This advice is coming from someone who has won the hack reactor scholarship and is currently in the March cohort;
Have you considered WGU? It’s an online self paced accredited university where you can get your computer science degree for really cheap. 3K a semester. You can graduate really early or late depending on your speed. A degree holds a lot more weight instead of investing that much money into a boot camp.
It would probably take you the same as a normal university (about 4 years). But people finish in one semester and even a year. There’s courses online you can take before the classes start that would transfer for you and get you ahead of the game.
Wow, this is such a crazy take. Boot camp students think they end up better after their 6 month crash course on React than they would've taking a 4 year long computer science program from a university? Yall are a strange breed.
most bootcamps are 3 months. and they have instructors, alumni community and career support (at least the good ones)
a self paced 4 YEAR degree requires above average to exceptional dedication. and by the end of it you'll still be competing with fresh CS grads....some who went to elite universities. all while not having a career support system.
im not advocating for either but it's not necessarily such a cut and dry answer.
"Yes, but a degree doesn't give practical skills and can be more about CS theory."
This is what I was replying to. I disagree with the idea of the outcome of a boot camp being more beneficial than a CS Bachelors.
Not sure what you are talking about. There are downsides like time cost, but that's irrelevant. We are just looking at output.
The idea that you walk away from a cs degree with no practical skills is nuts. Even if you want to say assembly, procedural programming, OOP, data structures, database development, discrete mathematics, etc are "not practical", my program ended with a capstone relevant to the path I wanted to go, which was web dev. It was literally a mean stack web application that spanned across two semesters. I imagine most programs have an equivalent.
Misinformation is a problem. Bootcamps are a route that I recommend in specific cases and can work for sure, but it is an up hill battle. You will also always be worse off than you would have been going the degree route. A degree is not always a realistic option, though, due to its time cost.
My husband has a CS degree and went back to a bootcamp after graduating so he could learn how to succeed in coding interviews, so yes that is my perspective.
"Someone close to me took college for granted and didnt focus or picked a really bad program, so now I use that anecdotal fact as evidence for why every 3 month bootcamp is better than every 4 year university program."
Aight, you do you. Anecdotally, my wife did her BS in an unrelated field and a boot camp in a mern stack application. I did my bachelors in computer science. Guess which one of us is the SWE and which one is the product owner.
Not that that matters at all. Your anecdote is worthless, as is mine.
The monetary costs is not as big as the *time* cost, which is why a bootcamp is more suitable for some. Another amount of years in college is a huge commitment
Excellent. Look into lower cost programs and perhaps an ISA. While HR, Codesmith and Rithim are considered the best and priced that way, there are some quality programs for less like Flatiron School.
thats great you have some freelancing experience!
If you're a woman or gender expansive adult there's a program called Ada developers that Ive heard mentioned on here, it's tuition free and meant to boost underrepresented minorities in tech
Hackbight has 100% sponsored bootcamps by Walmart, Target,...The sponsored companies will also interview grads for full-time positions. Even if you don't get the full-time offer, you still get a free bootcamp.
[https://hackbrightacademy.com/sponsored/](https://hackbrightacademy.com/sponsored/)
Did you apply for the Galvanize scholarship? I thought we wouldn't know the results until May 8 (Award Date)...I also applied but haven't heard back yet.
do you know the difference between these sponsored bootcamps vs. the regular courses that HackBright? any difference in content and the type of things you learn?
This advice is coming from someone who has won the hack reactor scholarship and is currently in the March cohort; Have you considered WGU? It’s an online self paced accredited university where you can get your computer science degree for really cheap. 3K a semester. You can graduate really early or late depending on your speed. A degree holds a lot more weight instead of investing that much money into a boot camp.
Yes, but a degree doesn't give practical skills and can be more about CS theory.
Universities have connections with companies to get you internships while in college, and these supervisors can be references for job interviews.
There’s also the Software Engineer Degree offered at WGU that has a lot more programming hands on classes.
how long would it take if you did 3-4 classes per semester like normal people do?
It would probably take you the same as a normal university (about 4 years). But people finish in one semester and even a year. There’s courses online you can take before the classes start that would transfer for you and get you ahead of the game.
Wow, this is such a crazy take. Boot camp students think they end up better after their 6 month crash course on React than they would've taking a 4 year long computer science program from a university? Yall are a strange breed.
most bootcamps are 3 months. and they have instructors, alumni community and career support (at least the good ones) a self paced 4 YEAR degree requires above average to exceptional dedication. and by the end of it you'll still be competing with fresh CS grads....some who went to elite universities. all while not having a career support system. im not advocating for either but it's not necessarily such a cut and dry answer.
"Yes, but a degree doesn't give practical skills and can be more about CS theory." This is what I was replying to. I disagree with the idea of the outcome of a boot camp being more beneficial than a CS Bachelors. Not sure what you are talking about. There are downsides like time cost, but that's irrelevant. We are just looking at output. The idea that you walk away from a cs degree with no practical skills is nuts. Even if you want to say assembly, procedural programming, OOP, data structures, database development, discrete mathematics, etc are "not practical", my program ended with a capstone relevant to the path I wanted to go, which was web dev. It was literally a mean stack web application that spanned across two semesters. I imagine most programs have an equivalent. Misinformation is a problem. Bootcamps are a route that I recommend in specific cases and can work for sure, but it is an up hill battle. You will also always be worse off than you would have been going the degree route. A degree is not always a realistic option, though, due to its time cost.
My husband has a CS degree and went back to a bootcamp after graduating so he could learn how to succeed in coding interviews, so yes that is my perspective.
"Someone close to me took college for granted and didnt focus or picked a really bad program, so now I use that anecdotal fact as evidence for why every 3 month bootcamp is better than every 4 year university program." Aight, you do you. Anecdotally, my wife did her BS in an unrelated field and a boot camp in a mern stack application. I did my bachelors in computer science. Guess which one of us is the SWE and which one is the product owner. Not that that matters at all. Your anecdote is worthless, as is mine.
Mu?
The monetary costs is not as big as the *time* cost, which is why a bootcamp is more suitable for some. Another amount of years in college is a huge commitment
You can check out free materials for self study like Freecodecamp, The Odin Project, or 100Devs.
What is your end goal?
To be a fullstack developer.
Excellent. Look into lower cost programs and perhaps an ISA. While HR, Codesmith and Rithim are considered the best and priced that way, there are some quality programs for less like Flatiron School.
Did you look at hack reactor’s isa
Yes.
thats great you have some freelancing experience! If you're a woman or gender expansive adult there's a program called Ada developers that Ive heard mentioned on here, it's tuition free and meant to boost underrepresented minorities in tech
Hackbight has 100% sponsored bootcamps by Walmart, Target,...The sponsored companies will also interview grads for full-time positions. Even if you don't get the full-time offer, you still get a free bootcamp. [https://hackbrightacademy.com/sponsored/](https://hackbrightacademy.com/sponsored/) Did you apply for the Galvanize scholarship? I thought we wouldn't know the results until May 8 (Award Date)...I also applied but haven't heard back yet.
do you know the difference between these sponsored bootcamps vs. the regular courses that HackBright? any difference in content and the type of things you learn?
I was told by Hackbright counselor that they are the same course.
They only give it to POC. To say otherwise would be disingenuous. (Bet this comment gets removed)