Berkeley Boot Camps

I've been looking into coding bootcamps for a few years and when I lost my job for the second time in a year, I decided to attend a Full time bootcamp at the UC Berkeley Extension in San Francisco. In the past, I had jobs that required extensive knowledge of computer systems and I had done some testing in the past and wanted to know more about the background of programing. I signed up for the Full Stack Web Development course. I met amazing people and learned extremely practical and relevant languages. I ended the course with over 25 applications built that I can showcase in a portfolio to future employers. I had zero knowledge of the field before hand. I still feel I have a lot to learn in the field. But I'm excited to change career paths and take my skills to the next level. 

I decided to attend this bootcamp in order to learn practical skills that I could use to start a new career in web development and I got a whole lot more than just that!

Jerome Chenette teaches the full time web development course and he's one of the best teachers I've had. He really cares about each student and takes the time to talk to us and make sure we're keeping up with class and works with us to resolve any confusion or road blocks we might be having. He turned a daunting commitment to a career change to a career that I fully embrace and love doing every single day. If you can, I would highly recommend taking any course taught by him.

The course moves quickly through the material because there's a lot cover, but the TAs were incredibly helpful and often spend extra time just to make sure that students understand everything. There's also online tutoring through web chat included in the tuition and that helps a lot to expand on the topics covered in class and help you through difficult points in the homeworks.

The post graduation job search assistance is pretty good. I was given specific pointers regarding my resume and lots of resources in order to help ensure my job search success. My only wish is that they had more industry contacts that might come in and recruit promising graduates.

Overall I felt that this course was incredibly valuable and definitely worth the price for me. As with most of these boot camps, you'll get what you put into it so be prepared to live and breathe code for 3 months. You'll most likely come out of it with lasting friendships like I did!

Cost: I think I ended up paying around $10,500 for the FT 3 month program. I received a discount for paying upfront (-$1000) and another discount (-$500) for being UC Berkeley alum. I looked at schools that had payments start after getting a job (something like paying 20% of your paycheck for 18 months or whatever), but ultimately decided against it. I was advised not to do it because there would be a good chance that I'd get such a high paying job that the cost of paying afterwards would end up being more than paying upfront. If paying for school may be an issue, then it could be a better route.

Location: After months of research, this Berkeley Boot Camp ended up being the most affordable. I looked into HackReactor, General Assembly, App Academy, and Hackbright in addition to Berkeley's Boot Camp. Given that all of those places are in SF and that the Berkeley extension is in Berkeley, it was easy to decide which one was more convenient for me. There's also a Berkeley extension in SF but I live in East Bay so this one seemed best. It's located in Downtown Berkeley close to the Central Berkeley BART stop and numerous AC Transit bus stops. I would NOT recommend driving to school because street parking is nearly impossible in the area. Most of the streets have metered parking or 2-hour parking spots so you'd have to go pay the meter or move your car during lunch or risk a ticket. There's also a parking garage affiliated with the building, but it cost me $10 to park there 5ish hours. Since I live in Berkeley, I ended up bussing ($84.60 for a monthly unlimited AC Transit pass/$2.35 single ride ride/$5 Adult day pass) or using Uber/Lyft on lazy days ($4-6). There's plenty of bike parking on the street and I think there's bike parking in the garage too. There are plenty of good affordable food nearby and a Trader Joe's about a block away for last minute lunches. 

Campus building: For some reason there are elevators in the lobby that go up and down, but there's only one set of stairs (that I saw) that has doors locking behind you, which effectively make them one-way stairs to exit. At least 2/3 elevators were always working and there's never a hold-up. We had class on the second floor, and no stairs going up, so everyone takes the elevators. On the second floor, there are some phone booth type boxes for people to use for personal calls. There's a large lunchroom area with windows, tables and chairs, vending machines for snacks and drinks, a sink, a microwave, a fridge, and a questionable dishwasher. Most days I brought my own lunch just to save money/time, then wait in line to use the microwave. The clock used to be off by a few minutes so someone took it down and fixed it. One of my classmates brought a coffeemaker and people were really good about using it, keeping it clean, keeping fresh cream in the fridge, etc. It really came in clutch on those days I was dead inside or running late or forgot to make/buy coffee. The women's restroom is fairly clean most of the time and has 3 stalls. I rarely had to wait and everything was always fully stocked.  

Schedule:The classes are in-person, Monday-Friday from 10-2:30 with a lunch break. I did the full-time session so I had class 5x week for 12 weeks. The teacher and TAs are there from 9:15-3 so there's a solid 45 minutes before class and 30 minutes after class to get help with homework and ask questions.  We also get a slack channel so we can use that outside of class (and sometimes during) to ask each other questions. You generally have 2 homework assignments per week (due Mondays and Thursdays) and 3 major group projects. During the week before the projects are due, you don't really have homework and sometimes no lecture so you can just focus on the project at hand. 

Rigor: UNBELIEVABLY FAST. I came into this bootcamp with very little prior experience with coding (basically just HTML from myspace days) and I knew it was going to be tough, but it was REALLY TOUGH. I have always been a good student so I assumed I would pick it up with some effort. I think the first week was the only week I felt pretty good about my work. Every week thereafter was a struggle. In general, we would learn a concept, then do a small activity, then build on it immediately. The activities are limited on time too, and I rarely "finished" an activity within the time allotted and scrambled to pay attention to the solution even though I hadn't gotten that far. I kept a notebook of notes and tried to stay on top of it as best I could, but I never really felt like I had a handle on the material. Most days I felt like I understood 70% of the material and some days were more like 30%. It was difficult to consistently feel behind and keep going while feeling more behind. It was truly grueling. It seemed like most of my classmates totally understood it or at least, more than I did... although after talking to many of them, they were feeling the same about others in the class. Imposter syndrome is real. We were all struggling. We spent about a week on HTML/CSS, then probably 9 weeks or so of javascript/jquery/ajax/apis/node.js, one day on Ruby, one day on Python, and maybe two days on React. The sequence of lessons make sense but it's not nearly enough time to feel like you "get" anything. At the end, I wish we spent more time on React since it seems to be the latest hot skill but we got a cursory introduction. In addition to the 4-5 hours of school you have, you should expect to spend a LOT of time reviewing and practicing and rabbit-holing into topics that we skipped over in class. I think there's no amount of time as "too much" time studying the material, given how fast the course moves. For 12 weeks, I did nothing but schoolwork and nap. When they warn you to say bye to your social life temporarily, they're serious. I have some regrets about how I used my time because it could have been spent studying, but oh well. This course goes way too fast in general, so don't waste any time. Take care of yourself... but otherwise do nothing but code and maybe you'll feel afloat. Review DAILY.

Teacher: David Hallinan was my instructor. I can't say enough good things about him! As a teacher, he's approachable and extremely knowledgeable. He's able to explain the information clearly and make connections to reinforce ideas. The only downside is that he doesn't really have much time to repeat information or explore other questions, but that's not his fault. If we were able to work at a slower pace so we could have more time to practice, the course would be significantly longer. With the time frame he had, he did the best he could and crammed as much as possible into classtime. He's also friendly and funny, if you're the type of person who has to like your teacher to learn. For real though, you could not have a better instructor. David is absolutely fantastic. 

TAs: Our class had a rotating door of TAs. I heard that this was uncommon, but our TAs kept getting jobs and leaving! I think we had like 7 TAs over those 12 weeks. It was hectic I think, because we all needed help all the time. If possible, they should hire even more TAs so you could have 4 at all times so the instructor could focus on other tasks/higher level questions. 

Job Assistance: I ignored the career services stuff until close to week 9 or 10. I figured I didn't need to since it was optional, but I wish I had stayed on top of it the whole time. The program is a little confusing on the career stuff because it doesn't seem optional... but it is...? We never talked about it in class so it was up to the individual to do it. When I finally made an appointment with Kim Black and she gave me feedback on my resume, I realized I should have started the process much earlier. She also coached me on types of jobs to look for and gave me info about specific events in the bay area that lined up with my interests. If I had been in communication with her earlier, I probably would have known about other opportunities and events. I'm still job searching so I don't know what their success rate is on getting people hired. I've only been out of school for a week so I expect to be job searching for at least a few months. They told me to expect 2/20 applications to get a response, and then bombing like 50 interviews before landing a job. I was able to attend a hiring fair with a decent resume during the last week, so we'll see. I start applying around week 9 or 10 and generally spend at least an hour a day looking for jobs, applying, and writing cover letters.

Overall, I'm totally happy with my experience. It was HARD, but they really optimize their time. I wish I studied harder and the course moved slower, but that's probably my only issue with it. I made some great friends in the class too. There were about 30 people in the class and I saw many friendships develop. I was 1 out of 7 or 8 women, with probably 20 men. I was much more intimidated by the rumored industry sexism than I should have been. It wasn't that bad. The women were supportive of each other and it was nice to have that connection in such a male dominated space. I'm glad I did the bootcamp and I know I have a ways to go, but I did get the introduction to everything they said they'd cover. When I find a job, it'll be absolutely worth every penny.

The material is great. It's already listed on here that they teach: MySQL, MongoDB, HTML, Python, JavaScript, Django, jQuery, CSS, Express.js, React.js, SEO, Node.js, and Front end material. I can confidently say I'm strong in these subjects. However, for people who have never coded before, I want to remind you that you can't learn everything or memorize everything. For example, Javascript, a programming language, has at least a thousand or ten thousand different functions and syntax nuances. Like most programming languages, there are these frameworks that people make called libraries, which is essentially prebuilt code that you want to learn. The instructor and the teacher assistants will make sure that you and everyone else are comfortable with the idea that it is okay to not know something. The course is designed for you to know enough to start working at mid level. Like every job that has to do with coding, you will never stop learning. Luckily, the course subtly tells you where you can learn and grow.

It’s not an online course. Classes are held in the UC Berkeley Extension building. The area around the building has stores, restaurants of all kinds, and lots of transportation services. Behind the building, there’s a large paid parking area. Transportation is great too. There's a BART station only a few blocks away and bus stops everywhere. The building has a cafeteria, which a water dispenser, vending machines, a sink, good chairs and tables, a refrigerator, and a view. Bathrooms are clean. The toilets and the sinks in there are turned on by using sensors, so no one has to reach for the handle. The janitor cleans the restrooms three times a day. Classrooms seem really cheerful too because of the view, the rolling chairs, the amazing tables, and the amount of room you get. There’s a Lost and Found, booths for you to talk on your phone privately, and empty rooms for people to work. For the people that get lost in buildings, it’s impossible to get lost. Signs are everywhere and each room has a note beside it to tell what class it is.

The Trilogy team also ensures that you get full benefits each day. Each session is recorded. If you’re absent, watch the video to catch up and email the Student Success Manager a summary to excuse the absence. If you’re going to miss a lot of days, you can request absences with just a click. All the materials and videos will always be available to you, even after you graduate. The material are files online, allowing you to store them onto your computer and grab the materials anytime and anywhere you want to (no need to have a binder full of papers). Career services are lead by a team of extraordinary professionals. Requesting a personal tutor outside of class time is something I recommend. The tutors are based in other parts of the world. It may be night for you, but it could be day time for them. If you miss homework or don’t like the grade you got, you can still do the homework, then ask a teacher assistant to look at it again. For communication, Slack, a desktop and mobile app, will be used. Think of Slack as a workplace appropriate messaging app.

It has been speculated that the course is essentially four years of college condense into three months (or six if you’re doing part time). I feel that the course is more than that. It would take me a few years to get comfortable with getting a career in the tech industry but I had career services, like-minded classmates learning alongside me, and had an instructor and teacher assassistants going the extra mile. As Full Stack Developer, you can work remotely, communicating through webcam and microphone. That’s something I thought I would never get comfortable with but this course really helped me overcome that. The course simulates work experiences. Project week is one of the many times when you learn soft skills, such as performing stand ups with your team, planning with them, using whiteboards, handling pull requests, and resolving conflicts in your code on github. I am also a very young person and I have grown my confidence that I can get a career as a Full Stack Developer. Want an idea of how young I am? I just graduated high school a few months ago and I am now going through the application process of becoming a teacher assistant here.

The full-time full stack coding bootcamp at UC Berkeley Extension is a great way to make the switch to web development or software engineering, provided you know what you are getting into and are prepared to put in the work. 

First things first: the tuition is more on the affordable side. Easier to afford, but some creature comforts are lacking, AKA don't buy into the marketing materials you'll inevitably see on Facebook, your classroom will not be a computer lab and you will not have external monitors. The Slack org is not paid for, so save any messages that may be important or you may want to keep for future reference. That being said, the San Francisco campus building itself is quite nice, but there can be limited space to work in larger groups once class is over, as the bootcamp itself doesn't have it's own dedicated space. You only get the classroom during classtime like the other extension classes.

The curriculum is kept fairly up to date for individual concepts. For my cohort it was the MERN stack, and it certainly wasn't stale React either. Some concepts you will not get to spend enough time on, but it's a 3 month bootcamp, so that's pretty common. I would say the most detrimental example of this is at the end with React. In general, an extra half week of React would be awesome. More specifically, learning create-react-app is a great way to get up and running quickly with React apps, but almost never used in production. Actually learning webpack would have been far more relevant IMO. 

Above I took care to highlight the word individual. Real world production-level environments will not look like the MERN stack apps you learn and create in class. It's very hard, almost unheard of, to be exposed to that in a bootcamp. So don't be surprised after graduation, it's okay.

There are usually two homework assignments a week, and periodically career services assignments as well. Mix in 3 projects, and that's a lot of stuff to work on. If you're coming into this with zero experience and zero exposure to coding before the pre-bootcamp assignments, you NEED to be prepared to put in 40-50 hours of work, or you will be wasting your money, and letting down your cohort. The "admissions" process is a joke. Don't be fooled into thinking it won't be hard because the application part was cake. It's going to be hard, and you're going to struggle. That being said, there is a fair amount of hand-holding, so for students more comfortable with the material, it can be easy or tempting to not pay attention or look ahead. It can also start to feel like the pace of the class is too slow.

The instructor and TAs I had were great. Jerome does a great job of breaking the material down and does not shy away from coding examples on the spot. Time doesn't always allow for deeper dive conversations into the concepts during class, but if you can bring it up after-hours or in 1-on-1s, there's knowledge to be shared there. My only complaint is sometimes I wish they had clones. Even if I couldn't always get time in-person outside of class (more my fault than theirs), I could almost always find at least one of them on Slack at all odd hours of the night. They genuinely care about the students' well-being and success. If you're someone who likes to get extra instruction, be sure to book those 1-on-1 sessions. Online tutoring through other course alumni is also available.

Outside of the classroom, the organization in my opinion is fairly barebones and thinly staffed, with sometimes little support for the students, the TAs or even the instructor. I never even got the receipt I requested by email. I suspect this goes back to the more affordable tuition I mentioned earlier.

The career support is a mixed bag. Again, the organization here is thinly staffed. The career support directors are amazing. Both of the ones we had were very insightful, charismatic and genuinely driven to help us succeed. The people behind the scenes who review career services assignments were a different story. The feedback I received was shallow, unhelpful, and direct questions would be very vaguely answered. I'm pretty sure it's because each one has to review hundreds of these assignments.

I can't say anything about post-graduation career services support ( I didn't opt-in at that point). However because I completed the assignments to qualify for post-grad support, our career services director still checked in with me from time to time. which I thought was pretty cool.

TL;DR worth the money if you have reasonable expectations about what you're getting and how much effort you have to put in. You can't learn everythign in the classroom, so if you truly want to learn, there's so much more to check out on your own, too.

I recently (1.5 months ago) completed the 6-month variant of the UC Berkeley Bootcamp as one of the members of the very first cohort, and just this past week I excepted a job as a front-end engineer at a startup with a starting salary in the 90k range.

Before coming to this bootcamp I had been teaching myself to program for about a year, but slowly, and had also been able to essentially intern(largely for free) for a company slowly learning to write automated tests in Python. So my experience with code was past absolute beginner.

I knew I needed to find a way to elevate myself quickly to a professional developer's level, and I knew that the quickest way to do this was to focus on a Javascript - front end to full-stack engineering bootcamp.

After researching a number of them, I chose this one partly because it was among the least expensive by far, and also because of the name recognition (Berkeley). I was happy about the prospect of taking 6 months to learn everything I wanted as I knew I would need to work part-time and generally use the time to consume more information on my own.

This bootcamp took me and my cohort through a cirriculum that rivaled if not largely beat the cirriculum of more famous and expensive place like HR, App Acad and Dev BC. This according to notes(and code) compared with my friends who attended each. They cover everything about the front end from your first introduction to HTML/CSS to coding in Javascript all the way through to React powered full-stack applications.

The instructors Michael and David were both excellent. Personable, kind, and (most importantly) genuinely engaged with the idea of transferring as much of their knowledge of the science and art of programming professionally onto all the student. Michael had a traditional CS background and a number of years of work while David was a grad of HR with a couple of years of working experience, which made them each compelling for their individual experiences. They are both excellent programmers.

The same idea carries throughout the organization. Rosa the career director cares for the concerns and roadblocks individual students might face, and Sam of career services is constantly involved in building your public profiles and presentational person for career services. Although, ultimately, this part of the program is perhaps the weakest, as their networks are not the same as your bigger and far far more expensive BC's.

I also got a chance to meet Pavan, someone from the parent organization of the BC, a company called Trilogy that partners with Universities throughout the country to create these bootcamps for them. Pavan was also smart, kind, and commited to hearing about my experience as a student. They all wanted to see me thrive, and not just collect a check and pepper you with information only to leave you to "sink or swim" as the case in some other programs.

By the mid-point of the program we were already writing full-stack applications with our own server instances(Node.js), and using them to render templated views of custom sites which would both consume various API's and also access our own SQL or noSQL backend data services. Students would coluntarily explore topics like user authentication with Passport.js or WebSocket enabled multi-user live interfaces. I dove into a Google Maps Api for my first (one of three) major project and came away with a powerful new tool.

It was at this time that I started to peek at the work my friends had/were doing at the more popular BC variants out here in SF, only to discover that their body of work was tiny in comparison. Often not particularly broad. Nothing wrong with checking out the competition once in a while. Right?

Now, like any programming cohort there was a range of stories, many struggled HARD, and some essentially failed or gave up, but to those that did not, the experience has left them with a significant number of projects across the modern Javascript stack and an overall broad knowledge of how the heck a modern web app is built from the ground to the backend MongoDB non-relational databse. Sorry, bad programming humor.

Ultimately no Bootcamp can singularly gurantee you a great engineering education if you just sit there with your arms crossed waiting for the instructor to automatically funnel the information into your head, you have to do the work. And, not only that, but rise to the occasion to exploit the technology introduced more deeply.

Having that attitude may mean that you will be successful at most any Bootcamp, but this one will introduce you and set the stage for a deep variety of topics that you will want to expand on and explore to secure a mastery.

As a student I realize I may have been an exception with my incoming experience and devotion to extra learning on the side. I would constantly look to expand on the assigned hwrk and develop new and unexpected features not explicitly required in the assignment.
However a number of my peers who I now get to call good friends, had not touched code until starting this program, and through constant devotion to learning and playing with code they have all elevated their skills far beyond what I was able to achieve in my very first half-year of programming knowledge.

So if you are serious. Want to learn a lot about the modern web, and plan to build on what this school offers you to stand out from the busy bootcamp graduate field out here in the SF/Bay Area, then this school will help you prosper!

Best decision I have ever made! Can't wait to get started with my new job on Monday.

I signed up for this bootcamp just a month before it began. My background is in mortgage and real estate, but I had no tech background at all. The course pre work was the only exposure I had to coding. At the end of week 1, I wanted to quit. I was overwhelmed and completely lost! My instructor Jerome(who is awesome) sat me down and told me that if I commit to the course, he would be there to support me and not let me down. Rosa, the program coordinator also assured me that I will be fully supported if I stayed. Failure wasn't much of an option for me anyway, since I was a newly single mother of 3 (ages 5, 3 and 7 months), so I decided to stick it out.

If your goal is to just get through the program to get  the certificate in hopes of landing a job, you are wasting your money. They test your knowledge on the interviews. You have to make this a full time commitment and put in 40,50 hrs a week to get the most out of the program. It's a very intense 12 week program,but you are fully supported by the instructors, TA's and even tutors. I didn't realize that they offer the 2 tutoring sessions per week until week 4. Make sure you are assigned to a tutor asap and take full advantage of all of your resources. What you put in is what you will get out. 

The curriculum is strong and solid, but I wish we had spent more time on React and Python instead of Firebase and Handlebars. I am sure they will work this out for future cohorts.

Career Services just started for us, so I don't have a whole lot to say about that now.

So this can be a great course for someone but here's the caveats:

• You CANNOT work at all while in the full-time cohort.  Say goodbye to your family for 3 months, you MUST eat, breathe, sleep, dream coding to succeed in this bootcamp.  In fact, it does a disservice to the entire class and the student who is working (including part-time) to be in the full-time cohort.  You could work doing the part-time cohort, but not the full-time.  It just goes too fast and you won't have enough time to dedicate to practicing your craft.
• I come from a background in IT, albeit I've been out for a minute.  The applications are different nowadays because you're combining several languages and/or offshoots of a language with HTML and CSS.
• The only real flaw I saw with the course was 2 things that could be changed from the go-- (STAFF PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING:)

1. Make sure to let students try the pre-coursework BEFORE signing up for the class.  If you don't have time for the pre-coursework or you can't complete it because it's too hard, THIS CLASS IS NOT FOR YOU.  Don't waste your money.
2. Get rid of the Handlebars section and focus on REACT instead.  Never have seen any jobs requesting that skill, but REACT is in HUGE demand!  Plus having that extra week to focus on it would be great and better served for the class.

Instructor and TA's were good, but since we were the first full-time cohort for UCB Extension, there were obvious places it could improve.  Once a few changes are made, this can definitely be one of the premier coding bootcamps around.  The basics are all there for it and the instructors definitely have what it takes to make it into an elite program.

Don't overlook it, just ask a lot of questions and prepare yourself.  That being said, you would have to prepare yourself well for any coding bootcamp.  You're not going to come in and get something out of it by being half there.  You're cheating yourself and wasting money if you think you can just come and expect to get a certificate with half performance.

I am in a unique situation of having previous experience with another full-time bootcamp prior to graduating from this one. 

1) Finance: deposit (which is pretty standard for coding bootcamp) + monthly payment (many bootcamps require full payment upon enrolling unless you qualify for special assistance.  I would say the tuition cost is roughly mid-range compared to other bootcamps.  

2) Curriculum: fairly updated (I love ES6 and MERN).  

3) Pace of class & teaching approach:  This is the biggest difference between my previous bootcamp and this one, in my opinion.  Comparing the two, Berkeley bootcamp does more hand-holding to help people ease into the material, whereas my previous bootcamp takes more of a "sink or swim" approach (which has its own merits too).  At times I find Berkeley bootcamp similar to a college course instead of a military boot camp, which is to be expected since UC Berkeley Extension oversees/runs this bootcamp. As a result, both the pace and the atmosphere of the class is friendlier to most people, but it is also easier for students to "drop their guard" and top students may get impatient/bored as they wait for the rest of the class to catch up (but they can offer to help struggling students).  If you prefer really high intensity/immersion programs that form "band of brothers" then you may be better suited for another bootcamp.  

4) Instruction team: I thought the instruction team did a good job considering how wide the student range is.  Instructor and TAs are easily available/accessible, although I did have to correct one TA's understanding of Javascript's 'this' keyword.   

5) Job Assistance: the activities the career coach asks you to do are all highly valuable.  I personally find sessions with the career coach useful only when I specifically tell the coach what I would like to be work on.  One weakness of this bootcamp is that it's relatively new and as such does not have an extensive alumni network, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area.    

6) Logistics:  compare to my previous bootcamp, the Berkeley bootcamp is less organized but that also means the Berkeley bootcamp is more lenient on certain things while still trying new ways to improve the students' experience.