I signed up for Codeworks' Software Engineering Immersive course after deciding to switch careers. Doing so was one of the best decisions of my life. Within three weeks of finishing the course I secured my first role as a developer. After deciding that I'd apply to study with Codeworks, I was fortunate enough to be able to spend three months preparing for the course full-time. If you have other responsibilities, you should perhaps plan to give yourself at least 6 months to complete the application process and pre-course materials. The admissions team are all really friendly and can help advise based on your personal situation. The course itself is split into two six week sections, with a short break in-between. The first half of the course consists of daily exercises and coding challenges and are supported by short lectures, code reviews, and study materials. A typical day starts with a code challenge and then dives straight into lectures and a Q&A session. You'll spend most of the day coding alongside a partner to solve a tough exercise and at the end of the day review a solution with an instructor. During my cohort they were experimenting with delivering lectures via pre-recorded video. Whilst video lectures are a good idea, this first iteration wasn't great. That said, you soon come to see that the lectures are a tiny part of the learning experience. Codeworks' teaching philosophy follows the firehose method. You will be exposed to so many ideas and new technologies so quickly at times it will feel extremely overwhelming. All I can say is put your trust in the methodology and in your instructors. Get comfortable with feeling out of your depth and confused - that's partially the point! You're being trained to encounter difficult concepts and seek out the information you need in order to understand and apply them. Weekly assessments will help you identify areas that you need to work on, and guidance is only ever a help request away. All of the instructors were extremely friendly and were fantastic at helping you find answers and process difficult concepts. Following the first six weeks, you'll have a week off. During this break, you'll likely spend the first half sleeping and the second half preparing for your first senior project. The second half of the course consists of three projects. With these you'll have the opportunity to build an app from scratch all by yourself, to review, test, and improve someone else's project in a pair, and finally to work in a team to deliver a more ambitious application. I would fully recommend doing the entire 12 week course as every project teaches you something slightly different. I found this invaluable when talking about my experience in job interviews. In the final week you'll start preparing for your job hunt. Once the course ends you'll want to keep up this momentum and start applying. I'd recommend that you plan to make time for the job hunt - keep a month free after the course ends. My job hunt ended up being almost as intense as the course. There's a careers advisor on hand to help provide advice and motivation during this phase. I originally felt nervous about signing up for a bootcamp. Even with Codeworks' competitive pricing, it was still the largest sum of money I've ever spent. Following an unpredictable year of freelance work, I couldn't afford for this course not to result in a job. I can now confidently say that all that nervousness was unnecessary. Codeworks prepares you extremely well for the current job market, though you get as much out of the course as you put in. If you are both willing and able to push yourself harder than you ever have done before, can afford to commit to a challenging and exhausting few months, and bring plenty of enthusiasm and positivity I can't recommend it enough. It's tough but it's worth it. If you're completely new to coding and unsure whether it's for you, I'd recommend trying out Harvard's free CS50x course - it'll put you in a good place to start your Codeworks application! | 