Actualize

My experience at Actualize was life changing.
It was such a stressful, arduous  process to find the right bootcamp for myself. I would even go as far as to say, that finding the right bootcamp was and will probably be the hardest part of my coding journey. I researched over 10 bootcamps, and I learned very quickly that most of them have the same business/education model. Which is either being scammy by not properly evaluating students for their program, because they just want your money— and then kick you out when you can’t keep up (Ii.e. App Academy, Coding Dojo), OR are 10-12 hrs a day, 6 days a week, with very little  instructional/teaching assistance and absolutely no mental health support. (I.e. Hack Reactor, Hackbright Academy) 
Being someone who has OCD, ADD, and Complex PTSD— I was freaking out about how I would be able to do a coding bootcamp.  All of these schools had educational models, that set up people like me to fail. I finally found Actualize when I decided to venture outside the west coast for schools. They have been running a remote program way before the pandemic. I was immediately struck by their curriculum, in that it’s 3 months long but half the hours of a traditional bootcamp (normally 12 hrs). After speaking with the school’s Dean Peter Jang— I was beyond inspired to attend this bootcamp. Their education model is revolutionary, in that they prioritize ‘learning how to learn’ first— and coding second. The school is filled with faculty that have educational and mental health backgrounds. And their emphasis is teaching you the skills to teach yourself, which is vital in the tech industry. 
Amanda was the AMAZING, and the best teacher I’ve ever had. I reached out to her pretty early on in the bootcamp, because I was really struggling— and we ended up meeting every single week to check in. She helped me outline study habits, concepts to focus on— and always always encouraged me to take care of myself first, not go into burnout, and prioritize my mental health (something you WILL NOT find at any other bootcamp). It was honestly very difficult to reprogram myself to work in this way, after being conditioned since childhood that the only way to succeed is to work 78372 hrs a day/ 213421 hrs a week, and be a slave to the miserable, endless grind to the top.   Far more valuable than the coding education I got, which was excellent— the most valuable things I learned from Amanda was: getting a framework for how to learn, realizing I can work in a way that supports my wellbeing and still be successful no matter how hard or ambitions the job, goal, or task is— and learning that I don’t have to do everything perfectly in order to accomplish my goal. This was life changing. 
I also want to take the time to mention the job support team at Actualize, which was OUTSTANDING. First of all, the career support was an active part of our curriculum from day one. This is very unusual, as ALL the other bootcamps I researched do not begin job counseling until the last 2 weeks of bootcamp, and in some cases after graduation— and it’s a short-lived process. Lisa and Sarah conducted class with us every week, working with us on everything from resumes, to our LinkedIn pages and personal summaries. They were also accessible throughout the bootcamp to meet one-on-one. I really utilized this resource with Sarah, who I met with frequently during the bootcamp. She went ABOVE & BEYOND to support me not only with my job search experience, but helped me to organize my time at bootcamp in a way that took care of my mental health. In fact, Sarah prioritized my mental health, and every solution we created started with this as a foundation. What’s remarkable is the job support hasn’t even ended… I’ve graduated bootcamp, but this week I begin 3 job hacking classes , and then 4 successive weeks of interview prep classes— all to support and gear me up to secure a job in the new year. In addition, Lisa and Sarah are also making themselves available again to meet one-on-one as needed.  This is the first time in my life that while feeling overwhelmed to begin this process, I feel fully comforted in the support I know I have— and will ultimately emerge successful in the job hunt process, because I have passionate, brilliant, caring people to help me through every aspect of it. 
The last thing I will say, and this is for anyone researching a bootcamp— the support I got from Actualize was fully contingent upon my ability to reach out, advocate for myself, and ask for help.  I’m sure that my experience would differ tremendously from a student who didn’t do this.  In my opinion, succeeding at Actualize requires a keen level of self-awareness, the ability to communicate that, and reaching out to faculty for help when needed. Do not expect to get this level of support from Actualize or any bootcamp for that matter, if you don’t ask for it. This is one of my biggest pieces of advice to anyone looking to do a coding bootcamp.
I could not recommend this school enough, I am so grateful I found Actualize— and believe will forever be reaping the benefits of this choice. 

I spent a fair amount of time researching coding bootcamps before I took the plunge with Actualize.  After all, the cost of these camps vary as much as the technologies offered.  I was certainly proficient with computers, but I had no coding background at all.  I didn't even know how to bring up the terminal.  Let me say, emphatically, this was the best decision I could have possibly made.  This course did not teach me syntax or how to build "X" (Well I mean of course they did, but read on...).  I practiced researching, learning, and apply information directly from documentation.  I learned how to fish in this bootcamp.  It's given me the confidence to build things we never learned in class, and tackle other technologies right out of a 4 month camp.  Don't waste anymore time thinking about all the things you have to do to start, just start and start here.

I knew I needed some structure when learning the fundamentals of software development, so I started taking a look at dozens of different bootcamps. So many of them taught similar languages and had multiple projects that you'd be able to produce. There was one however that stood out from all the others on a couple main aspects, and that was Actualize. Actualize has been one of the greatest learning experiences I have ever had. 

A lot of bootcamps only provide you with maybe an hour a day, 3-4x a week of actual instruction. The rest of the time that you are "in the bootcamp" you are just doing some self learning. Spending the amount of money that a bootcamp costs just to teach yourself isn't helpful. Actualize is devoted to having actual live instruction 5 days a week. You go through some material, watch the instructor code, and then have a challenge to do something similar yourself. It is incredibly effective and I was able to learn & retain so much information in a short period of time. Not to mention the instructors are incredible and very knowledgable - Brian was my cohort instructor and I cannot praise him enough for how well he goes through everything. 

You can also tell that everyone in the class genuinely cares and wants you to succeed. Actualize also has something called "career hacking" which meets every Sunday to go over things related to the job search. Lisa is amazing and helps you get prepared to start tackling interviews and applications pretty much halfway through. The best part - the job hacking is available UNTIL you get your first job. They genuinely care and want you to land that first role!

I can't say enough incredible things about this bootcamp - there isn't another one that compares whatsoever. 

From the beginning, I've pretty much only heard good things about Actualize. Originally, I made a post of LinkedIn asking what bootcamp people would recommend and for a good couple weeks to a month, the only people that replied, were people from Actualize. On top of that, one of the other major reasons I chose them was because of the smaller teacher to student ratio, I believe my class was just about the max at 13 to 2 (Teacher and TA - both specifically for this class). When I was doing my research about other bootcamps, I saw that they had 20:1 or 30:1 and other variations of that so when I saw that Actualize is a much closer/personal experience, that definitely stood out to me. The last thing that stood out to me was the fact that all their teachers were a teacher of some sort before, meaning that they aren't just people who know how to code, they are people who know how to teach and also know how to code.  

I transitioned into web development with zero prior experience, and after graduating, I rate my experience at Actualize to exceed my expectations. I expected a boot camp that would only teach me to code and throw me out into the wild. What makes Actualize an excellent program to me was the help in the transition every step of the way. Will they teach you everything there is to know? No. But I found it more valuable in their mission to teach students by letting them break code, learn from their mistakes, and build a solid foundation to go forward. The instructors and teaching assistants are there whenever you faced an obstacle every day during or after class for the students. They are always patient and willing to help you learn the material.
At Actualize, they understand that the main goal is to land a job in the industry. That's why the first week they introduced weekly job hacking lectures to help in your transition into the tech field. Even after graduating, you're able to still connect with your career advisors for any assistance on landing a job whether it be resume reviewing, announcing job posts, discussing application strategies, or even reviewing job descriptions and compensations. To reiterate, every step along the way, the staff at Actualize is there to help in your transition into the field. 
How well Actualize helps you transition into web development becomes a strong attraction to many others that also decide to make the jump. That means the cohort you meet in class comes from multiple backgrounds with little or no experience and that creates this bond with them knowing that all of you are in this together. As the lectures progress forward, you get the chance to talk and work together with cohorts that helps build a sense of camaraderie when code does or doesn't work. So I think the types of people that boot camps will attract make as much an impact on your experience as the quality of their instructor. I could not recommend a better boot camp after my experience at Actualize.

As someone who was on this very website 5 months ago looking for a bootcamp to throw an exorbitant amount of money at, I understand the difficulty behind trying to pick which reviews to trust, which sound scammy, who just had a bad experience due to their own lack of effort, etc... In the interest of openness and transparency I was asked to write this review, however, that has in no way had an impact on the scores I am giving. I tried to pick an area I could maybe leave a 4 instead of 5 star answer to try and give this review a bit more trustability, but I failed, because in all honesty my experience has been 5 stars all around. My lead instructor Amanda Hale did a phenomenal job of being both engaging and informative. Additionally  Amanda did a terrific job of pushing me to my limits while still offering a helping hand when it was truly necessary. Our 2 teachers assistants were also an amazing help when fixing bugs and both super supportive throughout the process of learning this new skill. The environment was extremely welcoming and over the course of our five months together our cohort became great friends with each other. If I were to criticize a single thing to give this review a bit more validity among the skeptics it would be my personal distaste for Vue.js, again that comes down to preference and it is an incredibly popular framework and useful for the job hunt. Speaking of the job hunt, this bootcamp offers something unique that many other bootcamps do not, Career Services. At any point you can book an appointment with one of Actualize's two fantastic career counselors. due to the small class sizes you get very tailored, personalized help from finding a job, to writing a resume, to leads on different apprenticeships that match you specifically. All in all, highly recommend this bootcamp. 

Actualize is a great bootcamp, especially for this with little previous coding experience. They focus on teaching you how to teach yourself, which is extremely important in programming, and one of the main reasons I chose Actualize. The other main reason I chose this program was because they had been offering it online way before COVID, which was a huge plus - they definitely have the right structure in place. My only caveat, being someone who had a decent amount of previous coding experience, is that there were times where I didn't feel as challenged as I would have liked. Other than that, Actualize did a great job in giving me a solid foundation to further my programming abilities.

I cannot recommend this program highly enough. From the great instruction to the TA's to the Job hacking crew, everything is set up to help you be successful. Our instructor Amanda was amazing! She is so much fun, but also pushed us every day out of our comfort zone. You could always tell she truly cared about us as students and wanted us to succeed. She believed in all of us and was encouraging through the process. We had great TA's to help us as well. Meg and Jonathan did an outstanding job as support.

Bootcamp is very challenging and demanding. I was impressed by the lessons as we learned a great deal about both back end and front end software engineering. Actualize set me on a good path to continue my learning after bootcamp as well. I really appreciated the dedication to job hacking. Actualize helped us update our resumes, fix our linked in profiles, and connect with others in the industry. We did a lot of practice for tech interviews and were encouraged to start applying for jobs and put our resumes out there.

Many bootcamps have you work on a capstone project in a group, but at Actualize, we did our own project from start to finish. Although we had many opportunities to pair or mob program, I thought it was really important that we built our own app from the ground up. It gave me a much better understanding of the whole process and how the parts fit together. 
I truly appreciate all of the support, encouragement, and top notch instruction that we received. If you are looking for a bootcamp, look no further! I did look into other programs, but Actualize let me sit in on a class, they have Mac's that you can borrow so you don't have to invest in one, and they truly support their students!

I chose Actualize because after reaching out to a few different bootcamps they were the only ones to actually reach out to me and put me in touch with an actual person and after talking to the admissions manager I knew this was the place for me. My experience seriously could not have been better Amanda was an amazing teacher and was more than happy to help and teach you all of the stuff you are going to need to make a true run into the software development industry. From my classmates and the T.A.s everyone was super helpful and it makes you realize that you are all in this together and that you are all working towards the same goal and everyone is more than willing to jump in and help you with anything you may need. I would recommend this bootcamp to anyone that wants an actual in depth course on how to learn about learning software development and in the 12 weeks you are more than capable of building a full stack app and present it in a way that you know everything that you are talking about not just a bunch of vague nonsense. I would also say anyone that isn't happy where they are at that this is a great jumping off point for a new career I spent 15 years at my last job and had to leave and when struggling to figure out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life I am glad I went this way and chose in my opinion the best coding bootcamp out there.

After transitioning out of the concrete industry, Actualize gave me all the tools I needed to succeed in the tech field. Their curriculum is fast paced and covers a wide variety of information, but you never feel left behind. Due to the small class size, experienced instructors, and multiple great TA's, there is always a support structure to fall back on if you need it. If you're interested in a full-stack experience that will challenge you as well as teach you, then I couldn't recommend Actualize enough.