UC San Diego Extended Studies Boot Camps

I am a 2018 graduate of the UC San Diego Extension Data Science and Visualization Bootcamp. This course is great if you want to jumpstart a career in programming or just expand your skillset. The curriculum is well designed and updated regularly to keep up with the current technologies used in the industry. The bootcamp is fast paced and could be difficult to keep up with if you are completely new to programming. Although not necessary,  I would recommend taking a little time to learn some coding fundamentals before starting the course. You'll need 20 hours a week to study at minimum. The more you put into it the more you’ll get out. Everyone on the staff was very knowledgeable and friendly. The structure of the class and the opportunity to work with other students on group projects were invaluable to my coding experience.

I've taken this course from May - November 2018 part-time, and I must say, it has changed my life completely. From barely having much coding knowledge, this bootcamp has taught me ins and outs of becoming a web developer and provided clear instructions and career services to achieve my goals. I've also gotten a chance to work as a TA for this bootcamp, and I realized that this course constantly changes to provide students with the most current technologies and tools, which is awesome! If you are looking for a career change to tech, or trying to improve on web development knowledge, this course is definitely a great choice.

I have been a teaching assistant for the program since February 2019. The program exposes students with the latest web technologies and effectively prepares them for the Job Market in San Diego. Upon graduating from the program, I have been able to secure a full-time job within 4 months. The career services and teaching staff team has been instrumental in my success in the program. I believe that the true value of the program comes from the dedicated support staff. Coding is hard for someone with no prior experience. I was only able to make through the rigorous program due to the support not only during class but also post-graduation support. Continuous support and consistent number to students returning to contribute to the UC San Diego Extension Boot Camp have helped build an invaluable community and network of support. Ultimately, if a student dedicates themselves, they will find success through the program.

I loved taking the course.  I think the course has enough breadth and depth for the time allotted, and helps jump-start a career in web development.  Since the program's parent company operates nationwide, its easy to get the educational support you need at a time that suits you; you get both the benefit of a tested and up-to-date curriculum of a MOOC as well as the region-specificity of a local boot camp.  This is crucial in helping land your first job nearby to gain experience.  Overall, I had a great time and learned enough to start working in the industry!

This was one of the most challenging academic endeavors I have ever set forth to accomplish. The full-time flex web development course was so well thought out and the instructors where very knowledgeable. I thought I was in over my head at first but the teacher assistants and the course instructor instilled confidence and empowered me and everyone in my class to make it thru the heavy course curriculum. With them we all succeeded and are now proud to say with confidence that we are full stack web developers ready for what every challenge we have to face in the future. I highly recommend this boot camp for those looking to find a career in web development or even if to further your existing knowledge on all criteria taught in this course. 

Hello,

My name is Farhad, I recently graduated from UCSD Data Science and Visualization Bootcamp in December 2018.This program was a great experience. The curriculum is well designed that covers variety of tools and technology that is being used in this field, it is quite impressive to look at the list of topics that was covered in 6 months.

My background is chemical engineering and I started this course with almost no coding experience, and after six month I am able to create website with data visualizations and analysis, also was able to switch my career right after graduating and started new job as a Business Analyst which it was my main goal.

The Instructional team we had were very nice, experienced and very knowledgeable, they provided a great support, and made the whole program fun and pleasant which I believe that's where it makes a difference between this program and similar online programs, beside this, being in the class and working alongside other students and TAs gave me great opportunity for networking and learning more and more.

I highly recommend this program for anyone who wants to enter to this field or boost their career and willing to works hard in and after class.

This course provides an extremely efficient and practical way to make coding techniques very handy. Web development is a fresh domain that is evolving very fast. It is difficult to keep up with all the technologies out there. With this porgram, it gives you means to start up and it trains you to look for the right information and utilize available resources. 

I had an amazing experience with this course and I highly recommend this course whoever feels they want to stay in track of web dev technologies

The Full-time Coding Boot Camp at the UCSD Extension is a great value for the education that I received. In just 3 months, I was exposed to and gained an incredible breadth of knowledge on subjects including HTML, CSS, CSS Frameworks, Javascrtip, Node, MySql, MongoDB, and React. If you are looking for a fast way to jump start a career in web development, you will be hard pressed to find a better value for your time and money. If you are looking to be challenged every day to break out of your comfort zone and tackle difficult concepts in a fast paced environment, this program is for you.

I cannot overstate what an excellent experience it was to be a student in the Full-time Coding Boot Camp at UCSD Extension.

Overall this course was exactly what I expected: an overview of full stack programming, introducing me to best development practices in real-world situations, pair-programming, and building applications. As I finish up the bootcamp I feel overwhelmed by how much I don’t know, and how much I want to go back and re-learn, but I have those tools to make it happen. I know a little about a lot of different programming concepts and languages. That’s okay; I knew I would feel something like this when I started. I feel empowered to keep doing development, and I am proud of my accomplishments in the course.

FAQs

-- Program length: 6 months for the part-time program for people who want to keep their day jobs (they also have a full time program that meets every day – not sure if it’s wise to have a job during that)

-- Days: M/W/Sa or T/R/Sa (they combine the classes on Saturdays – cool if your main instructor sucks, bad if you really like your main instructor like I did)

-- Homework: Every week – due on Saturdays. By the time you get to the backend these H.W.s can easily take 4/5 hours on non-class days, plus 1-2 hours on class days resulting in about 15-20 hours per assignment JUST on H.W. alone. That does include a lot of trial and error, as well as poking around on the inerwebs for answers.

-- Projects: These are fun, but can be highly stressful. They always let us pick our groups which I think is important. If you are an introvert, that’s okay, just be sure to make at least one friend you can buddy up with. Just be as normal as you can be…but that’s a life skill in general that you should have before joining any class.

-- Instructors: One main instructor (who was so awesome two of my classmates are working at his company now! He let our class know about the open positions and helped with mock interviews…wow!) and two TA’s (junior to mid-level programmers who had 1-several years in the field, but still junior to our main instructor. Overall very helpful and fun to hang out with).

--Cost: $8500 one lump sum, $9500 if paid monthly. Deposit required before you get your pre-work.

-- Pass rate: I’d say about 60-75% of my class completed the course. We had a lot of people drop right around our 2nd project when we started to get knee-deep in backend material.

My main qualm with this program is the pre-work didn’t manage people’s expectations properly, and there was just a little too much emphasis on “building stuff” and not on the concepts. The pre-work was easy, and I wish it had prepared me on a more conceptual level, rather than just producing websites and games. I had coded before and I chose a bootcamp to accelerate and guide my learning, rather than me trying to figure it out on my own. I understand people in my class may have never coded before, but I think letting those people into a bootcamp is risky. Without the necessary fundamentals it’s easy to drop the course because you get so frustrated. You need those concepts when working with the back end, and heck, even portions of the front end. I also wish that our homework wasn’t so focused on building games but included a bit more on the concepts. Plus, it’s just killer building a an entire website every week on a concept you learned Tuesday or Thursday, and it’s due Saturday. If you aren’t working, or have a part-time job, then it is manageable, but if you are working full time like me, it’s tough and you have to sacrifice. I was able to get through the class but just consuming as much info as possible and spitting it back out in a H.W. and worrying about understanding it later. But hey, how much can you truly learn in 6 months? You can learn a lot, but it takes a while to be good at something, let alone be a master. Which brings me to my next point…

If you want a job following this Bootcamp you better be prepared to work your toosh off and go full speed for the entire course. It is possible to get a new job, but you really do need to have coded prior to this course, even if it’s just HTML/CSS and a little bit of JS. If you do want to get a job, they have career services… but it’s my other big qualm with this program. They hold it over your head like a stupid carrot the entire program, which is okay because it’s a way to hold people accountable, but turns out it’s really not all it’s cracked up to be. I chose this bootcamp over others because of the career services. They had promises of one on one help with your resume, pitch, cover letter, even interview prep and it’s really just a bunch of people who are an online career team who you never get to meet in person and get feedback from via Google docs. I know of other students who arranged a phone call for help but it was only so helpful. I just want people to have their expectations managed, because I am disappointed for sure. Either way, you will need to keep practicing after the class. I fully expected this, but I think some people truly think they can be making 80K/year coding at a startup or Google the day after you graduate. In reality you need to focus on the bootcamp during the duration, and then hit the ground running afterwards building projects, going-over concepts you don’t understand and honing in on your strengths. You can’t be good at everything, but there will be topics you enjoy more than others. What I did love about this course is we covered so many different languages and tools I discovered a love of working with databases. Who knew? I honestly would have never known how intuitive DB’s are for me if I hadn’t taken this class. I think I would have shyed away from stuff because it looked “scary,” but you don’t get a choice in this class haha. That, my friend, is a very good thing however, especially if you want to be a web dev. You have to face “scary” stuff every day!

Overall this is program money well spent, and the experience is worth it. I made good friends and great professional connections through this course. Doing an in-person course is so beneficial because just when you feel alone, helpless and/or overwhelmed, there is someone else who feels the same way, but there is also someone who can help. Having that support is priceless, and having these skills are too!

Overall this course was exactly what I expected: an overview of full stack programming, introducing me to best development practices in real-world situations, pair-programming, and building applications. As I finish up the bootcamp I feel overwhelmed by how much I don’t know, and how much I want to go back and re-learn, but I have those tools to make it happen. I know a little about a lot of different programming concepts and languages. That’s okay; I knew I would feel something like this when I started. I feel empowered to keep doing development, and I am proud of my accomplishments in the course.

FAQs

-- Program length: 6 months for the part-time program for people who want to keep their day jobs (they also have a full time program that meets every day – not sure if it’s wise to have a job during that)

-- Days: M/W/Sa or T/R/Sa (they combine the classes on Saturdays – cool if your main instructor sucks, bad if you really like your main instructor like I did)

-- Homework: Every week – due on Saturdays. By the time you get to the backend these H.W.s can easily take 4/5 hours on non-class days, plus 1-2 hours on class days resulting in about 15-20 hours per assignment JUST on H.W. alone. That does include a lot of trial and error, as well as poking around on the inerwebs for answers.

-- Projects: These are fun, but can be highly stressful. They always let us pick our groups which I think is important. If you are an introvert, that’s okay, just be sure to make at least one friend you can buddy up with. Just be as normal as you can be…but that’s a life skill in general that you should have before joining any class.

-- Instructors: One main instructor (who was so awesome two of my classmates are working at his company now! He let our class know about the open positions and helped with mock interviews…wow!) and two TA’s (junior to mid-level programmers who had 1-several years in the field, but still junior to our main instructor. Overall very helpful and fun to hang out with).

--Cost: $8500 one lump sum, $9500 if paid monthly. Deposit required before you get your pre-work.

-- Pass rate: I’d say about 60-75% of my class completed the course. We had a lot of people drop right around our 2nd project when we started to get knee-deep in backend material.

My main qualm with this program is the pre-work didn’t manage people’s expectations properly, and there was just a little too much emphasis on “building stuff” and not on the concepts. The pre-work was easy, and I wish it had prepared me on a more conceptual level, rather than just producing websites and games. I had coded before and I chose a bootcamp to accelerate and guide my learning, rather than me trying to figure it out on my own. I understand people in my class may have never coded before, but I think letting those people into a bootcamp is risky. Without the necessary fundamentals it’s easy to drop the course because you get so frustrated. You need those concepts when working with the back end, and heck, even portions of the front end. I also wish that our homework wasn’t so focused on building games but included a bit more on the concepts. Plus, it’s just killer building a an entire website every week on a concept you learned Tuesday or Thursday, and it’s due Saturday. If you aren’t working, or have a part-time job, then it is manageable, but if you are working full time like me, it’s tough and you have to sacrifice. I was able to get through the class but just consuming as much info as possible and spitting it back out in a H.W. and worrying about understanding it later. But hey, how much can you truly learn in 6 months? You can learn a lot, but it takes a while to be good at something, let alone be a master. Which brings me to my next point…

If you want a job following this Bootcamp you better be prepared to work your toosh off and go full speed for the entire course. It is possible to get a new job, but you really do need to have coded prior to this course, even if it’s just HTML/CSS and a little bit of JS. If you do want to get a job, they have career services… but it’s my other big qualm with this program. They hold it over your head like a stupid carrot the entire program, which is okay because it’s a way to hold people accountable, but turns out it’s really not all it’s cracked up to be. I chose this bootcamp over others because of the career services. They had promises of one on one help with your resume, pitch, cover letter, even interview prep and it’s really just a bunch of people who are an online career team who you never get to meet in person and get feedback from via Google docs. I know of other students who arranged a phone call for help but it was only so helpful. I just want people to have their expectations managed, because I am disappointed for sure. Either way, you will need to keep practicing after the class. I fully expected this, but I think some people truly think they can be making 80K/year coding at a startup or Google the day after you graduate. In reality you need to focus on the bootcamp during the duration, and then hit the ground running afterwards building projects, going-over concepts you don’t understand and honing in on your strengths. You can’t be good at everything, but there will be topics you enjoy more than others. What I did love about this course is we covered so many different languages and tools I discovered a love of working with databases. Who knew? I honestly would have never known how intuitive DB’s are for me if I hadn’t taken this class. I think I would have shyed away from stuff because it looked “scary,” but you don’t get a choice in this class haha. That, my friend, is a very good thing however, especially if you want to be a web dev. You have to face “scary” stuff every day!

Overall this is program money well spent, and the experience is worth it. I made good friends and great professional connections through this course. Doing an in-person course is so beneficial because just when you feel alone, helpless and/or overwhelmed, there is someone else who feels the same way, but there is also someone who can help. Having that support is priceless, and having these skills are too!

This bootcamp exceeded all of my expectations. Be prepared for a lot of work, you'll be working at a very fast pace with a new project almost every week. This is not a spoon-fed program, they teach you the basics and teach you to constantly dig deeper and learn more (You will have to spend a lot of time out of class researching how to do many of your projects) which is essential to being a good developer.

Career services is very active and involved, willing to reach out to companies you are talking to and to new prospects, letting hiring managers know where your skills and interests lie and getting the ball rolling towards a job.

If you are willing to put in a lot of time and effort, you will learn a lot and be well prepared to enter the workforce.

The more I learn about web development the more I despise and regret attending this boot camp. I could have learned all of this on my own and in a much more effective way. As a developer, I can't let others make the wrong choice and end up like many of us UCSD graduates.

First the numbers. There isn't any! How many students get jobs after the course? With my class about 3 of 25 got positions. You don't see numbers posted anywhere. A great boot camp is transparent with the numbers.

The quality of the material, similar to the free online version of Codecademy.

Teacher and TA's are great, the only positive note on the course. They really help you out.

Job placement. Still looking for work, graduate in mid-2017.

An alternative, stick to freecodecamp.com and become a self-taught developer. Don't let your education be in the hands of somebody other than yourself. Stick to a roadmap of either becoming a front-end developer or back-end and gradually work your way to full stack. 

I am very satisfied with the 6 months program

- Syllabus is great. The course schedule are all well designed. The program covers most commonly used technologies like JavaScript, jQuery, AJAX, Node, Express, React, MongoDB, MySQL, etc. The whole process is done step by step, so all students (no matter if he/she has previous web development experience or not) start from the basic HTML, CSS and JavaScript and use it as the foundation of learning more fancy stuff like Node and React. This is very important because students not only know how to use handy packages like Node and React, but also know what is under the hood and reason for switching to these framework from plain JavaScript.

- There are weekly assignments and three group projects. Weekly assignments push students to spend time outside the classroom on the topics covered in the classroom. Group projects not only provide a chance of integrating things learned in the classroom, but also expose students to real world teamwork environment (merging conflict in GitHub and something like that)

- Instructors and TAs are all very nice. They can be easily contacted through Slack (IM used in the program) and they are happy to answer questions. Lectures are well prepared.

- Some career support like they provide tips on resumes, do mock interviews, etc., are offered. In the program, a few guests from companies like Amazon, GoPro and a few other local start-ups are invited for tech talks or sharing recruitment information.

Overall, I am 100% satisfied with the bootcamp. I’ll give some background about myself to kind of put my experience into perspective. I ended up landing a great job due to the bootcamp, but I believe my background in engineering played a large role as well.

I’ve been coding on a regular basis since around 2011, but it was only with Matlab and VBA. I had tried learning to code real languages (Java, Python, etc) several times, only to get to the point where I understand syntax and how to write a few functions, then lose motivation.. I also tried learning web development on my own, but got to the same point. I was lacking two things:

1.A deep understanding of how all of the languages work together (front end vs back end). I didn’t understand the benefits or even the purpose of each language. I was missing a huge piece of the puzzle.

2.Real projects that I could put my name on and show off on my resume. No employer was going to take me seriously by just having some codeacademy and treehouse tutorials under my belt.

I was growing more and more unenthused about my job, and I knew that coding was my passion. Upon hearing about the UCSD Extension Bootcamp, I think I was enrolled within 24 hours. The main selling points for me were:

1.I didn’t have to quit my job

2.Purpose of the bootcamp was to build your github/portfolio

3.Career assistance once the course was over

I’ll take a page out of Will’s post and discuss pros/cons separately.

Pros:

Projects: The 3 group projects in the course were probably the best things to come out of the bootcamp for me. Literally every single interview I had I was asked to go into lots of detail about each of the projects. The fact that they were coded from the ground up, team projects, version controlled with git, and were deployed. This the full cycle of a real life software (except for testing).

Instructors: Both George Morgan and Brandon Lyon were amazing instructors that I learned a lot from. George has been teaching for many, many years and it shows. He was comparable to (and better than) many professors in the Engineering school at UCSD. The way he would explain difficult concepts was incredibly insightful because of the way he could break it down into simpler high level explanations. I learned an insane amount of information from George about anything and everything coding. He was really accessible before and after class and was always willing to answer broader/off-topic questions about other languages or technologies. Brandon, although having a different teaching style, was a very good professor as well. He helped us learn on our own (valuable skill) by reading docs and doing your own research, which is like the real world.

TAs: Can’t say enough good things about these guys except they probably weren’t paid enough. They were all super helpful and ready on slack all the time.

In class exercises: The in class exercises were exceptional. They broke down difficult concepts/technologies into small chunks where we would complete smaller sections of an app piece by piece. These were probably the most valuable tool for me as they taught proper coding practices on top of learning the content itself.

Career support: Although I landed this job on my own, I learned a TON from Stacey. Her workshops and the guests she brought in throughout the course were really valuable. After the course ended, the constant feed of job leads were also nice coming from the Trilogy recruiter.

Cons:

The curriculum changed throughout the course. Initially we were supposed to spend a couple weeks on other languages such as Java, Ruby, Python, and PHP. I was pretty excited to go through other languages to help me get a better understanding of all of the different languages. I wanted to get a bit of practice with them also, even if we weren’t going to get a lot. However, all of these lectures were scrapped (I think there were 6 total) because the class wanted to focus on ReactJS more. At the time I was incredibly disappointed in this because I wanted some experience with object oriented languages. But after the class ended I dedicated my time to learning object oriented languages and object oriented design, so looking back it’s not as big of a deal to me.

Homeworks:

I think the first 3 homeworks were pretty difficult and they forced us to do a lot of learning outside of class to complete them. However, I’m sure they got a lot of complaints because from there on the homeworks were pretty much copy/pastes from the in-class exercises. They didn’t require much time or effort to complete.

Pace:

I feel like the overall pace of the classes were pretty slow. I feel like I could have spent 30 mins to an hour looking at the in-class exercises and got the same information as the 3 hour lecture. Obviously when we were learning a new technology it was great to be in class to get a high level understanding of the technology, but many lectures provided minimal value.

Overall, I got exactly what I wanted out of the bootcamp. I would take it again if I were to do it over.