Northwestern Boot Camps

- The instructors are not from Northwestern University
The instructors did not seem to be familiar with the information they were attempting to teach us. I do not think these are qualified instructors.
Trilogy did not take the feedback provided by students... Read More regarding curriculum and poor teaching techniques. Instead they blamed the students for not being able to keep up with a fast pace program.
The Data Science bootcamp taught very little Data Science. I was informed by a Trilogy instructor that the course was originally intended to teach Data Visualization only but the bootcamp name was changed to "Data Science" to attract more students.
There are better bootcamps out there that are accredited and that actually give the skills you need to actually land a job in Data Science (Metis, General Assembly, for example)
The career advisors also had no real experience with the Data Science community or industry. The advice I received was very generic information you can find on the internet . I would have liked advice tailored specifically to Data Science but they were unable to provide that.

There are 2 teachers per cohort mine is the better of the 2. My teacher tries to explain concepts however the other teacher codes and talks to himself telling you to follow along and that he “has no time to take your questions” yes that was said in a... Read More class. Over this has been a disappointing experience to say the least. You are paying 11K to be told to google and also being shown a complicated concept maybe twice before being turned loose to fend for yourself. Educate yourself else where. remember it is run by Trilogy as this is in NO WAY a Northwestern caliber of education.

This is simply not even close to worth the money. The instructor code would be broken at least once per class and the entire class had to google how to get it working again. I would show up to class and sometimes the class curriculum wouldn't even be... Read More on the github yet, so you had absolutely no idea what the details of the class were going to be about. The only reason the class materials weren't on the github is because of pure laziness and oversight. The class is so regimented in terms of time that if someone asks a question then the explanation will put the class behind time and from there on it its just jam through as much stuff as possible in the time left. Not in depth about anything. If you showed up to class and the topics were written on the door and you went home and googled it -- you would accomplish the same outcome as someone that went to class if you "put in the time" .... a classic line. Bottom line the class does NOT need to be 6 months or 3 hours a night -- just take out the material, like Javascript, that takes an entire month and not one person was paying any attention. Honestly feel duped because the class could actually be good if the curriculum code was written by an actual data scientist but instead the class is all over the place and has no flow at all. Really hard to learn when you can't even ask questions because you will get off time and will have everything rammed down your throats from then on out. There are other bootcamps that are a lot shorter, cheaper and way more to the point. Northwestern say they have "talked to employers and we know what they want". Well, they might want to ask again just to make sure they heard it correctly.

Do not sign up for this bootcamp if you are assuming that the university name has anything to do with the quality of the material.
You will be highly disappointed if you set your expectations this way.
This is strictly a review of Trilogy Education Services,... Read More and their methods for building the camp with a ___ University name slapped on.

I'm not going to say that this bootcamp was not valuable - there were positive takeaways and learning experiences -- BUT -- those positives came solely from the bonds I made with my peers and small portions of the teaching staff.

TEACHERS
The instructor choices were a mixed bag. We had one teacher who was highly knowledgeable on the subjects, and struggled to point students in the right direction with the curriculum and pace supplied by Trilogy. The other instructor was a complete mess, with no pedagogical knowledge whatsoever, and barely grasped the materials of our program. The second instructor conducted themselves as if they had only just introduced the material, creating endless frustration and confusion on a weekly basis within my cohort. Red flags for miles.

ORGANIZATION METHODS
Trilogy's administration was incredibly disorganized throughout the entire process, frequently mixing me up with other students, unable to manage meetings and calendars, providing little technical insight throughout the career portion of their service, generally unable to keep track of their own system. You need to be a serious advocate for yourself, and hold each person on Trilogy's team accountable by tracking their follow-up, to make sure that you get what you need and deserve from the money and time you're investing.

ATTITUDES
Trilogy's attitude toward you and their work is entirely a "by your own bootstraps" mindset. They WILL play some psychological cards by saying your success is only on you (and for the educational determination portion of this experience, they're right, it is), but they WILL NOT be very helpful in managing the technological errors of their student portal, nor the pedadogical errors in their instructor decisions, nor the miscommunication errors of their internal staff.
You WILL be investing a lot of your own limited time helping to keep them organized, and you WILL constantly need to be verifying and re-confirming their conversations with you. It is possible to do well, with a lot of added frustrations.

THOUGHTS
The application process before the course began felt a lot like a fast-paced, high-pressure sale, and they were not able to answer simple questions about demographics and success rates. Their responses to these questions were naive and downright lies ("We don't like to view our students as numbers"). If you're truly determined to take this huge educational step with Trilogy, ask the tough questions before you commit. If any of their answers make you feel uneasy or unsure, know that there are many, many different coding bootcamps out there, and invest wisely elsewhere.

I found my Bootcamp experience to be highly undesirable. If you have technical knowledge of any sort in the realm of computer science/web development then this course is definitely not worth the money.

The program focuses only on front-end development... Read More and briefly touches back-end technologies but nothing close to providing enough information to work in a professional setting. You will learn the very basics of storing data, little to no python and just enough to connect your front/backend. There is no emphasize on best-practices that are necessary for industrial work. You are simply paying to be branded with Northwestern on your resume.

The program starts out by covering the very basics of HTML and some outdated methods of styling webpages such as "floats". The beginning of the course starts out very thorough explaining trivial concepts in depth but as the course progresses to complicated concepts, it becomes very "hand-wavy." There is a large emphasis on outdated technologies such as templating languages and engines. Things that are very popular for today's industry such as React/Vue/Angular are bushed over.

Teaching assistants are recent graduates of the program, who for the most part are not concerned about helping students but finding different jobs.

If you reach out to the program for additional information, be warned that they will spam call you once a day to attempt you to fork over your money.

The job assistance I found to be quite useless. It seemed to be a strong selling point for the program but if you've worked as a professional previously then the behavioral interview preparation portion will be useless. There are practice technical interviews which are useful. You can also go to meetups and get the same experience for free. Brand statements, elevator pitches, resume reviews were other subjects that were touched on but did not seem to cover anything beyond standard information you can find online.

If you are driven enough you can learn the entire curriculum plus some additional content from freeCodeCamp, without wasting a dime. Udemy is also a great place that I found had much more valuable content. If you need the structure of a classroom then a boot camp is a great viable option. There are some fantastic boot camps out there, but this is not one of them.

I completed the part time bootcamp back in October.

I just want to say - you get what you put in. If you aren't going to attend or do not try to complete homework. . . indeed you are not going to understand anything and you are going to waste your time... Read More and moneny. That's your fault though - honestly if i can complete this bootcamp so can you. It doesn't take a genius to learn this. It just takes dedication and commitment.

If you actually use the resources that they give you - like the four teaching assistants, multiple tutor(s) or success manager - you shouldn't have to drop out. But everyone has their own reason.

Also some major points on why i gave the # of stars for each rating.

Job Assistance
I completed the bootcamp 4 months ago and I still get messages from the success manager
my peers were helping each other find jobs for the first month or two after the bootcamp ended
Instructors
the Lead Instructors have 10+ years of experience as developers/software engineers
the two lead's taught us tools outside the curriculum - like how to make a webpack.config.js file from scratch and flexbot
the TA's were either QA's, Testers or Javascript Developers - that also attended a bootcamp elsewhere(like devbootcamp)

Curriculum
You can't complain about curriculum. . . It's pretty much the same everywhere you go. . .
It was cheaper attending here - especially with the early registration discount($500-$1000)
even though curriculum is the same everywhere - our lead instructors for the most part tried teaching us new material during office hours (half a hour before class)

Overall
You can not go wrong with this bootcamp.
Price is a lot cheaper then other places
Curriculum is the same as elsewhere
Instructors are very experienced
Job assistance is there to help - as long as you talk to them

I'm writing this review in hopes that someone who was in my shoes 12-months ago, may find it useful. So if you're considering attending a BootCamp, and weighing the options on price, curriculum, quality, etc... this review is for you.

My experience at... Read More the NU Boot Camp (operated by Trilogy), was very good.

Walking into the first class I didn't know anything about coding - so I was the true "target" candidate for a program like this. I researched dev BootCamps for about 3 years previously and was extremely pleased to find this one at NU. This became my top choice for two reasons: 1) due to the affiliation with Northwestern I was able to put NU on my resume (very few of the other bootcamps have a name brand affiliation like this, and it does standout to recruiters), and 2) it turned out to be one of the most affordable classroom bootcamps in the US (I paid <$10k, which at the time, was less than any of the other serious contenders).

My experience with the program content was extremely challenging. I can't over-state this. My mind was blown on multiple occasions. I cried for sure and came close to quitting several times. Coming from a non-technical background, it was much harder and required much more time and commitment than probably anything I've ever done (ok, to be fair, there were also a lot of amazing learning experiences that left me on a high!).

Also, I need to mention that there were definitely some issues with some teachers being overly technical, and struggling to explain concepts in simple language (which is why I'm giving 4-stars instead of 5-stars). But in the end, I am extremely pleased with the program and my results.

I now have a good working knowledge of how software is built, how it works front-to-back, and I can build my own simple apps from scratch. I can have in-depth technical conversations about topics I never even knew existed before. I can easily read HTML, CSS, (most) JavaScript, and also piece together and publishing my own MVC-style Node applications. I can also contribute on larger projects, as a junior team member. It feels AWESOME!! I absolutely love the feeling of building a new concept and seeing the finished product. So so satisfying.

Based on the other reviews, it's pretty clear that not everyone had the same experience. I'm not really sure why. But I caution anyone considering this program to expect to work very hard to get the results you want. It's just so much information, in a short period of time, it's like drowning.

I was lucky I didn't have a full-time job during this class. That allowed me to really focus on the material. If you plan to take this course AND work full-time, expect it to be a very difficult time.

If I could do it over again, I would choose this NU BootCamp. Hopefully this helps you move closer to your decision. Good luck where ever you end up!

This boot camp has been a truly horrendous experience. To begin with, Northwestern has absolutely nothing to do with this boot camp besides lending their name and classroom space. The entire program is run by a company called Trilogy Education Services.... Read More Our current classroom learning has been so underwhelming (please read other listed reviews) that Trilogy sent the regional vice president into our classroom for an audit. That should tell you right there how bad of an experience it has been and how poor our entire class is performing. Two days later, I received a phone call from the vice president, who informed me that they would be extending some class resources for our boot camp as well as personally offering me the opportunity to retake the boot camp at no additional charge. It was made clear that this last opportunity was not extended to the entire class. I find it highly suspicious and poor business practices to call individual students to work out private deals. It makes me wonder what may have been offered to other students.
For me, retaking the course is not an option. If the course is so fundamentally flawed that I need to be offered to take it all over again, then obviously Trilogy is readily admitting that the course does not meet their own boot camp standards. I do not see how going through the entire 3 month program again is expected to produce different results the second time around. So I will be leaving this boot camp with a certificate in name only and no real learning as promised.
So, if you wish to go to this boot camp, please be advised that it is Northwestern in name only, they have absolutely nothing to do with the curriculum nor career services. The current full-time class is “graduating” with such a low level of skill and ability that they have to offer additional resources including retaking the entire course. Finally, even when they realize they have a severe problem on their hands, their damage control business practices of calling students to work out personal side deals is in my opinion very poor way to do business.

Question everything about this program. I felt blindsided when I found out that this program is run by Trilogy not Northwestern. What this means is that the curriculum, instructor and career services are all Trilogy NOT Northwestern. I was expecting a... Read More Northwestern level education and instructional staff, I got something that was far from it. This program was a catastrophic failure for me. I'm writing this review because I think people need to know about my experience. I know other people who are taking a different bootcamp and are doing much better then me. I feel like I made an investment in the wrong bootcamp.