Thinkful

I choose Thinkful because of several reasons. One reason was that I was looking to learn to React as the framework in their curriculum and this program was one of them. And then learning about Node, Express, and Postgresql was amazing. I also liked to... Read More structure of how the curriculum is designed. It is expected that you know the fundamentals of JavaScript, HTML/CSS before you start and if you don't, they have prep for that. Once you get a hang of the fundamentals, the real learning begins then. That was the curriculum I wanted.
The second reason was the schedule. Since I still had to work and with my commitments to my family, I knew I had to sign up for a part-time program (they call it flex there). It was more self-paced than part-time. There are no live videos, and you do not belong to a set cohort (they had registration starting every Wednesday) but other than that you get to have everything the full-time students had (if you can though, I suggest the full-time program called immersion there). I liked the self-pace because I could spend as much time as I want on a new subject, learn the ins and outs, and practice as much while I can practice and glance at the topics I already know. Don't get me wrong, there are checkpoints in almost every step, and more than enough assignments are graded. So you have to pass them to move forward. Your progress is closely being monitored.
Now comes the last part (or rather the first I listed in the title), the support. I started with the 15-day trial they had and even in that trial, they assigned me a mentor on the second day and we were expected to meet once a week (this becomes twice a week once you are done with the trial and register). Honestly, I am very grateful for the mentor I had, he was somebody who had 20 years of experience in the field (their mentors are engineers that work at other companies who chooses to be a mentor, and they are located anywhere in the world). I got a mentor before even I started to pay, can you imagine. I felt that they value support more than anything else. Then you have technical help, you use a chat tool to ask your questions (within the work hours but it was like 7 am to 10 pm), and almost always somebody answers. (I said that because I had answers to all of my questions but I heard people sometimes not getting answers). Then they have office hours ("had" I should say because near my graduation they removed it) where you could just join a video call and ask your question about the pre-determined subject and the lead will help you find a solution. They also had workshops and student presentations you could join anytime and just listen and learn a few things. Their AMA sessions were my favorite. (Again, they decided to re-design that concept near my graduation so it may not be there anymore). Another support and was really my go-to one was the Slack group. All the instructors, coaches, mentors, students, and alumni are on their Slack group and you could just ask a question and there is always somebody answers it, more often than not, it was other students which was great for peer learning but alumni jumped in and helped from time to time. On slack, you could also learn about personal experiences from alumni and how their professional life is after the program. Lastly, you have one assigned Academic Success Manager and they are your last resort if you couldn't find the support you needed and my ASM was awesome, she got what I needed sometimes faster than expected. You also check in with your ASM every month or bimonthly to go over your progress and graduation schedule and if you have any concerns.
So for those reasons, I am so grateful that I chose Thinkful and I am so happy to know that I graduated. Onto the job search now

Pros - payment flexibility and stipend.
Cons - pretty much everything else. Not much assistance is available, the course is poorly laid out, and if you want to actually succeed you’ll need to learn elsewhere. The cohorts are now 50+ people due to an influx... Read More of applications, so pairs are no longer a thing. Daily Q&A sessions have been cancelled and Office Hours have been cut. Everyone in my cohort has reported using other online coding systems to supplement the Thinkful curriculum—not only is that unaffordable for a lot of people, that’s not reasonable considering the extensive time and financial commitment required of this program.

I wouldn’t recommend this program to anyone; you’re likely better off taking a variety of the free courses available to people online.

Feels like a demanding job rather than a helpful school. Presentations could be more mentor based. Feedback from graders varies. Not comfortable. Started off alright but then went downhill near the beginning of the course. We'll see how it goes by end... Read More of next year.

This program is seriously lacking in clarity and organization. There are no specific rubrics or syllabus. The mentors, academic success managers, and instructors all have access to different information and have a hard time conveying the assignments.... Read More Even after reaching out formally to request an updated calendar that is correct for assignments I haven't heard anything in over two weeks. This program is also not BBB accredited and has had multiple complaints filed against them. The link to that is below:
https://www.bbb.org/us/ny/brooklyn/profile/continuing-education/thinkful-inc-0121-172100

I finished the Thinkful Data Analyst course in January, but I did not get a job and have been denied a refund by my career coach. The course did not help me to get responses from data jobs. I applied for more than 500 data jobs, exceeding the 10 jobs... Read More per week requirement. My Thinkful career coach only shared two data jobs with me, one of which was already closed. Lastly, it was never communicated with me until now that I was not in compliance with the requirements to get a refund. its all the lies....
during course, one-on-one mentor is only once a week. On the last two months of my course, my mentor just never show-up and never reply my email at all. Please do not apply this bootcamp.

I have recently graduated from Thinkful data science program and got positive reviews from all their Mock Interviews. I have followed everything they required, but was not able to land a job. They did not refund the tuition as they promised. Do not trust... Read More and chose this program. For anyone who want more information, I can show you everything that I have done with Thinkful.

Today, I graduated from Thinkful Digital Marketing Immersion Course. It was a challenging 2 months, brushing up my skills and building up my portfolio.

Joining a bootcamp was one the best investments I ever made. The education they give you is practical... Read More to today’s world, and it is the latest marketing insights and trends you can find!

Prior to the program, I had work experience with Excel and a little bit of experience studying SQL and Python. I really wanted to move my career in a more technical direction, but didn't know how to start. I had a little bit of exposure to Data Analytics,... Read More but not enough technical skillset to get the job. As much as I was eager to learn, for a technical job, you always need the experience to get the job and you also need a job to get experience, so I decided to sign up for this program!

I found it through a Google search and what drew me in the most was their tuition guarantee for a job. I am so glad that I found and finished this program. I was able to get hands-on experience in Excel, SQL, Tableau and Python and feel more confident with my data analysis and presentation skills. The program is very well-structured with an organized curriciulum. My Academic Success Manager was always quick to reply back to all my questions about the course. My current mentor is also very encouraging and offers amazing insights on real world application. I loved the Slack community, especially the technical coaches - they were so nice and always made sure my questions were thoroughly answered. While anything nowadays can be learned online, I feel like doing a bootcamp is better because of the certification and doing projects that are relevant that has been reviewed by someone who can give feedback is so important. I'll be moving on to the career phase of this program and I'm impressed so far about the resources they provide!

So bear with me for a few minutes as I go through this. Thinkful is a glorified loan company that offers a sub-par program as a guise for their ridiculously high-interest loans. I was interested in the engineering immersion class, with the ISA and stipend.... Read More I'm 44. Single. My job bit the dust with the plague, and I've had zero phone calls in over 3 months for new jobs, in any field. I cooked for most of life, and for the last year I've done wedding decor and coordination.

I have 8 years experience in LPC, which is a dead language now and a sub-branch of C. I had never even looked at HTML, CSS, or JS before I started the prep course. I went through the entire prep course in 4 days and knocked it out of the park. Their timeline is a little over 3 weeks. I was done and approved before I ever spoke to my mentor for the first time. My first call from admissions was rescheduled by email 5 minutes after the call was supposed to come through. When I did finally receive the call a week later, I could tell immediately I was talking to a salesman, not an admissions officer. He did little more than send me what he called as an application, but it was simply a a permission form for a credit check. Nothing more.

It's notable to mention that up to this point, after having finished the prep course so easily and so quickly, both my mentor and this saleman were very eager to extol all the wonderful things about Thinkful and kept alluding to the prep course being some sort of os scholastic-type test for potential students, and also to make sure all students started with the same basic knowledge. This was utter horse crap all around, but I'll get into the curriculum itself momentarily. After having hyped me up about how great they are and making me think my performance on the prep course actually mattered, they denied me the ISA and stipend both within 24 hours.

Your eligibility is based solely on that credit score and current employment. Nothing else. NOTHING. Leaving me wondering why the hell I was given any work to do at all before they ran my credit score. I busted my butt and excelled in every way, even with the poor materials they provide. In reality, the ISA is nothing more than a $16,000 loan, and the stipend is just adding $7,500 to that loan, bringing the total loan up to $23,500. If you couldn't go out to a bank and get a loan for this amount, you won't qualify for the ISA or the stipend. The payback price is $40,000 at 25% of your gross income for 4 years or until paid. That's close to double, and any bank could do better.

I received a call from my salesman again within 15 minutes of being denied, urging me to apply for the 6 month course instead of the 5 month with stipend, which still costs 16k and takes even longer, and I would still have not been eligible for. Jobless, almost no credit history, no debt to speak of. I don't even own one single credit card. I've always lived with what I have and never borrowed. When I tried to just tell this guy to forget it, he started in with the sales pitch again, and when I didn't bite he actually accused me of trying to just scam the school out of the $7500 stipend. As if that was a lot of a money and even worth the hit to my already crappy credit score. He was quite rude once he realized I wasn't going to take anything less than what I signed up for, or I was going elsewhere. When I tried to find an avenue of complaint over his behavior, I met nothing but dead ends. I emailed the one link in my course material that goes to someone vaguely official and got no reply.

So if you thought ISA was some kind of helpful service you end up paying out the butt for, you're wrong. There is zero interest in your ability, aptitude, or state of need. This company would rather have a double digit IQ and high credit score than a potentially amazing coder with a low credit score. There is zero interest in helping you, only in putting you in debt. I also got the impression that if I simply paid the 16k up front and didn't owe them anything, I would be placed at the very bottom of the list on helping me find a job after the course. Since there is no certification of any kind given after the course is complete, you would be out 16k with nothing but a few simple projects to show for it, while Thinkful steadily places all the graduates who owe them 40k into a job.

The curriculum was no better. The three week course covers what would amount to your first two classes in a tech school. It is stressed up front that an actual programmer knows how to find the information they need without help from outside resources. Which is totally true, except in this case it's a way of covering their repeated mistakes in code and the various pieces of misinformation you are given. I'll give a few examples.

In the demo on assigning multiple classes to one element, they create a class called "bold" in the CSS, and then use "heavy", which is undefined, in the HTML, making the demo worthless. The examples don't show properly. The video and instructions on how to properly publish a web page on Github are incorrect and result in a fail. You are plainly shown wrong instructions and neglected being told that your repo name has to be created in a specific way or the site can't find the files. This was huge for me, because this isn't even coding, and it's a necessary step in completing your final assignment. Then, on the final assignment, if you place the CSS normalization link in the head that they literally recommend you use, it causes the test to fail and have to be resubmitted. The link is good, the grading code is bad.

Those are just a few of the various mistakes and pieces of false info I found. And this is the PREP COURSE designed to draw people in. It's awful, and for the same price you can easily go to a technical institute for a degree and actual job placement help. This is a scam.

I considered becoming a software engineer for 8 years and researched bootcamps for 1 year before selecting Thinkful. The greatest strength of the program for me was having an experienced mentor debugging with me, pair programming with me, and providing... Read More insight into the real world of tech. I valued the flexibility of the course to schedule my studies around when I had the most time and energy and could get the most out of what I was studying. As you may expect, a fully online, self-paced program requires some passion for programming or at the very least self-discipline. I see the flexibility provided by Thinkful's engineering flex program as the perfect way to find out if programming is right for you and if it is, to gain confidence in problem solving along the way with the weekly support and guidance of your mentor.

I pivoted into tech after working in Property Management for four years. After completing three months of Thinkful's program, I was asked to consult for a small business and design and develop their website, and the best part is, I had the confidence to do so because Thinkful taught me to embrace the unknown and to approach challenges methodically with the belief that you will learn and solve for any problem that comes your way. Highly recommend if you are looking to learn a relevant stack, change your career, and/or build a great portfolio of projects.