Holberton
Holberton School Reviews and Complete Guide
Holberton School is a coding bootcamp that offers a project-based and peer-learning-based curriculum. This school provides students with all the tools necessary to learn a variety of subjects and start their careers in tech.
What Do You Need to Know about Holberton School?
Holberton School is a coding bootcamp with locations all over the world, including a remote option. This school offers a unique learning experience by providing students with only one course, but six different specializations within the course. There are full-time onsite and full-time online program options.
| Locations | San Francisco, New Haven, Tulsa, San Juan, Bogota, Medellin, Cali, Barranquilla, Hauts-de-France, Tunis, Beirut, Montevideo, Mexico City, Online |
| Tuition | $85,000 |
| Financing Options | Upfront Payment, ISA |
| Start Dates | June 7 |
| Program Types | Online, Onsite, Full-Time |
| Courses | Full-Stack Software Engineering |
Where Are Holberton School’s Campuses Located?
Holberton School has campuses all over the world, with the majority being located in the United States and Colombia. All of the locations are listed below.
- San Francisco, California
- New Haven, Connecticut
- Tulsa, Oklahoma
- San Juan, Puerto Rico
- Bogota, Colombia
- Cali, Colombia
- Barranquilla, Colombia
- Hauts-de-France, France
- Tunis, Tunisia
- Beirut, Lebanon
- Montevideo, Uruguay
- Mexico City, Mexico
- Online
Holberton School’s single course is offered at all of the campus locations, as are all of the specializations for the course.
How Much Is Tuition at Holberton School?
To attend Holberton School, you will need to pay somewhere between $8,400 and $85,000, depending on which campus you attend. This can be a bit pricier than other coding bootcamps, but the cost is the same regardless of the learning format.
How Can You Pay Holberton School Tuition?
You can pay for the Holberton School tuition in either an upfront payment or by agreeing to an income share agreement, or ISA.
Upfront
If you choose to make an upfront payment to cover the cost of your tuition, this means you will have to pay the tuition in full. This is usually done when you apply to the course or are accepted and register for your classes.
ISA
The ISA offered by Holberton School is explained very clearly. You will not have to pay any of the tuition until you have graduated and found a job earning $40,000 or more. Once this happens, you will give 17 percent of your salary to Holberton School for approximately 3.5 years, or until the tuition has been paid off.
Can You Use the GI Bill at Holberton School?
Unfortunately, Holberton School does not accept the GI Bill or any of its benefits.
What Courses Does Holberton School Offer?
Holberton School only offers one course in full-stack software engineering. However, this course does have six different specializations you can choose from to customize your learning experience. All six specializations are available online or in-person.
Machine Learning
The machine learning track is one of the most popular specializations in the software engineering program. This track is designed to help students learn machine learning by teaching them the most up-to-date innovations in machine learning, and then helping them find a career working as a machine learning engineer.
AR/VR
Working in augmented reality and virtual reality is arguably one of the coolest jobs you can find in tech. If you choose to enroll in this track of Holberton School’s program, you will work in a curriculum designed in partnership with Unity, the creator of Unity3D. While in this track, students learn all about AR/VR.
Towards the end of the program, students develop a 3D video game from start to finish, which doubles as a valuable hands-on learning experience and a fantastic addition to your professional portfolio.
Full Stack Web Development
During the full stack software engineering program, you will learn quite a bit about programming languages and web development. However, if you plan to go into a career in web development or anything similar, the full stack web development track allows you to study more advanced skills and frameworks. Course topics include advanced JavaScript, advanced Python, SQL, and React Redux.
Low Level & Algorithms
For those interested in careers working with security and blockchain, you may want to consider this track. This program offers a wide array of teachings in UNIX file management, advanced memory allocation, and, of course, the many different uses of blockchain.
Front End
In the front-end development track, you will focus specifically on developing your front end programming skills. This track can be completed a bit faster than the other tracks, and focuses its teachings on advanced HTML/CSS, Typescript, and React. By the end of the program, you will be able to code within a framework, as well as understand how the frameworks function.
Backend
The backend track helps students master the backend side of programming and development. You will learn what backend development is, along with advanced Python, JavaScript, and MySQL language skills. Other course topics include API pagination, caching algorithms, and queuing systems.
How to Get Accepted into Holberton School
Holberton School is one of the most difficult coding bootcamps to get into. It has a very low acceptance rate. However, it is still possible for anyone to get accepted. Start by going through the Bootcamp Prep course Holberton School offers. Next, get your resources together to complete your application.
Holberton School Acceptance Rate
Holberton School is well-known for offering small class sizes and a good student to instructor ratio. Unfortunately, Holberton is only able to keep class sizes so low by restricting admission to around three percent of applicants, making it one of the more difficult coding bootcamps to get into.
Holberton School Application Process
Though the acceptance rate is relatively low for Holberton School, the admissions process is very straightforward.
- The first step of Holberton School’s admissions process is to simply fill out the online application form. This form is described as being more of a “get to know you” questionnaire rather than an interview about your coding skills.
- Assuming your application is moved forward to the next round, you will next be asked to complete a couple of small, online projects and coding tests. These are simple projects designed to test your coding skills, and should only take around two hours to complete.
- If you pass the tests and do well on the projects, you will be contacted by an interviewer. They will then direct you to build a very basic website to further demonstrate your capabilities. Most students are given two weeks to complete this project.
- Finally, after you have completed all of the projects and tests, as well as the website, you will be contacted to schedule an interview. The interview is described as being a Q&A session, and can be conducted on-campus or remotely. You will finish the interview with a monitored and timed technical challenge.
Holberton School Interview Questions
During the interview portion of Holberton School’s admissions process, you will be asked to answer quite a few bootcamp interview questions. These questions are designed not only to test your technical capabilities and skills, but also to learn more about who you are and what your goals are. You may be asked about the following topics.
- Why you want to attend Holberton School.
- How you discovered your passion for coding.
- Your future career goals.
- Technical questions coinciding with the previous technical challenges.
How Can You Prepare for Holberton School?
Holberton makes no particular demands on beginners. All you need before showing up is a high school diploma and a desire to learn. But if you’re really feeling anxious, you can get a head start by learning the basics of C.
Is Holberton School Worth It?
Holberton School, though more difficult to get into, offers an alternative to traditional higher education. Rather than attending a college or university and spending years earning a bachelor’s degree, you can complete Holberton School’s program in just over a year.
Like many other bootcamps, this is a great option for those who want to pursue careers in tech, but don’t have the time, money, or desire to enroll in a college degree program. Not to mention the job opportunities upon graduating.
Holberton School Job Placement
Holberton School boasts a high job placement rate. Currently, 78 percent of Holberton School graduates have found employment within six months of graduating.
Not only does Holberton School offer a high-quality education that prepares you for real-world work, but the school also offers a few career coaching services. You can participate in mock interviews, peer collaborations, and technical writing tutoring, all of which are included with the cost of tuition.
Does Holberton School Offer a Job Guarantee?
Unfortunately, Holberton School does not offer a job guarantee. However, the school makes up for the lack of job guarantee by providing a top-notch curriculum and career coaching services, and most students find themselves prepared for the post-graduation job search.
Should You Apply to Holberton School?
Attending Holberton School is an amazing way to get your tech career started. With an acceptance rate of only three percent, you are guaranteed a small class size full of peers with the same amount of coding skills as you. Nearly 80 percent of graduates are employed within six months of graduating, so you would have no trouble finding a job.
Overall, Holberton School is a great option for those who are pursuing careers in software engineering, web development, AR/VR, or even blockchain and cryptocurrency.
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9 Reviews
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Anonymous
Intense study, on projects where you can become a programr super advanced in little time,
where you can learn all by itself is the motto
June 9, 2019
Anonymous
I started Holberton School in January 2019. Before that I had little experience in coding, I learned some Java, C++, and JavaScript by following tutorials on the Internet and asking some friends. At Holberton, I learned a lot in a short period of time and now I feel more confident in my coding skills. One good suggestion I can make about it is you should have some experience with coding or spend at least 2 months following some basic tutorials on the web because you will have some foundations to rely on.
July 7, 2019
Anonymous
I have learned a lot in such a short time.
July 9, 2019
Anonymous
Holberton School is not the easy way to learn to code but nowadays I think it is actually the best option. The most valuable there is that they are teaching you not just how to code but how to learn whatever you want. The hardest is not the curriculum or the projects you are working in, the hardest is actually yourself because you will have to face the failure every single day and the voice in your head telling you to give up is getting louder while you keep learning.
So, take the risk and the chance to challenge yourself with Holberton by your side!
July 18, 2019
Anonymous
Hi, I am currently a student who is about 7 months into the first year here.
I would highly recommend Holberton to anyone who wants a deeper dive into computer science. If you want to learn how to code, there are many options but where I think Holberton really shines is in the depth of the curriculum. Because you spend the first three months in C, you will be working very closely with the kernel and learning lower-level tasks such as memory management/assembly. You will be working in Linux machines from the very first day and be very proficient in Bash and Git. The final project for the first trimester involves using data structures such as linked lists to build a Unix shell from scratch.
In the second trimester, you learn Python and the Object-Oriented Programming. There is a heavier emphasis on algorithms and interview prep. We deep-dived into Big O/sorting algorithms and binary trees. I personally enjoyed this semester as we got to learn SQL and built an Airbnb clone from scratch.
Now I’m in the third trimester which is heavily focused on Dev Ops. The topics we are focusing on are server management with NGINX and Apache. We spend most of our time in SSH and learning about networking. We are also using Docker containers to debug and deploy applications.
Year two offers 4 specializations at the moment: Web Dev, Machine Learning, AR/VR and Blockchain.
If you are considering schools, I would recommend this program if you are looking for an education more akin to a Computer Science degree. If you are interested in the DevOps field, this is also a great option as it is one of the only schools that teaches this topic. If you are an independent person who is comfortable with asking questions and socializing, this is a good fit because you will be working with peers all day long. There is no instructor to keep you on your toes; that is up to you.
I would NOT recommend this program if you want to just learn web development or if you are on a time restraint. Because of the length of the program and the way it is structured, that topic is covered in Year 2 as the priority is on full-stack development in Foundations (Year 1).
At the end of the day, there is no lack of resources to learn how to code these days. It’s about how resourceful you can be. Yes, you can learn to code on your own, but personally speaking, I think you will learn much faster if you are surrounded by intelligent, motivated people every day. What I am happy to pay for is the community, mentors, and people with industry experience who can guide you on your journey. Holberton has given me that so far.
July 20, 2019
Anonymous
Great work, definitively you learn to learn, all from scratch.
It’s no necessary that you knows about tech, here you will learn independent of your previous core.
May 11, 2020
Anonymous
Holberton has been an amazing, intense, and difficult experience. I’m learning a ton, though often times I feel like I’m not absorbing as much information as possible. The curriculum moves at a break-neck speed. If you’re not prepared to dedicate most of your time and energy then you’ll fall behind. Additional outside study and research is absolutely necessary to this program.
This can be both a good and bad thing. The intensity of the program creates strong bonds within and across the cohorts. Students genuinely want to help and support each other. It’s also great that within less than a year, I will have completely enhanced my skillset. Really pleased with my decision.
July 8, 2020
Anonymous
Holberton School has been the most challenging and rewarding curriculums I’ve taken. The peer to peer learning style and the challenges we face together has helped make learning a fun and flourishing experience. The best learning experience is when we have mandataroy days called peer learning days. If you ever fall behind on a topic or material, you can definitely look forward to peer learning day because, it helps everyone review the material we just learned and it also helps reinforce a better understanding of how things work. Holberton will sometimes have special events, these events have also helped me build more connections and get more insight of what is expected from a software engineer. I have 3 months left until I finish my first year, It is scary but also exciting to see what we have in just one year! Some people tend to apply for jobs right after their fist year, I plan to take the second year and specialize in either machine learning or low level programming, which hopes to build a strong foundation
July 9, 2020
Anonymous
I will make this really simple. I attended the first-year curriculum with Holberton School which is 9 months long. Our 1st programming language is C for 1st semester then Python for 2nd semester. Surprisingly these two primary languages will be required for my job. Even though the curriculum prepares students for Full-stack software engineering, I am living proof that you can be hired as a System Software Engineer which requires much more hardware-level programming. I am grateful for the first semester which focused on Lower Level engineering, Data Structures, and Algorithms. One thing I did not mention to anyone until is that I had two days to prep for the interview onsite. I truly believe this curriculum is very good but to anyone interested, please have a base knowledge of operating systems and computers. With that said, I am super grateful to this program for changing my life. I specifically waited to write this review after getting the job offer and start working next Monday. Total almost 4 months of job searching.
September 20, 2020