Northwestern Boot Camps

The Northwestern coding boot camp was great. I think, as with any course you take, a lot depends on your teacher. Our set of Instructor and TAs were excellent. They were genuinely interested in seeing each student succeed and were always helpful. They dedicated a lot of time after class hours to help students and gave up much of their free time to share their knowledge and experience in extra help sessions. They were always motivating students to do better and were themselves motivated to teach. 

Career assistance was great too. They provided plenty of advice, guest speakers, and networking opportunities. Especially for those that have not had experience in web development, the classes on honing your resume and understanding how to present yourself and your portfolio was a great help.

This is a great choice for those that need to maintain full-time work, but would like to dive into coding. However, you really only get what you put into it.

I took this bootcamp with absolutely no coding background but an interest in the coding/ IT world. 

I think you can be successful in this class if you are willing to put in the hours of time to keep up. The pace is FAST. This is a BOOTCAMP. You probably will not grasp every concept. If you hold on and do the work to keep up the best you can, you will have a wonderful experience and learn more than you ever thought possible in 6 months.

The pace of this class is very, VERY fast. I've felt confused almost the entire way so far. Granted, I am only a few weeks in, but my head is still spinning. It gives you a very quick overview of lots of different languages and their uses. A few months in you will be able to write some basic websites. 

Although I didn't get to use the career resources to it's fullest (I got a new code-related position only a few months into the bootcamp!), the resources I've been given have been spectacular. My career coach was willing to meet and stratagize with me from day one. He has been so helpful and followed through completely- with a willingness to offer help every step of the way. 

This bootcamp has been awesome, despite the VERY fast pace. The other students are wonderful, instructor has real-world experience and is funny and engaging, the teaching assistants are the absolutely best. The resources are there for you, but you need to be willing to reach out and use them! The student success manager is always available and willing to help. 

I highly recommend this class if you're a quick learner and have six months to completely devote to this program. 

I work in the financial services industry and enrolled in this bootcamp in order to gain a better understanding as to how the underlying technology that runs this industry functions.

Through this course, I was exposed to numerous Javascript libraries that unexpectedly allowed me to build tools for my company and clients to manage and mass analyze data from silo'ed data sources - doing things above and beyond the scope of my job.

For example, I learned how to request financial market data through various APIs, join the data with proprietary data, run calculations (through Javascript code and libraries that I was exposed to in class) and store / access the data and calculation results through MongoDB. Prior to starting this course, I would have assumed that this task was 'impossible' or could only happen if our technology team were engaged to scope / deliver the project. Instead, I am now able to do things like this during "down time" at my job - I truly didn't know what I didn't know before I enrolled in this bootcamp.

I attended a part time, 6 month winter/spring cohort.  This was such a great, immersive experience. I loved my fellow students more than anything else.  Also, thank goodness for the high energy vibe.  I needed it to be able to participate !!

Boot camp is a *big* time commmittment and if you are working another job, be prepared to feel sleepy.  Despite the real phyiscal and mental challenge of working and learning at the same time, it really is a great way, especially if your employer will help foot the bill, to level up your skills.  They have an awesome person leading curriculum development now, too - so I'ts going to be even more fantastic.  

I will say, of this or any other boot camp, start making your portfolio early.  It is hard to get a job without one, and it takes a lot of energy to try to do it all at once.