University of Minnesota Boot Camps

The UMN Boot Camp UX/UI has been one of the most challenging, yet real-world learning experience I've ever have gone through. The staff and instructor are amazing; super supportive of each student's development and growth in the program. It is truly a fast-pace course, but you learn so much in such little time. I've enjoyed learning new software and learning along with my peers. Not only does the program bring new and challenging insights, the students in the group also brings a lot to the class too. I've truly enjoyed getting to know my classmates and learning from them. 

Overall I would say its a great program. I would highly recommend to those interested in the field of UX/UI. Its fast so it's important to have some knowledge of basic computer.

Started this course while between jobs during the pandemic and initially everything went well. However, after some extenuating circumstances forced me to miss some sessions (death in the family and a new job which conflicted with class times) it became a nightmare. I was initially optimistic as the student success manager provided all sorts of options for keeping me in the class and up to speed. It quickly became apparent that this was lip service. It took me a over a month and multiple emails and calls to the regional director of Trilogy (the company UofM contracts the course out to) to finally get a response. I'm once again waiting for a response to another query after nearly two weeks and several emails/calls. The inability to communicate with students who are investing $11k on this course is, candidly, disgraceful. Life is unpredictable and communication through unpredictable times is a must. The fact that the the student success department is unable or unwilling to effectively communicate to students, the majority of whom are likely working and dedicating what free-time they have left to this course, is contemptible. Furthermore, The University of Minnesota is tarnishing their name and reputation by partnering with an organization that holds their students in zero regard. 

In short: Future-forward look at who UofM partners with to offer these boot camp courses. If it is Trilogy, save yourself the time, money, and headache and stay away!

I really enjoyed my experience in the program. I did not have any coding experience before doing this and I received a lot of individual support and attention. I am really grateful for all of the help I got from my instructor and ta team. We had a rough start to class with only one ta, but we ended up working with a great group of people. I liked the group work and the program manager had a lot of helpful resources for me. The class is very hands on and I needed visual resources too. The class does not come with a book or reading materials which is the one real downside to me. I enjoyed the students I was with and had a great time, except for one group project. I ended up with a group member that was a lot of trouble. 

I enrolled in the University of Minnesota Cybersecurity BootCamp. This was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life. The training was rigorous but was worth it. It fast paced so you have to stay on top of things. I only wish the instructor did not show open favoritism towards specific students and indirectly make others feel unworthy. I am naturally a resilient person so that did not bother me at all but for the sake of others, I think this should not be. Overall great experience. I will not be rating a 5 for this reason

Taking the part-time full-stack programming class. WAY TOO FAST PACED. The activities are terrible because everyother one is supposed to be an example of how to do the next activity. Who ever put these together forgot how to explain how to do what it is your supposed to get done."Drives me flippn insane"  Apperently one is supposed to do a challenge while learning a new concept every week. If somthing doesn't make sense or you get stuck, you don't have time to practice or get the hang of it because they will move right along to next week and expect you to be able to code in a new language or use a new program and have the knowledge to speak about it technichaly. Learn JavaScript in a week!?????? wtf.  I have learned more from recourses outside of the bootcamp that have step-by-step instructions and explain what is happening with the code. Example: Edx, learnprogramming.online, codecademy. This bootcamp says if you have no prior knowledge of coding thats ok... IT'S NOT. This is set up for people that have experience in coding. Its funny that I tryed to find a bad review for this bootcamp and couldn't find one. Defenantly feels like people just want to get 10k from you. My class started with over 30 and has about 20. I have been under so much stress I literally got hives from this bootcamp. Very weird because even when I was active duty and deployed to Iraq I never got stressed out enough to get hives! The good things are: the recourses they have to help students with a career path, building a portfolio, tutors, and help with the interview process.  Other than that this has been an absolutly terrible experence for me and would strongly recomend people with no prior knowledge to look into other programs. 

I completed the Part-time Full Stack Web Development Boot Camp in April 2023. 
SUMMARY: I learned a lot about web development from this course, but I'd love to see the curriculum and practices improved. An emphasis on learning the concepts, and providing tools to put that information into practice, is sorely needed. The function of the course as I experienced it was much more in the way of, "scramble to turn something in, regardless of your grasp on the information. 
CERTIFICATE: What you earn is a pixelated image that is supposed to be sent to you digitally within the weeks following your completion of the course. Setting aside the fact that I believe the least the organization could do for students that have paid 13k and made it through 6 months of arduous instruction is to send a hard copy, I didn't even get mine. Apparently there was an error so I had to additionally reach out and make sure I even got a copy (which I did print and frame you better believe).
TIME MANAGEMENT: I Initially enrolled in the full time version of the course as it was advertised at around 18 hours/week plus homework time. I immediately realized that the pace of the class and workload would make it impossible for me to continue working 20-30 hours a week while enrolled. You have 7-10 days (?) at the start of the cohort to switch/drop/etc, so I used this window to transfer to the next part time course so I could keep my job. In talking with other grads, the consensus is that in order to have a solid grasp on every topic and tech addressed you'd have to put in 100 hours/week. Even in my part time cohort, several of the top students marveled that most of us had jobs, stating that they're having a "hard time staying on top of things" even dedicating the majority of their time to the course. The bare minimum I think you need to put in would be 3X class time. 
TUTORING: I also found that the successful students spent additional time (and money) on tutoring. To clarify some amount of tutoring was included with the course, but the time was limited, and the tutors left something to be desired. When I was struggling I asked every TA and the instructor about additional tutoring. I was told by another student that staff were not allowed to tutor us, so I asked them for a recommendation, and they did not have one. I spent some time googling and connected with a tutor that did help me at some stuck points quite a bit. In reference to assignment requirements vs level of instruction provided my tutor exclaimed, "Wow they are really just throwing you into the fire here."
CURRICULUM: The course is extremely fast-paced. Class goes like this--> 30-45 minutes of opening lecture on the topic(s) of the day (reading off informational slides), followed by activity time. This ~2 hour portion of class consisted of the instructor introducing a sub-topic and then sending us into breakout rooms with 3-5 other students to complete an exercise of listed requirements (finding a bug, writing function(s), or notating the existing code). This is problematic since the real "how" of the course is executed sans an instructional team member. Breakout rooms usually started with 5 minutes of silence followed by either a student going, "yep I got it," or all of you going, "nope I don't get it." Now the person who "got it" is not an educator, so they're often unable or unwilling to walk the rest of the students through their discovery. Perhaps more frequently no one "gets it" and the squad dives into an endless Stack Overflow chain, getting more confused by the second. Sometimes a brave soul calls a TA into the room to try and help out. Around this point "time's up!". The instructor then walks through the activity, and takes questions. The issue with this is that due to the number of activities, and the number of possible questions/stuck points, there's actually not any meaningful time to delve into questions/responses. Complete 2-4 more activities and mix in a 10 minute break, and that's a class. At the end of the week you get a challenge assignment (your graded homework for the week). The deadline for these was stressed (particularly at the start of the course), along with a policy of being able to re-submit each challenge one time within 48 hours after receiving a grade. This timing window became a huge point of stress for students. We were frequently cramming after classes (the deadlines were 11:59pm and due dates were always class days when class ended at 9:30pm). A late policy was never referenced, leading many of us to assume late work was simply a 0. It came out later (literally 6 or so weeks into the course) that work would actually be accepted up until the second to last week of the course without penalty. This proved extremely problematic as it contributed to the instructor never reviewing past assignments in depth (which would have been very helpful for those who fell behind), as they didn't want to essentially give away answers to those whose projects were not yet complete. Missing the instructional step of "here's how I would have done it" was extremely detrimental. Students never understood certain units/aspects, and just submitted something at the end of the course. 
ETHICS: Around 50% of my class completed the course (from 70-X in week2 to 30-X in week 23), and I don't think that's right. I understand not everyone in a class passes etc, but for a certification of continuing education that is marketed to lower income working adults, I expected better. The pace of the course, the lack of individual support, and the intentional concealing of information like the late policy, forced many students out. Whether out of malicious intent or ignorance, this is not acceptable. Another murky aspect of the course was plagiarism. Often referenced but ill-defined, plagiarism seemed ambiguous. How much example code from activities could we copy and paste in our challenges? The answer seemed to be "most" as it was often suggested we do just that, but was never specifically addressed. Tools like Github Co-Pilot were discouraged as learning aids, but not disallowed. Pair-programming using tools like Live Share was discouraged but allowed (given that collaborators were listed etc). These policies (or lack thereof) left me confused at best. 
ADVICE: If you're considering this course or one like it, do it, but do the following. 1. Take a shorter (free) Bootcamp before you enroll. This gives you a head start and sense of the subject matter along with some tools to take into battle when you do enroll. 2. Give yourself the absolute maximum amount of time to grind. If you can possibly lean on family/savings/etc to dedicate 100% of your time, do it. 3. Make the most of that initial 7-10 day transfer period when the course begins. Switch to a different speed (part/full), audible to a different Boot Camp, or roll the dice with a different instructor/team. 

This was has been a very fulfilling surprise for me. I chose to pursue a coding bootcamp as I was looking to change into a career where I would feel a constant need to keep improving. I started to explore coding as an option due to past hobby explorations of mine. I went with the popular named bootcamp programs you get once you do a google search (the top five or something) but the prices were outstanding (almost gave me a heart attack to be honest). As it turned out, all the avenues available to help with the cost were options that did not apply to me. In other words, I had to pay it out of pocket. COVID had just hit, so funds were taking a very drastic dive. Through all the nos I got, I stumbled into UofM and decided to make enquires and apply. I wasn't sure I could pay for it but it was more affordable than the others I had seen. After numerous talks and all the options presented to me, I was eligible for one of them and hence started my journey. 

It was the most nerve wrecking experience ever. I mean, where is my textbook please? Can't I just cram the method to solve a problem and pass it and get my A, pretty please? I was so scared of failing. I did fail so often it wasn't funny but I did it. From all those mistakes I made, I made more than once but I knew how to fix it and started to understand how to communicate better with computers. All this was due to the instructional team that consisted of a 1 class instructor and 4 TAs. I mean they put their heart into helping each and every one of us. You of course had to do the work to learn but any hurdle or obstacle that you came across was surmountable because they were available. 

There were many aspects that I greatly appreciated, one of which was the constant encouragement we got from our instructional team. They told it was hard and you might cry (I did) but it is doable. It is just really hard now but don't forget that you are not alone. I can't speak for anyone else but it made push through every difficult aspect especially when we got to JavaScript constructors, prototypes, classes and organizing structured tests (What??? you must not be speaking English, I swear). But now, OH MY GOD! I know what you are talking about. I can actually look through code and grasp what it is trying to do. Computers, I can read you now!! Databases... let's our CRUD on. 

All puns aside, I am so grateful to the classmates I met during the bootcamp and the patience of the instructional team because right now, I am learning new skills and technologies, how to do algorithms and applying for Junior Dev Jobs. This can't be my life! 

I would really recommend this program to anyone who has a pull towards programming. Don't walk into this just at the prospect of higher earning income (not that it isn't important) but the amount of work this requires both during and after the program, you need find some sense of innate enjoyment in it. If you have that, please reach out to UofMCodingBootcamp ;). You won't go wrong. 

Recent grad from the part time full stack program. My experience with course has been pretty good. Friendly staff, helpful TA's, decent instructor, although it was apparent that the instructor wasn't familiar with the material some of the time. Especially when it came to React.js. 

Most of the curriculum was written in es5, which made it pretty outdated. Things got tricky when they suddenly expected us to know es6 for react.js. Which was troubling, because for about 4 months they had us coding in es5.

They also fixate on some outdated material, which I don't think is useful in the real world. 

I also agree with some other reviews I saw on reddit, in which other students said that it seems a lot of the students there are just trying to hang in there and make it through the course, and not being able to keep up, or they have no idea what is going on. You'll realize this when projects come around. 

The program was cheaper than the other programs in the area. So it has that going for it.

Career counseling is pretty much none existence. When you'll first me your counselor, she'll come off as extremely enthusiastic, but when you have one on ones with her, you'll realize that she is extremely overworked and not very helpful. It took me over a month and a half to get a meeting with her. 

Again, this was my experience with the program, although many other students in my cohort agree with me and my opinion. Hopefully the program will learn from it's mistakes and better itself.