| | Pac | Do not sign up for this bootcamp if you are assuming that the university name has anything to do with the quality of the material.
You will be highly disappointed if you set your expectations this way.
This is strictly a review of Trilogy Education Services, and their methods for building the camp with a ___ University name slapped on.
I'm not going to say that this bootcamp was not valuable - there were positive takeaways and learning experiences -- BUT -- those positives came solely from the bonds I made with my peers and small portions of the teaching staff.
TEACHERS
The instructor choices were a mixed bag. We had one teacher who was highly knowledgeable on the subjects, and struggled to point students in the right direction with the curriculum and pace supplied by Trilogy. The other instructor was a complete mess, with no pedagogical knowledge whatsoever, and barely grasped the materials of our program. The second instructor conducted themselves as if they had only just introduced the material, creating endless frustration and confusion on a weekly basis within my cohort. Red flags for miles.
ORGANIZATION METHODS
Trilogy's administration was incredibly disorganized throughout the entire process, frequently mixing me up with other students, unable to manage meetings and calendars, providing little technical insight throughout the career portion of their service, generally unable to keep track of their own system. You need to be a serious advocate for yourself, and hold each person on Trilogy's team accountable by tracking their follow-up, to make sure that you get what you need and deserve from the money and time you're investing.
ATTITUDES
Trilogy's attitude toward you and their work is entirely a "by your own bootstraps" mindset. They WILL play some psychological cards by saying your success is only on you (and for the educational determination portion of this experience, they're right, it is), but they WILL NOT be very helpful in managing the technological errors of their student portal, nor the pedadogical errors in their instructor decisions, nor the miscommunication errors of their internal staff.
You WILL be investing a lot of your own limited time helping to keep them organized, and you WILL constantly need to be verifying and re-confirming their conversations with you. It is possible to do well, with a lot of added frustrations.
THOUGHTS
The application process before the course began felt a lot like a fast-paced, high-pressure sale, and they were not able to answer simple questions about demographics and success rates. Their responses to these questions were naive and downright lies ("We don't like to view our students as numbers"). If you're truly determined to take this huge educational step with Trilogy, ask the tough questions before you commit. If any of their answers make you feel uneasy or unsure, know that there are many, many different coding bootcamps out there, and invest wisely elsewhere. |
