GW Boot Camps

 Six months ago, I felt hopeless in our technology-driven world. I did not even know what an IP address was. The command line was like a black beast for me and I could not interact with a computer outside of a very friendly graphical user interface. I decided to enroll in George Washington University Cybersecurity Bootcamp.


My journey in the Bootcamp has been one of the best learning experiences in my life. The multidisciplinary approach of the curriculum helped me earned my CompTIA Security+ certification. Today, as I am graduating from the Bootcamp, I have a clear understanding about the tactics, techniques, and procedures an attacker may use for initial access, execution, persistence, privilege escalation, defense evasion, credential access, discovery, lateral movement, collection, command and control, as they compromise a victim’s network infrastructure.


Knowledge of attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures coupled with an understanding of secure network design gives me an edge when it comes to defending a network against cyber-attacks. This Bootcamp has transformed me into a cybersecurity professional who not only can leverage tools such as Nmap, Nessus, Metasploit, and many others to assess the vulnerability posture of a network, but also write rules in ELK stack or Splunk to continuously monitor network traffic and stop emerging threats in real-time.


This transformation would have never been possible without the dedication of exceptional teachers, Rashed Rabie who patiently clarified the misunderstanding I had and used different teaching method to make the curriculum accessible for me, Ms. Niya Lester and Christian Tremp who, through their scaffolding techniques guided me to the solution of difficult problems, successfully building me self-esteem in the process, and our beloved administrator, Ms. Gemini Sanford, who has remained present throughout the Bootcamp to make sure we had had everything we needed to succeed.


 

The GW Coding bootcamp has been the most rewarding experince of my life as it relates to eduational institutions. I came from a non IT background and the course got me from nothing to a whole lot more with the ability to understand programming in HTML, JavaScript, CSS, React, Mongo , Express and Node. The instructors were amazing with a great supporting cast of teching assistants who were passionate about teaching and helping. More so the Administration staff was excellent and very supportive. They supported me through my time in the BootCamp and made a graduate of the GW Coding Bootcamp . 

I had very little programming experience prior to the GW boot camp and after the 6 month part-time program (which I would recommend over full-time) I feel that I now have a very solid foundation to build on. I signed up for the course because I wanted to make a career change from a different field and didn't really have any technical skills. I am now confident that what I learned in this program will be very helpful with landing a new job.

My instructor was very knowledgable and had an engaging teaching style, which made the 3 hour classes go by fast. The TAs were also very helpful and responsive whenever I ran into problems. Career services were a great resource for things like resume writing, interview prep, and one-on-one career coaching.

Some of the material was covered for a very short amount of time (like Java), but I appreciated the introductions, even though they were brief. Self study is a huge part of your success in this program, so if you are not able to commit 100% it is easy to fall behind. Be prepared to spend at least 10-15 hours a week outside of class. But if you stay committed throughout the program it is managable, even if you are working full-time.

Overall I'm very happy I decided to take the course, and would recommend it to anyone that's thinking seriously about making a career transition or adding to their technical skillset. 

Signed up for the GW coding bootcamp as part of my attempt to make a career transition and was successful in finding a job before the course was over. Course gave me insight into tech that I hadn't gotten familiar with yet and let me deep dive into programming. TAs in particular were very helpful when it came to job searching. Very happy with my choice to take this bootcamp

My biggest complaints: Some of the cirriculum choices, I'm not sure weeks were needed for things like Firebase or Handlebars and would have happily taken extra time with React (in particular) or something more prominent in the industry like a brief intro into AWS. I do believe they are getting rid of Firebase for AWS in the future, at least.

My biggest advice to anyone going in is that you need to be realistic about the amount of time that you can put into the bootcamp. If you think that you are just going to attend class and that'll be enough to get a job after, think again. They say put it in at least 20 hours outside of class, but the more the better. Do your own projects outside of class, go deeper than the course does into things like React. 

I thought the program was very valuable and useful.  We covered a lot of material during the course.  In some cases, I think it would have been more valuable to slow down and make sure the core concepts were understood before moving onto other areas.  But for the most part, the course was well run.  Here are some special notes to consider before taking the class:

- Take at least one course in Python on udemy.com before beginning this course.  it will make the learning more valuable. 

- You need to commit time to homework every week, probably no less than 8 hours.  The homeworks are like projects and require a lot of work. 

- It would be best to get a tutor to help you if you fall behind.  I ended up needing one because I feel too far behind.  If I got one early on, I probably wouldn't have got so far behind.

GW Boot Camp offers the MERN-stack (MongoDB, Express, React, Node.js), and related techonologies toward them, unlike other places where the curriculumn is like a jumbalaya of different technologies. I understand that DMV area has a lot enterprise businesses that may use Angular, but as time goes on, React is becoming more and more popular, so that was my main focus point for choosing GW Boot Camp (At the time of writing this review, Microsoft enabled React Native on all of their platforms, including Windows, Xbox, etc..) 

 

The instructor seem very knowledgable, and the TA's were very encouraging, given they finished their cohort prior to ours. The Student Success Manager (SSM) is also very kind, and very helpful, her goal was to make sure we passed the course and we were treated fairly.  

Regarding career services, they are available to help you, and I personally got the help to write a resume and a cover letter. My counselor personally helped my by making sure I was actively looking, which YOU HAVE TO DO. 

 

Overall, I do recommend GW Coding Boot camp. It was a life changing course because you know that if you want to be a developer, you are willing to be a forever-learner. And that's what the Boot Camp taught me. How to learn, and how to effienciently apply what I learned. 

I'm taking the data analytics & visualization bootcamp at GW. I'm hoping to get into the a career in journalism dataviz. I'm learning exactly what I need to in this program, and building a portfolio as I go. It can be difficult to stay engaged in work in the evening after a full day's work at a desk, but my instructor makes the class very engaging and since we're working as we learn instead of just listening to a lecture, it is not hard to follow along. Plus, it's only 6 months long so it's a great option if you're hoping to quickly learn and put in the effort to change career paths or expand your knowledge in data analytics.

The GW full stack program has awesome instructors and teaching assistants. They really cared about our progress and learning in the program, and would go out of their way to make sure that we had the level of support we needed. The best part of the program, different from other bootcamps that I found during my research, was that we got to design our own apps for each of the four projects. This allowed me to delve into some GIS technologies that I was interested in but that we didn't cover in classroom instruction. After the bootcamp, I was able to get a job creating GIS and mapping apps because of those projects I had built! If you're willing to do the work and want to change your life, don't hesitate.