Penn Boot Camps

At the time of this review I am about 9 weeks away from graduation. As the title mentions, my experience has been great up to this point.

Some of the hightlights so far are great academic support, setting and location, administrating staff, and classmates. Our instructors and TA's really seem to have a vested interest in our success, they often make themselves available after hours. The Pennovation building is spacious, conveniently located in the city, with lots of parking. Something I find personally motivating is our classes are held in the innovation building, thus many of the fellow occupants are innovators and startups. Last but not least the on-site admins have been super pleasant and helpful. They have held several webinars and have provided us with great resourse to better position ourselves in the industry.

I can't speak on the Job Assistance department just yet, but I look forward to doing so soon. 

I would absolutely recommend this bootcamp to anyone looking to jumpstart there career in the software industry.

Good program for beginners. It is very fast paced but there is a lot to learn if you put in your 100%. Instructors and TAs are always willing to help and answer questions. If you are planning to work full time along with taking this program make sure you are very determined to put in good number of hours studying outside of the class. The program touches on a lot of technologies but it is up to you to expand your knowledge on those topics. Overall a good place to start your journey to be a developer.

A great course for any aspiring or new dev. Will give you the full stack kit you need to find your way in the world of development, and help you find your place there as well. The online course was great for me as I was working a full time job, and wanted to learn these new skills at the same time. The teaching and support staff helped me throught he tough weeks of overtime, and were very undrestanding of my situation. I am almost done with the course and I am already sending out applications, and scheduling interviews. A recommended course for anyone that wants to make a hobby or profession of development.

The Instructors and TA's we've had have all been fantastic and extremely knowledgeable about the material. I'm 4 months in and looking back to October when I started I can't believe how much I've already learned, even if sometimes I think I'm lost. The pace is definitely as fast as advertised, but the staff makes sure not to move onto a new topic without answering all questions.

If there is anything preventing me from making the jump from 4 to 5 stars it's that we are sometimes so deep in our weekly homework assignments we don't have as much time as I'd like to review previous material.

I am currently a student at Penn LPS Coding Bootcamp and my experience with the school has been phenomenal so far. The first thing I noticed was how engaging the instructors and career services are with you throughout the entire bootcamp. There's plenty of help and support to go around, plus tutoring if you feel like you are falling behind a bit in the course. The course is very fast-paced with lots of information adn new technologies being learned almost every week, so come ready to challenge yourself like never before. The class instructors are very knowledgeable about what they're teaching and give you enough class activities for you to practice. You really need to push yourself hard and study a lot thoughout the week, 20 or more hours in my opinion. It's challenging but rewarding once you understand the material being taught. 

I highly recommend this bootcamp to anyone that wants an in-person class experience and introduction to the most up to date technologies being used in the tech industry. 

   My experience at Penn's Coding Boot Camp has been great. The course structure is outstanding. Students are not graded through tests and quizzes, but through homework. The homework is set up in a way where students can apply the skills you learned in class, proving that you can do this, despite the fact you are just seeing the material for the first time. 

   Since I take the part time class, times range from 3-4 hours, but classes don't feel that long because we are always doing activities or communicating with classmates. TA's and the instructor are always there to answer any questions one may have in and out of class.  The amount of support is great.

   This class is very intense and fast-pace. When you recieve the email with the pre-class work, saying that this class is challenging, there is NO LIE in that statement. By the same token, after one month you will have learned SO MUCH, that the difficulty is worth it. I highly reccomend taking this course,if you are willing to put in the time and handle the rigour. 

I totally recommend this class.  I had zero coding experience before I enrolled. The skill yet that I have learned and the base it gave to me learn other languages was amazing!!!  My biggest issue was that I was unable to communicate with devs at work let alone understand what they were doing.  This course provided me such a good base to work from.

Having said the above, it is a LOT of work and a huge commitment.  It is a very humbling experience and while your in the middle of the process it does seem daunting.  However, the instructors, ta's and Bernard are there to help you succeed.  Your classmates are all over the map as far as skill set but they are all willing to help each other out.  You will form freindships from that experience which was really cool.

Overall, it was a great experience.  Looking back, even the things I didnt enjoy at the time, I see the value in them now. 

I had basic knowledge about MySQL before I joined the bootcamp. Whole program covers a lot of information & knowledge that you need to know to become a junior developer.

Instructors are very experienced and detail orientated. All the people in the class are motivated to learn, so it is defnitely better than lock yourself in your room and figure out everything on your own. 

However, it is a very intense program, you have to be 110% ready emotionally and physically. 

Overall, I recommend this program!

I had some previous programming experience, though not in web technlogies and experience working with web & app Developers in the past.  I enrolled specifically to fill in gaps in my knowledge and learn modern web developement.

The course exceded my expectations and I learned more than I expected. I learned the listed technologies (CSS, React, JQuery, etc) and a few more along the way. Importantly, I learned how to approach other APIs and tools not covered in the 6-Month Bootcamp.  After enough practice reading documentation, following along with tutorials and reviewing new code I felt confident I can take on most development challenges. It's a wild world out there of technologies and I appreciate the focus on Javascript and Node. I know some bootcamps focus on Laravel/Drupal/PHP, but I'm happy I went with the Node environment. 

The support team, TAs, and instructors we very professional. I was also impressed with the other students in the program. I felt there was a sense of community and willingness to help one another learn.  

Expect to spend a good amount of time outside of class learning, doing homework, and projects as well.

I completed the University of Pennsylvania LPS Full Stack Web Development boot camp through Trilogy Learning Services during the summer of 2021 (Late May to Mid August.) This was the full time (12 week) option. 

Let me preface this review by saying first that I think doing the boot camp was a great decision, and secondly that at the time I enrolled in the UPenn program I was a working professional with a full time job and over a decade in the service industry. I had a BA in Music, but at that time I had zero background with coding or web development.

The person I spoke to during my enrollment process let me know that the full time option would be about 25 hours a week of class, plus 15-20 hours outside of class completing mandatory homework projects.  The actual time I spent working towards the certificate ended up being closer to 30 hours a week of actually being on Zoom, between class time, office hours, and tutoring, plus an additional 25-30 hours of project time both individually and in three group projects. In addition to class, I was working 20-25 hours over the weekends at a service industry job. It was only a week or two into the course when I realized that I was the only person in my class who was still working a job on top of the bootcamp.  Had I had the option to not work, I would have probably put in an additional 15-20 hours of project and/or study-time over the weekends in order to increase my competency with the material.  For what the course costs, you’ll only get your money’s worth if you put in as much time as possible.

The boot camp was A LOT of work, and at times extremely stressful.  Long periods of frustration are punctuated with the brief highs of actually getting your code to work. The staff offer excellent support, and again, for what the course costs, you need to take advantage of every single resource offered to you.  My biggest piece of advice is to sign up for a tutor immediately.  Full-time students get two one-hour tutoring sessions per week.  I did not sign up for a tutor until I was a month in, and that was a mistake.  My class instructor was awesome. He was incredibly knowledgeable, had a thorough mastery of JavaScript, a great teaching style, was open to any and all questions, even the dumb ones, and clearly had many years of real world coding experience.  In addition to your instructor and tutor, you have access to live help 24/7 through Slack chat, to point you in the right direction when your code isn’t working.  There are TA’s who get involved at different stages in the program, and a Student Success manager who is there to talk you off the ledge when you need it. 

The career services team coach you through building your portfolio, resume, and LinkedIn throughout the course, and then offer you coaching sessions for several months after you graduate. They offer a wealth of resources if you’re willing to put in the work.

At the time, the course cost about $12,500, which broke down to a $1,000 deposit, and then upon approval for zero interest financing, roughly $479 per month for 24 months. I spent $1,500 on equipment, including a desk, chair, laptop, second monitor, cables, monitor stand, web cam, and a decent pair of wireless headphones.  

I applied for 350 jobs over an 8 month period, got 15 initial interviews, 5 follow up interviews, and eventually landed a 6-month full-time, fully-remote contract as a web developer.

Overall, this program is what I expected going into it. It is definitely fast-paced but doable. The lessons are meant to be challenging but feel rewarding as you learn. My class was grateful enough to have a really awesome instructor who really knew the material well. Him along with the TAs were really supportive. The only downside to this program was the career services support side. We were told we would have meetings with them and they would be reviewing our career-related submissions. That really hasn't happened for me or my classmates. 

I learned a lot in a very fast amount of time despite being afraid that I might not be able to. The instructors I had were super helpful, knowledgeable, and friendly. You really get a good overview of a bunch of different technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, APIs, React, Mongo, etc.) & also you ‘learn how to learn’ when it comes to tech so if you need to ever learn something else on your own, it will be a lot easier. The people you meet are fun & great to work with. Also, you have a lot of freedom with the assignments as far as the themes and topics, which makes them very satisfying to complete. As long as you pay attention in class & always ask when you need help + take the work seriously, I think it’s a great choice.