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About Thinkful
Thinkful teaches students how to become equipped for the world's next workforce with fast paced, job-ready programs in software engineering, data science, data analytics, and design. Students learn cutting-edge industry standards and work 1-on-1 with... Read More
Thinkful's Engineering and Data Science Immersion programs, Engineering Flex, Engineering Nights & Weekends, Data Science Flex, Product Design Flex, and Data Analytics Flex programs have unprecedented levels of support, with weekly 1-on-1 mentorship, 40+ hours of Q&A sessions, and a bustling Slack community of mentors and fellow students.
The Engineering and Data Science Immersion programs are among the most in-depth and rigorous available. With five full months of expert instruction, team project building, and career prep, the course sets the standard for immersive programs. If you graduate but are not hired as a developer or data scientist within six months, Thinkful refunds 100% of your tuition.
With Thinkful, you'll gain guidance from an active community, attend online office hours and offline local community meetups, while using various tools and resources to help you change your career.
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Courses
Average Ratings (All Programs)
4.59/5
- Anonymous | UX/UI Immersion
- Graduated: 2021
Overall Score
Curriculum
Job Support
"Do not waste your money here."
- Anonymous
- Data Science Flex
- Graduated: 2021
Overall Score
Curriculum
Job Support
"Pretty Good, but not for Everyone"
- Anonymous | UX Student
- UX/UI Design Immersion
- Graduated: 2020
Overall Score
Curriculum
Job Support
"Think carefully before starting at Thinkful"
Things started off well. It's scary leaving a steady-paying job, but the stipend is what ultimately helped me to pull the trigger. I figured the little bit of money would carry me through the education and once I was employed, I'd be happy enough about... Read More
The program started off well enough. Getting used to the design tools, a few little projects to start. A graded interview, to make sure you understood industry terminology and could present well. So far, so good.
The second phase had us take an entire project, start to finish. It was here I first started running into issues. The grading team would return an assignment with feedback, I'd work on it, resubmit, and receive fresh (different) feedback from another grader. The grader feedback was often useful, but also often vague, and there's no direct dialogue with the graders. Just enter notes in your project file, resubmit, and hope you hit the moving target (You'll find out in, at minimum, a couple of days).
So Thinkful likes to treat this as if it's a feature. In real-life, people are squishy, there are multiple decision-makers, etc. I get that, but more and more this seemed less of a feature and more of a bug. The work was never graded off of a rubric, and more on when graders felt like it was "good enough". Keep in mind, if you're more than two weeks behind you will not receive your stipend.
I complained to the teachers and the TAs about this issue and they thanked me for the feedback and got the impression it was a battle they were fighting. In fact the teachers are generally good, the mentors are good, the TAs are good. Perhaps even the grading team is good, but the efforts aren't focused well. The system is broken.
Anyway, back to this first project. It's cheesy, but it's well thought out. The timing is a little off on the modules (the reading on the modules usually showed up a day or so after we were asked to do it). But otherwise, carried through and I learned a lot.
Next major project was Team Design. As a group (ours was eight). We'd choose a real-life client and build a design of their project for our porfolio. The modules were chaos and naturally chaos ensued. There wasn't a lot of sense in the order of the modules and it wasn't unusual to find contradictory information. The main thing that carried us through was the dedication of the group. Three weeks of chaos and it was done. We still got stuff out of it, but it was a rough few weeks. Again, strange things with graders happened. 7 out of 8 would pass grading. Odd since it's a team assignment and everyone turned in the same thing.
Thinkful has decided to discontinue the Team Design Sprint moving forward. They have experimented and, I guess, decided it wasn't useful enough.
Following that is Portfolio 1. A chance to work on your website, LinkedIn, Resume, etc. The career team gave some good advice, but having a week to put together professional website on Webflow (with no experience) was quite difficult.
This seems like a good time to make an aside about how they teach the industry tools...they don't. You're really left on your own to figure it out. Figma, Notion, Webflow, any of the Adobe stuff. It's a bit of "You need to use this...go figure it out." I understand you're expected to be on the ball and learn how to use these tools and future tools on your own, but then what am I paying for?
Currently, I'm in specializations. I focused on front-end web development. It was my interest before joining and I was hoping to sharpen my skills. Really it was just an introductory course, the only instruction is checking in with a teacher in the morning, and you're left to teach yourself everything by yourself. So here I am now, no teacher, checking boxes on things I already know. I try to use the extra time to study on my own, but I'm still waiting on Portfolio feedback from about a week ago.
The final module is Capstone. A solo project. Again, not much instruction.
All together it's $37,500 for my time at Thinkful. Now you may ask me, "If it's so bad why not quit now and only pay for what you've done?". Well after passing the halfway mark you're on the hook for the whole thing. That's whether your drop out or you're hired. Funny that the quality took a sharp drop around that time.
To conclude: I met a guy who said he got a job as a Javascript Developer after spending 6 hours a day every day practicing JS for months on his own. I thought it was cool, but unrealisitc for me. In fact for the same amount I could support myself comfortably and had done just that.
I say all this to vent, but I also fear that things are continuing to get worse at thinkful. The group before my was 30 some students. Mine was 50 or so. The one following me is over 100. Thinkful is looking to get it's money hooks in as many as possible and yet isn't equipped to educate them.
I'm working hard, I hope for a job. If I can scratch together anything it'll probably be freelance. I think those that do the best were the ones who would have anyway. You've been warned.
Comment- Yusuf Alp | Software Engineer
- Engineering Flex Program
- Graduated: 2020
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Job Support
"Support I needed, pace I asked, curriculum I wanted"
- India Doria | Student
- Engineering Immersion
- Graduated: 2020
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Job Support
"Poorly organized, minimal to non-existent support"
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
I wouldn’t recommend this program to anyone; you’re likely better off taking a variety of the free courses available to people online.
Comment- Anonymous
- Data Science Immersion
- Graduated: 2020
Overall Score
Curriculum
Job Support
"Course"
- Anonymous | UX Designer
- UX/UI Design Immersion
- Graduated: 2020
Overall Score
Curriculum
Job Support
"Disorganized and Frustrating"
- Anonymous
- Data Analytics Flex
- Graduated: 2020
Overall Score
Curriculum
Job Support
"worst coding bootcamp"
- Anonymous
- Data Science Flex
- Graduated: 2020
Overall Score
Curriculum
Job Support
"The tuition guarantee is really disappointing"
- Kateryna Rozhko | Co-founder
- Digital Marketing Immersion
- Graduated: 2020
Overall Score
Curriculum
Job Support
"Thinkful was one of the best investments I ever made!"
Thinkful's average rating is 4.59 out of 5.0 based on 312 review(s).
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Frequently Asked Questions
What financing options are offered by Thinkful?
Thinkful offers many financing options, such as Scholarships, Income Share Agreements, Loan Financing, Upfront Payments, and Monthly Payments.
What courses are offered at Thinkful?
There are many courses you can take at Thinkful. These include
What types of programs are offered at Thinkful?
Thinkful has Full-Time programs for students that can be taken online.
In these programs, students can learn from and take advantage of 1-on-1 mentoring sessions, personalized feedback on submitted assignments, live 1-1 assessments (usually structured as a mock interview), career services, and more.
What are the job outcomes for Thinkful?
The average salary after graduation is $64,417, and 80% of alumni find a job.
Thinkful alumni work at various tech companies, such as Google, IBM, Boeing, Walmart Labs, Amazon, and more.
What is the application process at Thinkful like?
Prospective students will need to submit an online form in order to apply to Thinkful.