it is extremely difficult to articulate how bad this bootcamp actually is. it is not for a lack of words or vocabulary, but it is difficult to get past the feelings of being cheated, scammed and otherwise disappointed. i originally wrote an extremely long review but i have now condensed it to a critique of the 3 promises i was given before joining:

1. instruction & guidance : the main thing i wanted/expected from this course was instruction in what is modern web development and its best practices. what i got was a clueless instructor who clearly does not know what modern web development is. the curriculum is developed (and the course is run) by a company named trilogy. it really has nothing to do with UT Austin but rather is sold on UT Austin’s reputation. do not be deceived. the instructor basically read powerpoint slides to us in class and made it excruciatingly clear that he did not prepare before class one bit. what made things worse is that the instructor fumbled through every single lecture and could not answer questions intelligently or accurately. it was frustrating and infuriating to say the least. i was hoping for someone to tell me more than what i could find on youtube or blogposts. what i got instead was a joke of an instructor reading slides… not teaching. want some examples of the poor instruction and guidance? gladly…
– 3 weeks in i asked the instructor why we use parentheses on some javascript methods and not others, such as ‘length.’ he said i can add them to length, as in lenght(), and it will work. i was immediately given an error as length() is not valid.
– i didn’t get any of my javascript homework graded until about half-way through the course. so much for feedback. and when it was graded, my feedback consisted of “you should comment your code.” but nothing in terms of actual javascript best practices, language proficiency, or content mastery. the last of my homework assignments that was graded (which was due oct. 29 2016) was graded on nov 26, 2016. there were 5 more assignments due after that, none of which were looked at by any instructor, TA, or employee of trilogy.
– a couple weeks before our final project was due (which was a MERN project – mongodb, expressjs, reactjs, and nodejs) all instruction was over. we had not been instructed, however, in how to actually write a full MERN app or deploy it. in class, we used Heroku for deploying and hosting our apps. so one of my team members asked a TA (the resident ReactJS expert) how to successfully deploy our app. the TA responded with “I don’t know. I don’t deploy to Heroku. If you get an error I would see what the problem is and just fix it.” starting to see the picture? feels like nobody cared once they had my money.
2. career assistance: wow. this was the exact opposite of everything i was sold on. the majority of visits we had were from recruitment companies. anyone can get with these people. just join linkedin. they’ll contact you like crazy. or fill out a form at any of their websites. it was an embarrassment that they had recruiters come to class. and it was insulting because, in essence, they (the recruiters) came to sell their services. i thought that was what i was paying for… for the course to actively help in career advice and search. what i was initially told was that they had a bunch of companies as partners who would come out to meet us and give us a chance to present ourselves to them. and that couldn’t be further from the truth. our career assistance ‘guru’ was anything but. i found out last month that my family and i have to relocate out of state, so i asked our career assistance ‘guru’ if she knew if any of the companies coming to our ‘demo day’ hire remote workers. her response was for me to search craigslist. craigslist… that was the response. i have a screenshot of the slack conversation to prove it, if you really want to see it. craigslist. i paid money for this? you shouldn’t.
3. curriculum: that was the only decent thing but it could use some updating. and it would be better if they hired actual web developers to teach it. otherwise, it’s as good as codeacademy.

DO NOT waste your time and money on this awful program. i feel cheated and robbed so please learn from my mistake. if you really are interested in joining a bootcamp, my suggestion would be to seek out ‘graduates’ and instructors and talk to/email them; ask if you could sit in on a class to evaluate the program; join http://freecodecamp.com/ and follow it to the letter. you’ll get as good, if not better, instruction than this terrible bootcamp.

please understand that i put a ridiculous amount of hours and a lot of hard work into the program. and i really did learn quite a bit. but i learned DESPITE this program. not because of it. they did let us know on the first day of class that we are expected to put in a lot of time outside of the program. so i was prepared to do just that. i just didn’t expect to or think i’d have to teach myself everything.

the only two things that kept this experience from being 100% suck:

1. i met a few great people with whom i hope to continue coding and collaborating.
2. one TA, Alex Girodano. if trilogy wises up, they will hire him to be an instructor and possibly make themselves look good. because right now, i will tell everyone to steer clear of trilogy and the coding bootcamp at UT Austin. a total rip-off.

January 13, 2019

Female, late 20s, UT at Austin Coding Bootcamp, 6-month part-time program.
Searched for jobs for three months. Over 180 applications filled (not counting those “one-click-apply” job offers on linkedIn…)
Found a 3- month internship (worked for free), and worked as a part-time TA for the UTCB before working full-time.
Received three official offers, and accepted a job exactly five weeks after graduating.

Pros:
Great instructional staff. Shoutout to Josh Madewell, Stephanie Denny, Jedd Fenner.
Super thorough curriculum with a dash of comp-sci builds a fantastic foundation to ground trainings you learn on the job later.
Got the great University of Texas at Austin name on your resume.
One-on-one time with staff in person, online-video, and via slack.
Weekly webinars gave one hour trainings on new technologies as well as interviewed devs, and previous students which boosted moral.

Cons:
UTCB isn’t totally run by UT, its run by Trilogy under UT’s consent of usage rights.
I experienced high changes in TA staff, and employment specialist staff.
Had to go out of my way and ask for career advice from TAs and teachers to receive support that the employment counselor could not give. Plus, instructors where the dev engineers so they actually had inside knowledge when the counselors weren’t really devs.

All-in-all:
Two thumbs up if you are a go-getting person that is really interested in learning or very motivated to change your career.
This program provides you with all the necessary on-the-job trainings, access to the latest technologies, a thorough curriculum, and great instructional staff. If you are the type that would put your tuition to use like i was (stay late after class, coming in early, making TAs and teachers to work with you one-on-one, and a networking-monster) then this program can become much more then just a certificate but become a life-long network of friends, mentors, and lead to new perspectives. The world is your oyster, and so is this program. If you can show up, shut up and code, then great. If not…then get your head straight first and come prepared to learn and network. Everyone I came into contact experienced hitting a wall, or having a melt-down (as did i…) but once you get over that, things start getting easier…so if you hang in there you WILL do phenomenal. Good luck to you and your career endeavors.

May 23, 2019

I was a graduate from the first cohort at the University of Texas and could not be more pleased with the experience. As my skills and experience level have expanded, I have developed an even deeper appreciation for this bootcamp.

What distinguishes this bootcamp from the crowd? Passion! Without a doubt. All the people involved with this program are passionate about the success of their students. From the men and women who write the curriculum, to the instructors and TA’s who are in the class every day, to the career director and student success manager…the list goes on. Every single person I came in contact with at the bootcamp seemed genuinely interested in my personal success, and that of my peers. The energy this created was palpable every single day and drove me to try harder and do my best.

Anything else? Yes. All bootcamps are focused on providing a “practical and applicable” skillset, but this curriculum insists that students understand what is happening on a fundamental level. The focus is on not just developing skills that are applicable today, but building a skillset that sets you up for success in two, five, ten years.

Is it easy? Ha! Come in expecting to work. This is a challenging program. The pace is fast. The workload is heavy. Expectations are high. But hey, if it was easy everyone would do it. If you are willing to work, there is a support system that will get you to the finish line!

Why did you choose this program? Two reasons. Number one, I’m a sucker for the University of Texas brand. In this day and age of Trump University and fly by night “job training programs” I wanted something that I knew was going to be there, and not some charleton that was going to cash my check and dissapear. I knew the University of Texas would demand nothing but the highest standards.

Number two, the part time aspect. I was not in a position to drop 10k+ on a bootcamp program, quit my job, wait three months and hope there was an income waiting for me at the end. This program provided me with the opportunity to keep my job while studying and job searching. Was that easy? No, but if it was easy everyone would do it.

July 28, 2019

this course had a great curriculum that could benefit new coders but also experienced ones. You cover a wide range of topics but the biggest benefit is graduating from the course with a strong understanding of the underlying concepts of web development. With strong base knowledge you are prepared to expand your skills is all aspects of web development. And lastly, the instructors are very personable and willing to help at all times.

July 28, 2019

I’m 2/3 of the way through Trilogy’s full stack web development bootcamp, meeting part-time over 24 weeks. While this is branded as UT, it is clear that it is only “UT” in terms of where it holds it’s classes, so that in itself is a bit misleading. Our class has had two weeks’ worth of classes cancelled without being rescheduled (to break it down in terms of cost, that is equal to about $700 of the $13,000 spent for this course), and we’ve had a total of FOUR different instructors. Our first instructor for the first 1/3 of the program very clearly had no desire to be an instructor or assist us in anyway. He left to get a better paying job where he does not have to teach, and it appears he was only teaching as a means to a paycheck. The curriculum for this course is also very out of date. Our newest teacher (teacher #4) told us that he didn’t know why we were still learning some of the technologies in the curriculum as it is outdated and not something you will really have to create from scratch.

The “Student Success Advisor” is a joke. He will “check in” with you but don’t expect to get support when a real issue arises. Due to the cancelled classes, our course schedule online has been very off, and constantly confuses students and teachers alike. He has been asked at least 5 times to fix it, and he has not. He has been asked for access to additional resources, and has promised to provide them, and after over a month, has still not fulfilled his promise.

I took out a substantial loan for this program, and due to the nature of this program (not counting as a degree seeking educational program) I did not qualify for student assistance or student loans, and therefore had to take out a personal loan for $8,000 with an interest rate of 11%. This experience has been very lack-luster for me, and many of my fellow classmates feel the same. I am extremely hesitant to ever recommend Trilogy Education Services for coding bootcamps, and more seriously question why the University of Texas would put their highly reputed name on a mediocre at best external education service program.

October 30, 2019

The first half of the course was front-end heavy (html, css, jQuery) and I felt like this section had great course materials that were thorough. However, the second half of the class was not as strong. Some of the course materials, especially for React, had broken links and examples with deprecated code. Code changes frequently but I was told that the course has a group that is responsible for keeping the material up-to-date. Despite having time allocated to these topics in curriculum, we didn’t have much time for React, React Native, or PHP. The instructor instead took a couple days to set up a wordpress site.

One of the reasons I chose the UT course over other local bootcamps was the fact that they advertised tech companies that they were affiliated with. They presented this as if we would get contacts from these companies but I reached out to one company who had no idea they were still being used in the bootcamp’s marketing. We didn’t have career support until the last few weeks of the course when a new career counselor was hired and even then we only received a couple leads for positions that could not be found on the basic job posting search engines. We had a resume workshop with information that seemed out-dated and wasn’t specific to resumes for tech positions. The TAs were great and were extremely helpful throughout the course and even after.

We received feedback on our first couple homework assignments but code reviews would have been extremely helpful for the later material. This course gave me a good foundation for front-end coding but I had to rely heavily on external sources for the rest of the material.

April 4, 2020

Here’s the TLDR, I would absolutely recommend attending this boot camp, with the caveat that you have to be realistic about time management. If you don’t have to work while you attend, or if you work but have minimal commitments to loved ones, then you can get tremendous value from this boot camp, more than many college degrees would yield. If, on the other hand, you have to work a full time job and have kids or a significant other competing for your attention, then you may not get as much value out of the course. Just be honest with yourself, but if you have the time, this course is a phenomenal investment.

Here’s the full review.

About Me: I had been teaching myself to code on and off for almost two years before starting the boot camp, and as soon as I heard of it, which was a day or two after it was launched, I applied and was accepted. The prior coding experience I had due to my self-study was tremendously helpful, so I would advise you to have as much self-study as possible before applying, but it is definitely not necessary to succeed, as several of the students that have already landed jobs did not have prior self study. Today was the last day of class and I’m glad to say that the future looks very bright.

Overall Experience: I felt privileged to attend the boot camp with the folks that I was lucky enough to have as my classmates. It seemed like everyone in the class, including the TA’s and the instructor, had an interesting story and was an overachiever in one way or another. We had a Fulbright Scholar, a CPA, and a national skee ball champ, just for starters. It was an eclectic bunch and I’m really thankful to have met these folks and gotten to work with them. I’m actually quite curious as to what they’ll be investing their energies into in 5 or 10 years.

Instructors: The instructor and the TA’s for the course were great, they all really knew their stuff. Also, they always arrived early to class and left late, so we had a ton of time to pick their brains on anything. They were always available for me to reach out to, not only on class content, but also on bigger-picture topics like career advice, and I really appreciated that. All my instructors actually worked full time jobs as web developers in addition to their roles in the boot camp, so they had their fingers on the pulse of the web development scene in Austin. They’re really good people…it’s hard to convey this, but it’s more than a job to them. For reference, I was in the Tuesday/Thursday class with Roger Le as the instructor and Jedd Fenner, Josh Madewell, and Allen Wes as the TA’s, but on Saturdays the classes joined together into one large class, and I was lucky to have Holly Springsteen and Rob Daly as TA’s then as well. For brevity’s sake, I’ll just say that if you get the chance to learn under any of these folks, rest assured that you’re in good hands.

Curriculum: The curriculum is focused on the MERN stack, for which there’s a strong market in Austin right now, but it’s very flexible to the market’s needs, and changes were made to the course’s curriculum as we were going through it. When you think about that, it’s really amazing, no college course I’ve ever been to has been responsive in real-time to the needs of the market, and that’s one of the things that sets this course apart from a college course. Through this course, in addition to learning web development, you’ll also become extremely confident in your ability to learn anything, which is an invaluable skill in today’s economy as it allows you to chart your own path.

Job Assistance: This boot camp does not come with a job guarantee. That said, several students landed well-paying jobs before we even graduated. Two girls landed what could be described as their respective dream jobs. For the most part, career services consists of help with polishing up your resume and cover letter, introductions here and there based on your interests and background, and requiring you to apply to a certain amount of jobs per week once the course finishes. We also have industry speakers come to class on Saturday mornings and share what it’s like to work at their companies. I started the application process about a week ago and I already had an interview, which I can directly attribute to my cover letter, resume, and my portfolio and the contents thereof, all of which have been substantially improved due to my having attended the boot camp and my having taken advantage of career services. I’ll say this, having completed the boot camp, as I read job descriptions I find myself reading requirements and thinking, “Hey, I can do that!” And if I can’t do that, I think, “Hey, I can learn that!” It’s pretty swell.

I hope this helped you make a more informed decision, and if you have the time to invest into yourself, don’t hesitate, enroll in the course!

September 26, 2020