Elevation

I was a student in the Cohort 6 of the Coding Bootcamp. It was a good experience where I learn a lot about coding and about myself.

1) There were 3 teachers for 15 students, which is essential to learn well and get good help. When I was looking for bootcamps, it was the only one with that kind of service (in the others there were only 1 or 2 teachers). 

After the day of work, a lot of students were staying in class to review the lesson of the day and do the exercises.The teachers were staying an hour or two with us after the day, to help us understand, which was essential to me.

2) The 3 hackathons were the best things to learn how to code by myself, and in a group. Leaving you alone, in a group, for 3 days, with just little help, is the best thing to progress.

3) All the lessons and exercises are uploaded on the Elevation Academy platform. This platform is really good to catch up and work on your own. And even after the boocamp you still have access to this platform. The projects and exercises they gave us were really good and made me progress. 

4) The mood was really good ! I had a lot of fun with the other students and the teachers. Everyone comes from a different background, so you can help each other with what you know and understand.

5) The teachers were nice. Each one had his own specialty, so you know who you need to call, depending on the question you have. Brandon is a really good teacher, I was often calling him for help, knowing that I was a complete beginner. He was patient and found the good words for the lessons to be clear. Unfortunately there was a line to get help from him. The other teachers were good coders but were having a hard time putting themselves in the shoes of complete beginners.

6) Elevation Academy asks you for reviews every week during the bootcamp, which is a very good initiative. Unfortunately they weren't read, so the complains weren't solved and lead sometimes to frustration. 

7) During the bootcamp I didn't really get help to build my CV. 
The one that helped me a lot when I had questions about jobs or to build a CV was my mentor. Mentors are people from the coding industry that help the students during the boocamp. 
The R&D team back then wasn't great and didn't help me find a job. But now it is much better thanks to Rony and Adi, who were there after the boocamp to help me build a good CV and send it to a few companies. 

8) We learn a lot of languages, which is amazing. I now have a range of new skills!

1. The teachers - was not profesional and didn't have patience for our questions. 

One of them was with his headphones all the time and yell at students who asked him questions, Other one flew a month before the course end and did'nt return back. And other teacher have 0 tutoring skills. 

Only Omer had legitimate teaching skill and had patience to help us when we needed to. He is  the only that cared about us.

2.  It doesn’t help in job search- They are telling you they sent your resume but I actually i received just one job offer (and it wasn’t even full stack job offer)

Every time we tried to talk with the manager of Elevation Academy- nothing changed.

Although I got a scholarship, it wasn’t worth it

if you are not coming to the bootcamp with background in coding- don't do it!

I was trying to write a nerdy detailed feedback on Coding Bootcamp but soon realized that I actually don't want to. I simply adore this experience - too much for being just objective! That's why the first thing I say: Coding Bootcamp at Elevation Academy is one of the most challenging, daring and rewarding adventures in my life - probably, for the following reasons.
- Intensive program with very - really very good "written lessons". Simple language, essential notions, lots of practical exercises. Other feedbacks say that new topics are covered by other authors and yield the older ones - this is true, but most are still preciously great.
- Lots of projects and teamwork. At the very beginning you don't have to get lost in lengthy documentation or for hours listen to theoretic lectures - you're provided with basic info, detailed but simple examples, and here you are - most of the time you really create stuff, guided by instructions split into small steps. A bunch of tiny visible results every day gives you the sense of achievement and supports during struggle with harder parts.
- Thursdays devoted to catch-ups in mini-groups, code reviews and cahoot. Also, your code is accurately explored all the time even in small exercises and you'll get feedback and advice at any stage.
- Hackathons. A great experience to build something in a team and maybe even use in your CV later.
- Teachers. They are smart, experienced and willing to help you. It's always tempting to blame the teacher for every time you struggle to grasp an idea, and the fact is that universal gurus are rare species. I was lucky to generally fit the approach. I appreciate moments when I was upset with not getting something and teachers reached for me by themselves offering to discuss the topic again and again until I heard the very words I missed for the full puzzle. I have some warm words to every teacher but Hadas is definitely the queen, learning from her is a special luck.
- English. Maybe not that relevant for most Israelis but crucial for me - I would never be able to absorb all that info in Hebrew.
- HRs. Start talking to you and work on your CV from the very beginning. And their advocacy in negotiating with mentors and companies is probably your only chance to push your way further after the end of the course.
- Very friendly, supportive environment. Special thank you for our 20-minute yoga breaks and planks, masteminds, happy hours and New Year champaign. Seems to me that Omer is behind of many cute inspiring things...
- We were an amazing group - try to compete if you dare!

I took two courses at Elevation Academy. 
The first was Coding Bootcamp. I had absolutely no technical background prior to the course and It definitely gave me the basics and necessary tools to understand the "coding world". Yeah, it was tough. But if i didn't sign up, I think it would be impossible to get the same knowledge on your own. (Probably would take much more time and frustration). 

After the course, thanks to Adi that really helped all of us find some kind of job placement or internship, I got an internship at a startup. Some of my classmates found really great jobs in the field. Long story short, fast forward time, I decided to try yet something different and took a Digital Marketing course that I absolutely loved because Romina is the best teacher. Not only knowledgeable but sweet and super helpful :)

Again, having no marketing background prior to the course ultimately led me to my first marketing position in an awesome company.

So in summary,

Thanks to the school I was able to go thru a career change and "start my life" in Israel in a completely different field than I studied back home. They gave me the tools I needed to make a change. The rest really depends on you. How much time and effort you put into your studies and your attitude. You can't expect to take a course and know it all and get hired by any company but they definitely help you make the right transition.

On that note, make a decision and give your best :) 

I learned about Elevation Academy because I was about to begin my professional career working with digital products, and I wanted to learn to code in a fun and effective environment. It was fun to come to class every day, and it felt like I was coming to a class to learn and code with a group of fun people. The teachers were infinitely patient which I appreciated as someone with little to no background with code. I would highly recommend Elevation Academy for anyone who wants to write code, or if you want to supplement your existing skills, which is what I did. Elevation also helped me with non-code issues like fixing up my CV and with interview tips.

My overall experience was okay at best. I came into the bootcamp with background knowledge of a few programming languages and a good foundation in computer science concepts. 

On day one they told us that the basic structure of the day would be as follows: Lecture 1 starts promptly at 9am (10am on Sundays), if we are late then we would miss important information and if we are consistently late we may be asked not to come back because it's a sign of not being commited to the course. Then we would be given some kind of task/project based on the concepts in the lecture and would have time to go through the lecture in-depth on their learning application as to reinforce the lesson and give us practice actually coding it. Next was an hour break for lunch. After lunch, there would be another lecture and we would be given another task/project and time to go through the lesson. That was the basic structure of the day. On Thursday, we would have time to catch up on anything we weren't able to finish or things we wanted to add finishing touches to or just brush up on. 

A few comments:

1) The lateness rule wasn't really a rule. In theory, it would've worked well and transformed the classroom into a productive work environment that encouraged promptness/professionalism and would've weeded out the people who didn't really want to be there thus making it full of people who were "code-centric" and dedicated to getting the most out of the course. In reality, the instructors were too lazy or didn't want to have to repeat themselves or give a little extra private to students who were late and missed part of the lecture. Since they didn't feel it was important to stick to it from the beginning, they created a cycle that was impossible to break and we consistently started late, which was extremely inconsiderate for those who made the course important to them and showed up on time. On top of that, they made the course feel unimportant...so why would students make lectures important if the instructors didn't?

2) The learning application which is where they posted the lessons that we would learn self-paced was a very good curriculum...until a point. The person who created most of the lessons was there for earlier cohorts but hasn't been there for a few cohorts already, so the material that has been updated/added to meet the industries new technologies must-knows wasn't written as well and more difficult to understand, making the end of course really annoying. You don't really want the most confusing lessons at the end because you walk out of the bootcamp with less confidence about being able to find a job or making it in the industry. 

3) Out of the three instructors, only one had legitimate teaching skills. He was awesome. His name was Brandon. Unfortunately, he was the only one that students would want assistance from so he was spread thin and students didn't have enough time to get their questions answered in a timely manner. One of the other instructors was okay, he was just new to teaching so I'm sure he is much better at answering student questions now, but I can't say for sure. He was very nice and very skilled but he is also native hebrew speaker so as a native english speaker sometimes things definately got lost in translation and again, his teaching skills were not up to par for the price of this bootcamp. There was a third instructor - in my opinion, she shouldn't be an instructor. She is extrodinarily talented in programming, as she has 12 years of experience but the amount of mental energy I spent trying to build myself up after she crushed my confidence in actually learning difficult concepts (again, I came in with a pretty solid foundation) should've been spent honing the skills I already had and pushing me further in understanding them. Her social interactions and communication with students were difficult at best. 

The delivery of the formal lectures before we studied from the learning application were alternated among the 3 instructors. You can guess which formal lectures were actually impactful and helpful for students versus ones that students were just waiting for it be over so they can learn it on their own. (much like confusing/boring lectures in universtiy that you know you will just understand better if you do it on your own).

4) Overall understanding of the administration: Don't try getting help from the admin, because they won't help you. Again, maybe they are just new to managing a bootcamp so they might be better now, but from the experience I had, they will say what you want to hear so that you don't complain anymore and they don't try very hard to work with you on something that you are not satisfied with. And if they did try to fix it, it wasn't readily noticable nor was there follow up to make sure that things were getting better.

There were some staff members who were somewhat helpful and pleasant to interact/communicate/work with but for the main purpose making sure the classroom was as productive and supportive as it could be, the administration was not helpful.

--I wrote the points with a negative connotation on purpose so that readers will understands what they are getting when they pay for this course. If the price were in check with the expectations of the students, I would've framed the review differently. Of course, you come out of the course knowing a ton more than you did before you went in but the manner in which you acquire the knowledge isn't seemless and I think require more effort on the students part than other bootcamps. It is quite expensive to pay for 33% of good instructors, 80% of well written lessons, 50% supportive administration and an uncaring environment. For this price, if you ask me, you should at the very least be getting 100% good instructors and 100% well written lessons, 100% supportive administration and environment that fosters care. 

 

I am not pushing to not go to the bootcamp but I am pushing to question whether the value of this bootcamp is better than others and do your due diligence before commiting to this one. Are the problems portrayed in this review still present? Will I have a supportive environment for me to gain conceptual coding knowledge and push me want to keep going? Is it important that I feel that Elevation and me have a working relationship so I can get the most out of the bootcamp? How important is your learning to you?  

I'm a graduate of elevation academy bootcamp (finished December 2017, cohort number 6).

Our instructors were Hadas, Brandon, and Omer. Still unemploye at this point.   I feel that it's my duty to warn or at least share some insights about the bootcamp for people who are interested to spend $6000 (exactly 100$ per learning day, do the math) and 3 precious months of their life without an option to work during this time.   Before I'll start, I must say: By the time that you read this, you might see many newer and generally positive reviews. That's probably because cohort 7 will be fully assembled by students who got scholarships from the Israeli governmental institute. Please have that in mind. It's different when you don't need to pay for it.   Also, try to disregard old reviews. Prior to our cohort, Aaron was still there. Who's Aaron? Aaron is the soul behind the bootcamp. He created and developt the program and the main learning platform (a reading software, that we used to learn from, after each lecture). He also built elevation academy bootcamp's good reputation. Unfortunately, Aaron is not there anymore, and so does his energy and motivation to produce new developers.   Hadas - At least 60% of the lessons were passed by Hadas. Hadas is an amazing programmer, but have 0 tutoring skills. She told us that she has been coding since she was 17. From the way she teaches, it's obvious that she forgot what is like to be ignorant of programming.  She frequently got upset and had very little patience to analyze the person in front of her, to figure out his studying needs, and continually failed to find the best path to approach us as students.   Also, she was obsessed with her phone. obsessed with checking her Facebook account / whats-app messages, ALL THE TIME. Even when a student called her, even when a student presented something to the entire class, and even during the Hackathon presentation! she constantly lingered to finish her things and actually do her freaking job, that she gets paid for. Many times it felt like a complete joke. Unlike many of the students, at the beginning of the boot-camp I still believed that although she is practically useless as a teacher, she is very nice, at least as a person. But as time passed by, I realized how disrespectful she was for our time, effort and money that we paid. the same money that paid her salary.    Omer - again, Omer is a great programmer but lacks tutoring skills. Omer actually replaced another instructor that we had for 3 weeks, Steven. Steven was great because he really cared! After he left, Omer never really blended in, probably because of this reason and because he never was a teacher before.    Brandon - Brandon is the exception of the entire boot-camp atmosphere. Brandon actually cared, had so much patience, and did everything in his power that we will finish it with the sharpest programming skills possible. unfortunately, Brandon was only 1 out of 3 instructors. Also, he wasn't there every Tuesday, so we actually got 1 less instructor than promised. With all my love to Brandon, and I truly do love him, he doesn't worth 100$ per day when his attention is divided among so many students.    Adi - She is the manager of Elevation Academy. I personally tried to talk to her about these issues above, and others, since Day 1. She seemed so kind and caring when she sat with me and my fellow students, time after time. She promised to have a word with the instructors and even to come and sit in our class to see for herself what's going on and many other promises.  N-O-T-H-I-N-G, and I repeat, nothing changed!!!!!! I personally believe she has amazing acting skills, as we repeatedly honestly believed, after each talk, that something will change.      To conclude: this boot-camp worth is around 6000 shekels, not dollars. A third of what we paid, and not a shekel more. oh and help with job placement or connections to workplaces? forget about it. I strongly advise you to consider other places before committing to them.  

I came to elevation having some programming and theoretical computer science knowledge and little to no practical knowledge- how do apps work? how do all the pieces connect?

Having previous programming experience, the course difficulty wasn't hard for me, but the volume of it was challenging- every day you would learn something new, with lessons, and hands on individual work. Now I can build apps on my own

The hackathons also taught me alot- forcing you to learn much in little time to make a product,  they were a good challenge and on the other side of it all I am amazed by the path I've been through.

Also met some incredible people along the way, and everyone I know that have searched for a job after the bootcamp was hired.

Devoting three months of your life to learn code every day isnt easy- but if your'e up for it, it is worth it!