Northwestern Boot Camps

I'm currently enrolled in the program and with a couple months left to go I was able to land a job that will have me using skills I learned in this bootcamp.

I personally would say that a statement like "you get what you put in" can be misleading, it does take a lot of hard work to get the most out of this program. The reason I feel that it can be misleading is because "you get what you put in" to me used to sound a lot like me having to learn on my own and a stack full of books trying to navigate blindly. 

NWB has so many resources available that really do help you succeed. You just have to take advantage of them. There are two tutors per class (aside from the instructor), there is access to office hours and there is an additional out of class tutor that is available for personal 1 on 1 sessions. Additionally, each class is recorded and made available to students. Our instructor Rich is amazingly detailed and really cares about how he teaches and engages students. Dartaniel was equally helpful in communicating with me to make sure that I was well prepared. 

Days are long and weekends are short but truly worthwhile if you want to change career paths or gain new skills. 

I had a great experience with this boot camp. It was a grueling 6 months, but what I learned was worth every minute. The content was taught effectively and meticulously. Given this program is relatively new, there were of course a few aspects that could have been more organized.

The course requires two sets of homework, coding and career. While the coding homework was incredibly beneficial and absolutely crucial in the development of truly grasping the concepts, the career assignments lacked ingenuity. I would have appreciated more interview prep, rather than repeatedly updating my resume. Aside from that, I learned more during this program than I did in my time as a full-time student at UIC.

One of the major advantages here was the group work. We had to complete three group projects throughout the course, and those experiences were invaluable. Learning to work with others on new material forced us to learn skills that directly translate to office life.

If you’re looking to become a qualified developer in a short period of time, this boot camp is for you.

Participating in the Northwestern Bootcamp took my development skills to a new level. The curriculum is solid and covers a broad array of information. The real value of the program is the team environment. The student success manager and instructional team were incredible and made sure the class was professional / well run. They created a collegial atmosphere that made the experience truly enjoyable. For me, the connections I made with my cohort classmates are as valuable as the dev skills I gained. Highly recommend.

First thing I want to say that what I am today is because of this "Bootcamp". I wanted to join this course to learn advance coding as I already had some experience in coding. I had no idea how this course would help me. I enrolled based on the topics they listed they are going to teach.
When I went for my first class I saw the students are totally from different backgrounds and different experience levels. It was kind of intimidating for me as many students know a lot more than me but at the same time there were people like me who just know the very basics. But amazingly, The curriculum was design in such a way that each individual can learn.
They started with basic excerises to explain the concepts and then they had advance activities which every student has to do in group. So I particularly like to work in group, as I was not only learning to code but also learning how to work with the team as a developer.
No doubt its a intense course, But I signed for it. I had to work 30+ hours outside the class but its worth it. Its amazing that in 6 months we covered front-end, back-end along with 3 different databases. 
This bootcamp is not at all about the boring theoritical lectures. They introduce a tool to you and then let you play with it. Everything is practical learning based. We had to make 3 projects during the course which was awesome!!! Because I never thought I will be able to do that in just 6 months. I feel great!
For instructors, TA's and SSM, I would say they were the very strong pillars in my journey through out this course. They were very keen/interested to help me at any point. Apart from teaching, They are good mentors, coaches, moral boosters and good at pep talks too :-). 
They all do anything you want to succeed but its finally up to you that how much you want it. I wanted it and I get it!
Cheers to the Team!!!
 

Before I enrolled in this class I read a bunch of bootcamp reviews and looked into many programs. I rarely read reviews about anything because their inherent subjectivity, but this was a big investment for me so I thought I'd check around. I was surprised how dramatically diverse the opinions were from person to person, even those who were in the same program. 

I think it all comes down to expectations. Those who expected this or any bootcamp program to magically make them a developer have a bad experience because they find out there is no such thing as a magic pill. There is only hard work, determination, and tenacity. This program gives you plenty of the tools, resources, instructions, direction, material, and support to turn you into a competent computer programmer, you just have to do the work to get there.

Coding isn't easy, and becoming a full-stack developer is tough.  There are full college classes that only go over HTML and CSS alone but bootcamps try and teach you HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript, JQuery, MySQL, Firebase, Node, React, NPM, Handlebars, GitHub and more in just about the same amount of time. This material didn't come naturally to me and I would spend 30+ hours a week outside of class coding. But through good direction and hard work I was able to become a competent web developer. 

The teachers at Northwestern are amazing, the TA's are great, the material is methodical and well thought-out (maybe a little extra fluff, I'm looking at you Handlebars!), and the exercises are practical and challenging. Overall, looking at this as an investment, in terms of ROI, it was the most pragmatic educational decision I’ve made in a while. My undergrad cost four years of my life and $70k+, the only skill that I tenuously learned was econometrics.  This bootcamp cost me $10k, and six months, and I learned more tangible skills here than I can count.

Northwestern will give you the structure and resources to be successful, but your success comes down to you. You will get out what you put in.

This boot camp has been a truly horrendous experience.  To begin with, Northwestern has absolutely nothing to do with this boot camp besides lending their name and classroom space.  The entire program is run by a company called Trilogy Education Services.  Our current classroom learning has been so underwhelming (please read other listed reviews) that Trilogy sent the regional vice president into our classroom for an audit.  That should tell you right there how bad of an experience it has been and how poor our entire class is performing.  Two days later, I received a phone call from the vice president, who informed me that they would be extending some class resources for our boot camp as well as personally offering me the opportunity to retake the boot camp at no additional charge. It was made clear that this last opportunity was not extended to the entire class.  I find it highly suspicious and poor business practices to call individual students to work out private deals.  It makes me wonder what may have been offered to other students.

 For me, retaking the course is not an option.  If the course is so fundamentally flawed that I need to be offered to take it all over again, then obviously Trilogy is readily admitting that the course does not meet their own boot camp standards.  I do not see how going through the entire 3 month program again is expected to produce different results the second time around. So I will be leaving this boot camp with a certificate in name only and no real learning as promised.

So, if you wish to go to this boot camp, please be advised that it is Northwestern in name only, they have absolutely nothing to do with the curriculum nor career services.  The current full-time class is “graduating” with such a low level of skill and ability that they have to offer additional resources including retaking the entire course.  Finally, even when they realize they have a severe problem on their hands, their damage control business practices of calling students to work out personal side deals is in my opinion very poor way to do business.  

I loved it! I really needed the guidance of a bootcamp program to develop my coding skills, and I got that here. I'm not sure that the class content goes far beyond what one could get at an online course or tutorial, but the way it was provided and the supportive staff were incredibly helpful. The instructors and teaching assistants were real developers, so we learned from people who knew the course material and also had practical, real-world knowledge of what they taught. 

The career assistance during the course was great, but I particularly valued the post-graduation career advising. It was nice to know that I could still reach out to someone even after the course had ended and the job search had begun.

It was a very welcoming environment for people of all types, and everyone I met in the program was wonderful! I'm glad I had the chance to take this course.

The reason I chose the bootcamp at Northwestern University over any other bootcamp was that the part-time schedule meant that I could still keep my full-time job and the other reason was that the professors teaching the course are full-time professionals. I highly recommend taking going through the Northwestern bootcamp. It's challenging at times and you will spend a few all-nighters working on projects but if you keep up on the weeks that are not so busy, you will be fine. If your goal is to find a job after the program, be prepared to spend a good amount of time outside of classes studying algorithms and data structures. Overall, it is what you make of it. If you are going to spend the time and money to attend then make sure to utilize all the resources from the TA's to the career advisors, it really pays off.

Going into this program, I didn't know what to expect. I had some programming experience before, but it was in an academic setting so I didn't have a reference point for a professional development program. What I ended up experiencing in this program was a model that worked. The curriculum was reverse-engineered from what employers expected their web developers to know. The approach to learning was hands-on and project-based.

From the start to the finish line, we were running, putting forward 110%. An important factor of this program was that it's a boot camp. So it was fast, rigorous, and challenging. Even though I was able to keep up with little struggle, I was well-aware that my programming experience, albeit limited, gave me some advantage in keeping up with the material.

Oh yeah, and the instructor was one of the best instructors I've had in my life. He didn't just teach the material well, he motivated and pushed us to be the best versions of ourselves. This level of support made the program worthwhile to me. 

Of course, I came into this program hoping to switch careers after it completed. The career counselor was helpful and supportive in every step of the process-- from resume building to finding opportunities to mock interviews. He was good at what he did and made himself available to help students at any time they needed it (really, any time of the day or year). He helped me get the job.

The instructors and counselors made it clear that the more we put into the program and the job search, the more we would get out of it. When it came down to supporting us and advising us, they were there and really put in their time, attention, and care. However, it was on me to do my part by completing the projects, asking questions, and trying hard to get the job. Would I recommend this program? If you can do it (and don't doubt yourself), then go for this program. You will get something out of it.

For anyone, at any point in their student and/or professional career! (from zero background in coding to having experience) This is an amazing class because it's fun and very challenging. If you're ready to apply yourself and learn than this class will not only be a great experience, but even more, it will be great for your resume! TA's and Instructors are always there for you to help, not to forget, all the help form the careers team. The careers team is very very helpful! They coordinate hackathons, one-on-ones, your online presence, technical resumes, and more and more. A ton of companies come in to talk, meet and most importantly, the chance to network as well!!

I was fortunate enough to get a job while I was in this class, and a I know other fellow students who were able to interview. 

Amazing!

I found my Bootcamp experience to be highly undesirable. If you have technical knowledge of any sort in the realm of computer science/web development then this course is definitely not worth the money.

The program focuses only on front-end development and briefly touches back-end technologies but nothing close to providing enough information to work in a professional setting. You will learn the very basics of storing data, little to no python and just enough to connect your front/backend. There is no emphasize on best-practices that are necessary for industrial work. You are simply paying to be branded with Northwestern on your resume.

The program starts out by covering the very basics of HTML and some outdated methods of styling webpages such as "floats". The beginning of the course starts out very thorough explaining trivial concepts in depth but as the course progresses to complicated concepts, it becomes very "hand-wavy." There is a large emphasis on outdated technologies such as templating languages and engines. Things that are very popular for today's industry such as React/Vue/Angular are bushed over. 

Teaching assistants are recent graduates of the program, who for the most part are not concerned about helping students but finding different jobs. 

If you reach out to the program for additional information, be warned that they will spam call you once a day to attempt you to fork over your money.

The job assistance I found to be quite useless. It seemed to be a strong selling point for the program but if you've worked as a professional previously then the behavioral interview preparation portion will be useless. There are practice technical interviews which are useful. You can also go to meetups and get the same experience for free. Brand statements, elevator pitches, resume reviews were other subjects that were touched on but did not seem to cover anything beyond standard information you can find online. 

If you are driven enough you can learn the entire curriculum plus some additional content from freeCodeCamp, without wasting a dime. Udemy is also a great place that I found had much more valuable content. If you need the structure of a classroom then a boot camp is a great viable option. There are some fantastic boot camps out there, but this is not one of them. 

Agree with many of the other commenters on here - this thing is Northwestern in name only and run by a company called Trilogy Education Services.  Trilogy is all over the place with quality - our cohorts instructor seemed like they had just graduated from a bootcamp themselves and were not prepared to teach.  At the same time, another cohort had a great instructor but I wasn't able to switch to it.

I'm not confident in what I can build and I think I'm one of the stronger students in the class.  Our counselors keep telling us that the market is very good for web developers but I've checked with previous graduates and am not hearing good things for Trilogy grads. 

Also, Trilogy isn't sharing any results of how graduates are doing with students (or staff as far as I can tell).  Have heard very few success stories.

Stay far away.

This coding bootcamp really is only useful and doable if you have already had some degree of coding in your background before. That is to say that I was part of the november cohort and the program heavily emphasizes that you can learn to code with zero experience. During the first few weeks while going through HTML and CSS, it is extremely easy, they spend a lot of time and resources trying to teach you to build and style webpages. After that it goes downhill. At the point that you actually start learning to code, the course removes all useful tools that would make it helpful for new coders to learn Javascript and every other language they teach after. They take away the powerpoints, you spend 10-15 minutes at the start of class being asked to do exercises for new concepts you have not learned which in turn means you spend 15 minutes of class lost, at some point the entire 3 hours of class becomes all activity even for concepts you haven't been introduced to, and there are only 2 TAs for the entire class plus the instructor so it's close to impossible that everyone will receive guidance during these exercises meaning you're out of luck and just have to wait for the instructor to go over the exercise - which often is not a good explanation and ends with you being told "there's a lot of ways to do this" which is true but not helpful in a class that is supposed to teach you.

The worst part of this all is that there are two cohorts running at the same time and one day out of the week the cohorts come together. It was painfully obvious after a few weeks that one instructor really knew how to teach the concepts, and his students were really able to come to class and demonstrate what they were learning. My cohort often came together with this class and were horrified that they second cohort learned things in advanced that our class didn't get exposed to until we met up with the second cohort and found out we were behind. Basically, you can have two completely different course experiences depending on the instructor which isn't fair to ask professionals to pay $10,000 for a mediocre experience and to know that one class is getting the better deal while the coordinaors ignore the fact that they have an instructor that can't teach leading one of their courses. 

I have not been able to recommend this course to others and I genuinely believe that if you are new to coding, you should spend time using some free resources online to familiarize yourself with some coding concepts because this course will drive right over you and end before you know it. None of the assignments are orignal and you can literally google the assignments and see that every other coding bootcamp does the same assignments so to do this course at Norhthwestern SPS you're really doing it in hopes of name recognition. Before signing up, I'd ask them about the completetion rates, attrition, and graduate placements to find out the success of the program. 

I attended one of the first of Trilogy's cohorts at Northwestern Coding Boot Camp. I have evaluated the course based on the criteria provided here.

Instructors: My primary instructor was nothing to write home about. He seemed to be a strong coder, but didn't have much of a knack for instruction. He'd often seem underprepared for lectures and make answers to students' questions more complicated than necessary. He was serviceable, but I would have preferred a more natural educator. The other cohort's instructor, who often taught the conjoined Saturday classes, was spectacular. He knew how to communicate the content of the course in ways anyone could understand, and was able to teach specific principles while also tying them into the bigger picture.

Curriculum: Both the layout of the course and the slides used in lectures were pre-created by Trilogy. They seemed like a pretty solid overview of full-stack Javascript development. The lessons moved logically from basic HTML/CSS into JS, Node, SQL, React, and the rest. There was a break during the course for about a week of Python instruction, which seemed like a waste, as it was barely enough time to learn basic syntax and a few functions. That time could have been used to give complicated end-of-course technologies like React more time to be properly explained. Beyond that, I feel the curriculum could have benifitted from a bit more conceptual learning. I get that the best way to learn to code for many is by doing, but theoretical knowledge is still a big part of the interview process, and while there were occasional exercises geared toward this, it did not feel like it was enough.

Job Assistance: This is the aspect of the course that really did not live up to expectations. The head of career assistance came across as condescending, and didn't feel particularly helpful during nor after the course. I was put under the impression that the career resources would play a large role after the end of the course, including practice interviews, coaching and more. I experienced very little of this. I was primarily put in contact with a remote assistant, who mostly sent the cohort a few online leads every few days (which could easily be found from a simple LinkedIn/Angel search). They would check in with me every week or so to see how my job hunt was going, and despite not having results, would offer little feedback. I figured that being connected to Northwestern University would lead to networking opportunities, but beyond a few visiting lecturers throughout the course and a mixer just after graduation, I was put in contact with few people out in the field.

Overall Experience: I would consider myself a model student in this course. I came to class prepared, went above and beyond in my homework assignments, and took time outside of class to dive deeper into the curriculum. By the time I finished, I was able to create a full-stack React website (albeit maybe not the prettiest/most efficient one) by myself, and I am proud of that. However, after 10 months of applying to jobs post-graduation, I finally had to give up and accept a non-technical position. The course inspired me to continue to develop myself as a coder, but I doubt if I will be able to obtain a job in the field without additional formal education. Overall, I appreciate what I learned, but as someone who wanted a new career, I can't say that this course did what I wanted it to do.

I took this bootcamp in hopes of getting a good education and foundation for coding. I was really excited about the different topics being covered. The entirety of this bootcamp from start to finish was a collousal waste of my time and money. 

1. Job Assitance

         1. Some lady in Texas sends you postings from various job websites.

         2. No real person in front of you to help you find jobs. I can do this shit on my own. You'll be told, during the sign up phase, it's Northwestern's career services on campus. 

2. Signing up

         1. These people will blow up your phone trying to get you to sign up. You will be  pressured into making a payment ASAP. 

         2. They will tell you lies such as a promise of Northwestern's (not Trilogy's) career services, the curriculum and overall quality of education.

3. Instructors

        1. Imagine a grown man throwing a fit because students cannot learn from him. Just imagine someone who is having difficulty conveying an explanation and getting mad at his students for not understanding.

        2. When we experienced issues with the instructor we alerted our student success manager ( the one replying to everyone on course report. he was well aware of all the issues written on this page... I'm annoyed we're getting the poliet "please contact me to discuss concerns" when we did exactly that DURING the course so stop acting so oblivious and trying to save face for prospective students that are reading these). The success manager would let the instructor know and you can bet your first child that we would be geting a weird awkward attitude from the instructor the next day. At times, the instructor was even told what student complained and the instructor was especially bitchy to those particular students. It was a soap opera. 

4. Curriculum

      1. Another student said it best on here. The instructor reads off code and tries to explain it. I don't know why they figured this was the best practice. I didn't learn anything from looking at a bunch of code I've never seen before and have someone struggle to explain it awkwardly. Like seriously wtf. 

      2. The brochure that I was given about the curriculum had things we were never taught. Yes we asked why we were skipping these thngs. I can't remember the vague BS answer we were given. 

      3. I have friends who did other bootcamps. This is trash compared to the other ones. Don't be me and waste 10k and 3 months of your life. 

      4. It was cheaper attending here - especially with the early registration discount ($500-$1000). So if you'd like throw $9000-$9500 in a dumpster fire as I felt I did then maybe this would be right for you. Seriously I dont care about a discount I'm here to learn and get a quality education. I did not at all sign up because it was cheaper. $9000 IS NOT CHEAP. I'm not the type of person to have 9 grand lying around to gamble.  I was totally down to throw $16,000 at a bootcamp but the Northwestern quality and all the lies really sold me on the program. My next point  (shadyness) really sums everything up. 

5. Shadyness

     1. This is Trilogy not Northwestern no matter how much they try to sell you that this is all Northwestern. I never heard of Trilogy until the first day of class. Please stop lying to students when you are trying to get them to sign up. Shady business practices. 

     2. This weird thing where the student success manager is responding to everyone on course report to address their concerns when we literally spoke with him about these exact issues in person during the course of the program. You were well aware of all the issues. This is weird stop it. 

    3. The course was a compelte fuck up and they knew it so they had someone come in from their head office to see what was going on. Select students were offered the opportunity to retake the course while others were offered a crash course, tutoring and some other crap. You should've addressed our concerns from the get go and  given us what we paid for. Brett's review of the course really articulates this drama beautifully. 

All in all I'm mad and feel that a great alternative to the bootcamp (while saving you a ton of money!) is Udemy. You get a 30 day money back guarentee and it's $10 a course. Plus the instructors know how to teach! Not some man baby who gets offended when people (politely and with sincerity) ask him to change up his teaching style. 

FYI if you any specific questions about the course feel free to message me on here I'll give you an honest answer. 

Question everything about this program. I felt blindsided when I found out that this program is run by Trilogy not Northwestern. What this means is that the curriculum, instructor and career services are all Trilogy NOT Northwestern. I was expecting a Northwestern level education and instructional staff, I got something that was far from it. This program was a catastrophic failure for me. I'm writing this review because I think people need to know about my experience. I know other people who are taking a different bootcamp and are doing much better then me. I feel like I made an investment in the wrong bootcamp. 

I am shocked at how terrible this bootcamp has been. I am a little over 2/3 of the way through the course and it has been a disaster. I will be leaving this bootcamp not being confident in anything we have learned. The instructor was horrible and could not teach the topics properly, he would have days where he would be mad at us for not understanding what he is saying. A student dropped the course two months through the course which is very telling. Many of the students are in the same boat and feel as though we've all wasted our money. I'm not lying or joking when I say this program is TERRIBLE. This has been a huge investment that I regret. I wish I went with a more reputable program. The only reason I'm posting this review is because I had extensively researched Northwestern's bootcamp and had seen nothing but positive reviews. I want to warn others of my experience so that they don't go through what I went through. I have already told my friends to go with others programs. I feel like our class is owed a partial refund for how much of an absolute side show this class has been. Heed my warning.