Rutgers Bootcamps

I will break this down based on the star ratings.

Overall Experience:

The name says Rutgers but the course is run by a company called Trilogy who creates the curriculum and then sells the course to colleges.

The class enviroment was good. Everyone in my cohort was eager to learn which made for an interactive class. I have heard of a few classes with various types of people which pulled down the quality of the class and made it difficult for those wanting to learn to do so.

Instructors:

My instructor, Alex, was great. He kept the class fun and engaging while covering the material and brought in donuts constantly! He is always available and able to assist.

The down side is that none of the instructors have real world experiance working with React, Mongo etc in a company for a long period of time. They either have been in other areas of development, C++ etc, or just recently taken the course themselves. This reduced the learning to the basics and the things they have learned themselves along the way.

A course should be using instructors with years of experiance with these systems. Rutgers wouldn't hire professors that have only just graduated so why allow it for these ones?

The teacher's aides are also in the same boat. Most of them have recently taken the course so some of them know even less. They can assist you with the basics in regards to material covered in the course but outside of that they arn't much help and you are left to fend for yourself.

Curriculum:

The

The Curriculum covers the basics of everything but delves deep into nothing. It's good as a kick start to get you up to speed with everything but that is it. After that it is up to you to learn about other things. That being said, the course starts for those with no experiance at all and the first month is going over the basics of HTML, CSS, and intro to Javascript.

Because of the goal of the course I feel learning all that material should be prerequisite work and day one should be diving into JS.

Very little time is taken to cover SQL, Mongo, and React.. As I said the basics are covered on how to make queries but not how to do anything such as stored procedures or other valuable features of the system.

Even more disapointing is that React, the heart of the course, in my opinion, is only given 1 week of learning. My instructor replaced the last week (learning Java for some reason) with an extra week of React. Given that the system is so important they certainly don't procvide much time to learn it. This is the main reason they should make learning HTML etc a pre req.

From what I have heard of other course that is what they do so that they can start digging into the heavy stuff and provide more time with the important systems. Since this one is a Javascript course why was a wasting 1 month of time learning basics?

Job Assistance:

My advice, do not choose this bootcamp because of the job assistance. When I signed up for the course it said it uses Rutgers career services, which makes it sound like it's the Rutgers College career services but it's not. It's Trilogies on. They took that blurb down from their website after I was taking the course.

This statement is a joke. I wish I could of given it 0 stars. They state you are required to complete job preperation work in order to qualify for job assistance but that's not the case at all.

The person in charge of this area does post jobs on slack and tells you to apply, they seem to have some connection with companies. Once you apply though you never hear anything back. All I was kept getting told was "no havn't heard anything" or "going to be talking to that person next week". The links that are provided, and the assistance they give are indeed or glassdoor search links that anyone can do on their own.

between myself and someone else who took the full time cohort we only know 1 person that got hired through the career services.

Tech Panels:

The course says they do tech panels, it's more or less a lie. We had 1 tech panel the whole time ans it was two people that came in for about 30 minutes while we asked them questions. This really annoyed me as I was expecting, from their own words, a tech panel every other week or so.

Over all:

Trilogy makes lots of claims but falls short on all of them. I went in expecting much more that what I got but I did learn some things. I guess If you asked me would I take it again, I would say no. There are $25, multi hour web courses that you could take and get the same material out of it. This would go for begineers and intermediate programmers alike.

Sure the course does help in the fact that you can work and learn off of others but it's not woth the 10k for this course.

Find a place that does direct job placement, I spent 3 months looking for a job and the only thing that helped me was my previous background in I.T. Others without that will have a harder, if not impossible, time.

I have been a web developer for several years. As I'm getting older, I started to realize that I wanted to make a very meaningful impact for society or company. I thought I could do more beside just creating a website so I searched and researched exhaustively on what I can really do - a significant career change. I found Rutgers Data Science Bootcamp and I was very convinced that this was the one for me. The answer I've been looking for. 

At first, I was skeptic about this program as this was the first Data Science program they were offering. Normally, I tend to go for a well-established, seasoned programs with years of experience. But I trusted my gut and I had a feeling I would be just fine. And YUP! I was right. It was beyond my expectation. Everything was high quality. High quality course materials, instructor, TAs, support service, and career service. I can feel a lot of time, effort, planning went into this program. There was a tremendous amount of support and attention for us. They made sure EACH of us was getting what we wanted and would go beyond call to make sure we do not get left behind. They addressed my disability needs extremely well. 

Ahmend was an excellent instructor and I was very lucky to have him. He demonstrated a difficult concept with real life example so that we can connect dots easily. His course lesson plan spanning over 6 months is well thought out and includes all the popular data science tools. I had Matt, Han, Jacob, and Austin as my TAs. They were very knowledgeable and extremely helpful. At the end of the program, you will not be an expert in machine learning or data visualization but you will be an excellent junior data guy and you will become an excellent expert in a very short time. 

Juanita checked in regularly on me to make sure I'm still alive and chugging along. She was very attentive to my needs. Corey and Jessica did WONDERFUL job to make sure I am a high quality job seeker and they gave me a very individualized attention and gave me great advices for my resume, LinkedIn, and GitHub. 

This is a very important thing to do for yourself. In order to make this program works for you, you need to pay attention and put in all the hours and effort with due diligence. This program is not easy and it is fast paced. Practice Practice Practice and Ask Ask Ask! 

I entered the Data Science and Visualization Bootcamp with no prior coding experience and having not done analytics work in over 10 years.  After teaching mathematics for 10 years, I was looking to change career paths and seek a new challenge.  As a former educator, I was absolutely blown away by the quality of instruction, the constant importance of student feedback, and the attention given to every student to ensure their success in mastering the course topics and career support.  Additionally, class and homework activities were incredibly well crafted and solely focused on hands-on skills that allow you to become highly proficient in the topics covered.  I truly never dreamed that at the end of 6 months I would learn as much as a did.  I became fluent in languages/technologies such as Python, Javascript, SQL, MongoDB, HTML/CSS and the various libraries that enhance them for topics such as API creation/interaction, social media mining, statistical analysis, machine learning, and data visualization.  This program was hands-down the best educational experience I ever had.  It changed my life and was so much FUN!  

I attended Rutgers undergrad for computer science for a few semesters and became discouraged by the amount of time I had to spend on work for breadth requirement courses when I wanted to devote most of my time to computer science work.  I'd find myself in the library writing papers and doing homework for courses that I had no interest in, but was forced to take.  Fast forward a few years, and I saw the opportunity to take this Coding Bootcamp and jumped on it immediately.

I took the 12 week (full-time) course rather than the 24 week (part-time) course, and honestly I loved how condensed it was.  Going into it I thought I'd have trouble paying attention through a five hour class every day, but I quickly found that most days class would end and I wished that it was longer.  If you take the 12 week course it's definitely very important to stay on top of the assignments, but as long as you start the homework a reasonable amount of time before the due date it's no problem to get it finished and even find a little extra time to add your own flair to it.

For a little context, I had some experience in Java, but it was so far in the past for me that I didn't utilize it much.  I worked three nights a week as well, so it's possible to have a job at the same time but I wouldn't overload your schedule.  Especially towards the tail end of the course.  Many students had zero prior experience in coding prior to the bootcamp, and while some struggled in the beginning to pick up core concepts, they all finished the course as fantastic coders.  I would work with any single one of them in the future.  I just finished yesterday, so I can't really speak on job placement, but they have a career services department who will help you craft your resume, teach you what questions you will encounter in interviews, and set you up with recruiting agencies.  We even had a few recruiters attend the presentation for our final projects, which was cool.

Our instructor, Franklin Dawes, was amazing.  Super helpful, always took the time to answer questions thoroughly.  He'd go over the same thing several times if necessary, but somehow still managed to keep us on track with the curriculum every day.  Alan Chu and Tom Keel were our TA's, and they were just as fantastic.  Really supportive people who attended the bootcamp in a prior session and came out very knowledgeable.  We had a few other guest TA's, Aaron, Mark, Tammer, Rob, I'm sure I'm missing some.  They were all great too, and someone in my class by the name of Adam Kwan will be a TA for the next full time course I believe.  He was an all star all semester in our class and pretty much acted as a third TA for a lot of us, so I'm sure he'll be awesome.  Finally, Juanita Soranno helped out with career services and acted as our cheerleader throughout the course.  She's super helpful, knows her stuff when it comes to coding, and is very accomodating if anything arises.

Bottom line, if you want to learn to be a web developer in 12 or 24 weeks, you can't go wrong taking this course.  It's not easy so take it seriously, but I think you'll find it less and less of a chore as you get farther into the course to keep up and more just something you want to do.

After searching for two years on what should I learn next I stumbled into the Rutgers Bootcamp, at first I was skeptical, but after doing some research I decided to join. After the first couple of lessons, I knew this was going to be challenging; see I came from a hardware background and had no idea what coding was. The program advisor told me to go and practice in code academy before the class starts and as a good slacker, I totally forgot. So when the class started I was zero in programming but Ahmed (my instructor) was such an awesome teacher that I got to understand the concepts being taught to a high level, This is not an easy course and it is not for everyone you need to have the drive to learn and push beyond your limits "IS LIKE STARTING TO LEARN A LANGUAGE FROM SCRATCH". I just want to thank all the staff for the time being put into this course and especially Ahmed for being Great.  "Another One"! I will always remember this course as a life changing experience!!!!. After graduating I can say I am a developer with the capacity to keep on learning new programming languages because I have not just learned how to code in this program "I have learned how to learn".

I came into this course with no technical experience whatsoever. I had a desire to add to my skillset in a changing employment landscape. This course was one of the most difficult, frustrating, and humbling educational experience I've ever had. I had some incredible instructors, and other students lept at the chance to help those who were struggling. I think a collaborative environment is pretty essential in a course like this, and Rutgers Coding Bootcamp delivered on that one hundred percent. While the program advertises itself as one that will help you transition to a pure development, I think it's easy to see that everyone -- folks with writing backgrounds like myself included -- should at the very least have a better understanding of the underlying technologies of the web. I would wholeheartedly reccomend the course. 

This will be a short review, but what I wanted to concentrate on is the faculty and staff. Going in as a blank slate in regards to Dev, I was certainly worried about my ability to keep up with the curriculum and rest of class. But the Ahmed (my instructor) was easily the best teacher I've had in my life. With an ability to put difficult concepts into simpler terms, and with the support of the TA's and classmates, this was the most enjoyable learning experience I've ever had. Do yourself a favor and take the plunge, as this may become the most important six-months in your life!

The Rutgers Coding Bootcamp program is the best investment I have made for my future as a web developer.  This course is in depth and intellectually challenging.  The professor and the TAs knew how challening the course was and therefore went above and beyond to assist every student.  Ahmed, Nate and Will were always available for help with homework and to encourage students who began to doubt themselves.  I would recommend this course to anyone who wants to pursue a career in web development.

At Rutgers Coding Bootcamp the pace was fast and the work was intense. But thanks to Ahmed's light-hearted teaching style the classes felt fun even when I was really challenged. The instruction was clear, and it was obvious that a lot of thought had been put into the curriculum design. At the end of the course you will not only know full-stack web development, but you will have a good understanding of how to teach yourself any other programming language or technical skill. Really, the process is made that clear. 

But it's not just about working on your own. A big challenge for me was learning to work with other developers. We were really pushed to learn to work together, and Ahmed  had us explain material to each other, work in groups on projects and in-class assignments, and created a space on our slack channel for students to help each other solve problems. 

In addition to the regular classes, students enrolled in the program have the opportunity to take a plethora of free workshops. Knowing how important it is to keep abreast of up and coming technologies, they provided us with a chance to learn Elixir and Phoenix. Since I have a graphic design background, I especially appreciated the free workshops on UI and D3.js that I was able to take. In fact, alumni get to participate in a lot of the free workshops too. The entire team is very supportive of the alumnis continuing education. 

The career services offered are up to the standards of the rest of the program. Mock interview sessions, opportunities to practice white board questions, and career development workshops are all offered as part of the bootcamp. The career services team has been giving me and my cohort a lot of individual and small group attention. Frankly the career services through RBC have been better than what was available at my college. 

I couldn't recommend the program more highly. If you're considering a coding bootcamp, definitely consider RCB. The pedagogical expertise that comes from an affiliation with one of the country's oldest universities makes a difference. 

I'm confident that, given the time, I could have learned everything I learned in the program on my own. However, as I've heard emphasized several times now, the best software engineers are not just masters of the technical aspects, but they're excellent communicators and collaborators. Such soft skills are easy to miss if you don't have the environment that this class provides. If you want to make the most of it, I strongly encourage that you connect with fellow students, instructors, TAs, and speakers. Though it may not be immediately apparent, the indirect effect of making that effort will pay off.

All that said, the collaborative part of the curriculum felt a little lacking in structure at times. While I enjoyed working with my classmates, I would have liked to have had more time getting a sense of the collaborative process so we could have spent more time actually building the projects than trying to figure out how to get going. More practice with git, for example, would have been a huge help. I wonder if re-working a project would have given a better feel for the continuity involved in larger projects that'll be encountered after finishing the course.

Overall, Ahmed was an excellent instructor, the TAs were helpful, the students were engaged, and I'm happy with the results.

My experience with the Rutgers Coding Bootcamp was phenomenal. I had tried to learn some web development basics on my own prior to the class, but I was never as successful as with the bootcamp’s guided learning. They provided the structure that I needed to make sense of a field that can seem incredibly daunting and complex for someone coming from an entirely different world. They helped me learn how to learn, so I could continue even after the class ends. 

With all that said, there is nothing that will substitute hard work and hours of dedication. The immense dedication with which Ahmed, our instructor, went into each class was inspiring. He really went above and beyond to ensure that everyone received a well-rounded experience. Learning to code is like learning a new language. Put the work into it, and you open a new world of possibilities. Nothing is handed to you, but there’s always someone there to help you if you feel like you’re struggling. It’s an investment in yourself that you have to work hard at, but you’re never alone. 

I highly recommend RCB to anyone looking to get into web development. I have a background in business and prior to joining, I had a little bit of knowledge about HTML and CSS from online courses. I felt like I was at a stand still because I wanted a formal and immersive learning experience. Grad school was too long considering the tech field is continuously changing and the bootcamps I found either required a background in tech/computer science or seemed like a waste of time and money. Not only did I learn a lot while attending RCB, but this experience has been truly life changing. I'm leaving RCB with a very strong foundation and the knowledge I've gained is transferable to other languages and frameworks I'm interested in learning. Everything I've learned is directly relevant to what an entry level/junior developer requires.

I attended the Jersey City location and Ahmed was my instructor. He's extremely knowledgeable, committed and ALWAYS available. The class picks up quickly. The first two weeks, we learned HTML and CSS and by the third week we moved onto JavaScript and then Jquery. The classes usually started out with a lecture and then we moved onto exercises (sometimes we worked individually or did pair programming). Like most things in life, you get what you put in. If you are dedicated and proactive, I'm sure you will be very satisfied with your experience at RCB.

I absolutely loved the bootcamp. The curriculum was very intensive but I felt that it taught us the necessary languages and discipline to not only dip our feet into the Web Development world but succeed if the right amount of time and work was put into the class. It was NOT easy at any point in the course but I was lucky enough to have an AMAZING instructor (Ahmed) and two AMAZING tutor assistants (Nate and Will). There was an endless amount of support, literally 24/7. I never felt like I was bothering anyone when I asked for help and never felt that I was so lost that I wouldn't be able to catch up (which was my biggest fear coming into this bootcamp). My instructor genuinely wanted to be there and help all of us succeed. Aside from the education aspect, my instructor, classmates and TA's have helped me grow as a professional and also as a person. I am forever grateful for my whole RCB team.

I found RCB at a time in my life when things weren't adding up as they should. Do well on your SAT's, get into college, and you'll get a good job, they said. But this "life formula" turned out not to work for me. I thought I was doing everything right, but eventually found myself not being able to wake up happy every morning. I decided to finally bite the bullet and sign up for a coding bootcamp. I had nothing to lose.

The main reason I chose this program over others was because of its proximity, as well as the flexibility in the part-time program. I had to work full-time while attending the class, so this was my biggest concern. The curriculum offerings were also standard with the industry. As well, the bootcamp was offered through Rutgers University, and I liked that I got a little bit of "college experience" out of it. Students ranged widely in ages, profession, and skill level, but I found that it was a safe place to network with others without feeling judged. It helped me become comfortable to talk to other "coders" and maybe one day call myself that.

The greatest advantage of a having face-to-face class was that if I needed hand-holding, I could always find someone to talk to. But to really excel, I had to be able to push past my own limitations. The lectures provided a foundation on which I could exercise my creativity when doing the homework. The most helpful sessioins were doing a timed coding test in class and doing mock interviews with live feedback. I think that whether one graduates still a novice or an employable professional, largely depends on an array of personal factors, but previous coding experience is not one of them. Learning is a lifelong skill, and practice makes perfect; I felt that RCB did a good job of emphasizing that. When it came to applying for jobs, the biggest threshold for me was getting an interview. Sending a resume was definitely not enough, and Career Services was able to help me get in the door on more than a few occassions. Demo Day pushed me to get my portfolio ready and practice talking with employers. In fact, I found that it wasn't difficult to demonstrate my skills and willingness to keep learning. 

When I started RCB in January, I was despondent and unsure of what "path" in life I was taking. For the first few weeks, I forced myself to get into the routine of squeezing in time for a quick dinner between work and class, and trying to not fall behind. But it wasn't long before I found myself doing all-nighters because I wanted to, and gaining a sense of accomplishment when I made that final push to GitHub for all the world to see. (And then pushing it again a few minutes later because of a bug.)

And now entering into the last few weeks of the year, I am starting a new job, and I am a lot more optimistic with the direction I am going. Thank you to a great instructor and friend Ahmed, to the best section TA's Peter and Faisal, and also to Quincy for fielding all my in-class questions, Patrick for the intro to Python, and Peleke for taking an hour out of your time to talk about RxJS. Also, to Stacey, for always telling me where to park, to Career Services, especially Nalani and Zach, who were great to work with and kept me motivated post-graduation, and to my family and friends for their encouragement and support along the way. What a year it's been, and I can't wait for the next!

Taking this course was honestly the best decision I ever made.  I was in a career I was not happy with and I always wanted to learn to code, so that's when I choose to apply to the bootcamp.  The instructor was fantastic, the TAs are always there to help either in person or through the internet.  I learned so much through the course and now I have a full-time job as a developer and I am so much happier with my career.  The curriculum was very good and focused on teaching students technologies that the market needs developers for.  The job assistance was fantastic as well, the student success coordinator I was assigned stayed in touch and set up phone calls to talk about my job search often and didn't stop until I had got an offer. 

I recently graduated from the program in July 2016 and life has just not been the same since (pardon the cliche). I must admit that at about the 3 week mark I began asking myself if I could have gone the self teaching route that others have offered as an alternative. For me, it would not have been a stretch since I have a background in IT (comp sci undergrad, MIS grad). Web development was something I was interested in because so much of my prior experience had been on the systems side (process improvment, project management, quality assurance), and I was looking to transition my career track towards something that was more "hands on", if you will. Plus it's easier for developers to telecommute; systems people usually have to be at the office. 

Now that I've completed the program I know that I would not have nearly the amount of knowledge had I tried to self teach the skills I learned at the RCB. I am the parent of a soon-to-be 3 year old and a soon-to-be 1 year old at home so "self" anything is just about non-existent. I was lucky enough to be able to get to class 3 days a week for 6 months during which time I learned not only all the languages, frameworks, and other technologies that enable me to build complete web apps from scratch, but also some intangible lessons in collaboration, team building, and problem resolution. Most importantly, I got to work with knowledgeable, personable people, students and staff, many of which I hope to keep in contact with years to come. 

As far as the curriculum, I felt that the course moved along in a natural progression and at a very rapid pace, which I liked - it wouldn't be much of a 'bootcamp' if it didn't. Of course, there were times when I felt overwhelmed and there is a lot of pressure to not fall behind in the material. I was always able to get help from TAs/Instructors when I needed it and the career services support is stellar. I personally was able to earn myself a nice raise at my present job along with some other incentives and accolades, with the skills I learned at the RCB. 

If you are looking for a career change, or even just a skills retooling for Web development, I would highly recommend the Rutgers Coding Bootcamp. The format, curriculum, and support staff are all top-notch, indicative of the Rutgers namesake. You must remember, however, that you MUST be willing and able to put in the work outside of attending classes. As with so many other things in life, what you get out of this program will depend enormously on what you are willing to put into it.