on my own and where to find answers when stuck. My mentor was very good at explaining and everytime I got stuck, he would push me to the right path. During job search process, a career advisor did a great job with helping me to find the right companies for me to apply and where to find those companies. I'm working full time now as a Web developer and very appreciate that I found Thinkful! It was a great experience.