Berkeley Boot Camps

I had an amazing experience at the Full Stack Web Development Bootcamp at UCB Extension in San Francisco. 

My instructor was amazing and really helped me gain greater depth in my understanding of Front-End and Back-End technologies, and guided me through my projects and making sure I was writing quality code.

I do have to mention that everyone in my cohort joined the Bootcamp for different reasons - some to get a new job, some just curious, and some entrepreneurs who wanted to communicate with their developers more effectively.

In my experience, the students who spent a good amount of time familiarizing themselves with concepts like HTML, CSS and Javascript before the beginning the starting day were able to ask more difficult questions and attain more of a mastery over the concepts with their instructors guiding them. 

In addition, my career coach (Sam Dias) was amazing at making sure I didn't lose steam on the job search and give-up. My bi-weekly coaching calls held me accountable to someone, and with her guidance, I was able to learn more about the job search in the tech industry.

I would like to mention though, that to me, coaching me in the skill of job-hunting/interviewing was way more of an asset than just 'getting you that first job' (although UCB Extension played a huge role in that as well!). 

I can now confidently say that in addition to picking up technologies quickly, I can also apply for a job and go through the hiring process with a sense of understanding of what happens behind the scenes and how to best optimize that process.

Once again, this program would definitely benefit someone who has made their mind up to become a developer.

I started attending UC Berkeley Data Analytics program on June 2017 and I am in a first cohort of students for this course.  I took this class because I was looking for a part-time course that cover web development, programming and data analytics since I work full-time.  This course is Data Analytics course so the class focus mostly on technologies and skills on how to get and store data, how to analyze data, and how to visualize data but you also get learn introduction to other technologies too as well as currently hot technologies such as machine learning and big data.  This is the first class being offered so I was cautious in the beginning but it surprised me in a good way.  The class is very organized and structured in a way that you learn technologies in logical order.  I think all the skills I learned are very useful because I’ve seen those in majority of job descriptions when I was googling for jobs online and the mini-projects(homework) that I have to do are also fun and interesting to do because you get to practice what you learn in class and also you get to apply those skills in your own project too.  

In term of instructors and TAs, they are all very knowledgeable about what they are teaching.  I have to say my Instructor Pavan Katepalli, I have never seen an instructor who is passionate about programming, data analytics and very knowledgeable as well as great at teaching. He really wants to see his students succeed so you can ask question or schedule 1:1 with him anytime on anything.  And also, I think all the TA are amazing too because they give really good feedback (they are the one who grade your homework). And you can schedule 1:1 meeting with TAs and tutor or instructor which I think is great if you don’t understand stuffs in class or want to go over more on the materials.
Another best thing about the class is that it is always updating based on you feedback and they apply your feedback fairly quickly too so anything that you think which might enhance your learning they quickly get incorporated into the course.

In Career assistance side, they offer zoom session where you can call in to ask any questions and get answer right away as well as you can do 1:1 with career coach to go over any concern and get advices.  Also, they have special classes on interview practice and strategies so I think those are really helpful.  And there are career homework which are designed to make you organized and ready for job search, which I think is really good because they give you feedback on how your good resume is or what you needed in linkedin profile to be better and etc... Another thing I like is that they have people who work in the industry come to our class or remotely present share their experience with us, teach us new skills and get to network with them and ask questions.

Overall, for me I am happy with this course because with no background and having no idea where to start on learning about data analytics, I learned a lot from this course both on technologies as well as the analytics field.  And also, this is fast paced class so it covers a lot of materials but the class offer a lot of resources so if you are motivated you can learn a lot.  Also, it is a lot of fun working with classmates to learn these materials since I learn a lot through my classmates too.  I think this class covered a lot of materials and you can be successful if you can review and practice what they teach in the class and also it gives a lot of extra resources to learn on your own too.  This class gave me a really good foundation on programming and data analytics so I feel that if there are new skills that needed to learn, I feel that I can learn on my own in the future too.  I can’t wait to graduate in a month to continue practicing my new skills and start applying those skills in the data analytics field. 
 

I'm about a month away from graduating the 6-month variant of the Berkeley Bootcamp, and while I can't speak to landing a career out of the program just yet (fingers crossed), I can speak to the program itself.

Overall, the structure of the 6-month program was a homework a week throughout the entire course and three group projects. The group projects were larger in scale and had two weeks devoted to them, with the first few being with "randomized" groups (or well, groups drafted by the professors to adequately match different skill levels).

As far as the skills we've learned, it does feel like a tremendous amount I am leaving the program with. I went in with a very limited grasp of web development thanks to sites like CodeAcademy and Lynda, but have been quickly (or what feels quickly) been learning more and more complex things. By the time you learn jQuery, there is little stopping your front-end from really shining.

Backend wise, the build up was a bit slower but still quite empowering. You start with node, scrapping the front end for a while and just dealing with backend computing, then servers, then databases, handlebars, scraping, etc.

By the time the second group project came about, the ambition each group displayed and final product was leaps and bounds ahead of the first project, let alone our first homework assignment.

Our instructor was/is excellent, very clear in teaching the material, but also ensuring everyone gets it. Nobody is really safe to just sit back and not participate. 

Which leads up to overall point I think is important to stress -- you only get out of this what you put into it. I know it's a bit of a cliche, but it is important to note. Those classmates that did not participate struggled in later months. By the group project, working with some of those people was not always the best either. It's just the nature of the beast. But as far as your individual success with the program, you just have to understand that it really, really requires you to be involved 100% from the get go. Any slowing down and you'll have a hard time getting back.

We'll see how landing a career goes in the next few months, but as far as the learning component of this program goes I have been incredibly pleased. I'd recommend it to anyone considering transitioning to a web development career or just improving their skillset.

I decided to make a career change from architecture (construction) to full stack development, because technology intrigues and motivates me. The only coding experience I had coming into the bootcamp was from sites like codecademy, udemy, udacity, and edx. I taught myself some programming languages, but nothing in comparison to what I learned in this bootcamp.

If you're approaching this bootcamp just to get a certificate, you won't make it. You need better motivation than that if you're going to get through the points of frustration you will experience during this course. Take this course seriously to give yourself the best chance out there.

Some concepts may come easy, while other concepts may cause you issues. In the cases you need help, please feel free to reach out to your instructors, tutors, classmates, and any friends that you think could help you. But only reach out after you've tried looking for the solution yourself, and have come across a road block. Expect to put in 40+ hours outside of the classes for homework, research, review, and whatever else you need to do to stay on top of it. If you find yourself ahead in class, keep going. If you find yourself behind, catch up however you need to.

The support from the instructional team and career services is always there. The instructional team has gone above and beyond to make sure we understood the material, but you can only do so much in such a short amount of time. It's up to you to read extra documentation, google a bit more about concepts, and whatever it is you need to do to stay up to date with the material.

I hope you guys find this review helpful. I was trying to right a review that I wish I had when I researched which bootcamp to attend. Good luck!

I took the Full Stack Web Development Bootcamp at UC Berkeley Extension provided by Trilogy from May to November 2018. It was the online, partime program. Going into an online program, I expected mainly instructional material in form of texts without much social interaction. But the class was held in zoom with the option of small group work and was actually very social. Up front they told us that it was going to be fast pace and that one would need to put in a significant amount of extra study time to keep up. So it was! I was working only part-time at the time, but am very glad that I took the part-time program which gave me the extra study time I needed. The bootcamp does not really cover object oriented programming principals or network communication concepts and protocols, but it provides lots of practical knowledge, tips and tricks, lots of programming experience and creative room in assignments. I had taken several CS classes previously at a Community College, but felt challenged from day 1. I gained a level from which I can build my own applications now and enjoy doing so very much. Web Development is definetely the field that I want to work in and I am about to start hunting for jobs. Some of the career service workshops are helpful, but I find the greatest resources are the 1-on-1 sessions with my coach, and the feedback from the "milestones" coursework, where you write your resume, and set up your online appearance. The bootcamp is expensive, but overall it was a valuable learning experience for me.

• The administratin is very disorganized. We are being cut off one or two lecture days short because they messed up the schedule.  They failed to update the curriculum to match the holiday schedule.  
• We missed some materials.  Some materials were totally useless.  The materials weren't updated per the latest standard. The instructor had to rewrite parts of the code very often. 
• Career service was a joke.  Took lecture time to talk about career service while knowing some students are not looking for career service. Wasted their time often. Office hours in the middle of business hours. Can't attend while we were at work. 
• Only one instructor was good but whenever other instructors taught, the good instructor had to review the material again. 
• A lot of the students were very behind. Tutoring service was very hard to schedule during the time students attend.
• The web app interface looked like it was made 5yrs ago and it was not working when the class started.  Scary, coming from a code camp. 
• They didn't pay for Slack so we lost old important messages from instructors.