University of Birmingham Boot Camps

A very thorough course! I would recommend it to anyone interested but be warned that it really is a challenge to stay on top of the learning as there is so much content. As a co-habiting parent working part-time through the course, I did manage to complete every piece of homework to a good standard, but it did have an impact on family life and my partner has had to be very supportive with time and earnings. Also the more you know at the start of the course - spreadsheets and some coding for instance - the less daunting the topics covered will be. 

The tutors have been brilliant. There were many tutors and they were all very knowledgable and eager to help, often going outside the course content and demonstrating some interesting alternative methods to solve problems. The careers assistance has been excellent, providing a structured approach to transforming the course into applicable skills, and at time of writing I am still working on feedback from them on my online presence (github, linked in, &c.). In terms of course administration, things were generally very smooth, with frequent announcements and contact. There was some confusion around dates, as some key dates changed during the course.

I stumbled on the bootcamp course after coming up short on interviews for my desired roles. With that I set my goal for the bootcamp at learning just what I needed; VBA scripting and SQL. Everything else was a plus that sounded nice to have at the beginning.


Today, I have taken a cue gotten at orientation to write down where I am now and comparing that with where I was at the beginning of the program. I cannot believe how far I have come. The level of technicality I have amassed with everything else I didn’t know I even needed, like python, machine learning, web etc, have seen me becoming the go-to person on issues that ordinarily wouldn’t get my second thought amongst my circle. A data analyst emerged from this bootcamp in 24weeks!


This program is intense (do not believe what you see online about needing a few hours weekly only to review)! You’ll need to give this full attention for 24weeks; every day, every weekend if you plan to graduate. So, plan and book your vacations for later. You’ll need it after the bootcamp. Hug your family members tighter and longer now, because you'll get lost in your coding and web scraping homework.


However, as intense as this program is, everyone involved in the program understands this and will do everything to get you to the finish line.  Admissions Advisor – sets you up with the best info on scholarships and funding plans  Instructional team – they carry each one along. You would never feel like you are lost in the crowd.  Outside of class also, they are very prompt at answering any questions you might have. Tutors – Don’t we all need the extra hours and new perspective (my advice, use them!) SSM – as good as having your own school approved/recommended therapist and accountability partner. The invisible graders – they give the best feedback. You are never at a loss on what you didn’t do right. You make the mistakes just the one time.


On a final note, don’t drop off during python week no matter how ‘black’ (terminal screen) it gets. There is an amazing rainbow waiting on you with pandas if you make it there. All the best!

 

I honestly think enrolling in the course was one of the best decisions I have ever made.  

The instructional team is amazing and their love for coding AND teaching made this a very pleasant experience! Suraj, Kenneth and Cillian along with the tutors, Ben and Meeda, did their best to make sure that everybody understands the concepts that are being taught. Apart from that, we would have weekly extra-sessions to either go through the course materials, review the homework or gain some more in-depth knowledge in some of the technologies. 

Working on the bi-monthly projects was an awesome experience and I was lucky to team-up with amazing people.

I can say that I have not only learned some new skills but actually got a career out of this bootcamp and a new passion and hobby.

I'm not going to lie, it is hard, you have to actually be invested into it and put in the time. But it's definitely worth it.

Again, I am really grateful that I had such amazing Instructor, TA's and Tutors, they taught us how to code but also how to love coding.

I decided to apply for this bootcamp, when I saw an advert on Facebook. I didn't think too much into it but I wanted to upskill myself in a different field and thought tech would be an ideal field to go into. 

The application process itself was what I felt abit salesy, which after completing the course I can't understand why it was a pushy pitchy, as the course is absolutely brilliant. The initial hard sell and eagerness put me off and I was abit apprehensive at first (I actually rang Uob to find out if this was a scam or genuine)  but after meeting the teachers and the class, I was so glad I applied and was at complete ease.

The course itself is quite intense and you have to put in alot of hours and hard work as homework is given every week - so it is very easy to fall behind. However, the support provided is absolutely incredible. 

You're given a 121 tutor best suited for your learning style which is SO helpful. The teachers provide office hours and extra lessons for additional support to help on areas where you feel your struggling. The amount of technical and emotional support that's given in this course is something I have never experienced before. 
The teachers genuinely push you to be at your best and at any point if you feel like giving up, they are there to get you back on track. That is something money can't really buy and you won't get in other courses. That's the main reason I believe I have improved so much and have become confident in coding. Skills is one thing, but emotional support and getting the best out of a person is something only a few teachers can do and I can honestly say Suraj is an absolute brilliant teacher  like no other.

Like I've  mentioned before, the teachers are so supportive and always there to help which is what they are there for but Kenneth and Cillian are the type of teachers where when they say "no question is a stupid question" they truly mean it. They genuinely want to help and guide you and show you the correct way of doing things that are essential in the tech world. They bring out the absolute best in you that you didn't even know you had. 

The support doesn't stop there. There's workshops for career development,  121 interview prep and cv checking. You have an weekly update on the modules you have learnt and what's to come every week, which is nice to see and surveys are done every week to ensure we all get the best out of our learning. 

The senior student manager (Mai) is such a supportive person. Her words of wisdom really help motivate you as well as her continuous support. At one point I wanted to change my tutor as I didn't think the learning style was best for me, after speaking to her about my concerns she partnered me up with someone who was a better fit for the way I learn. 
The tutor I had was Meedaxa and I can only say good things about him. He helped me become confident in coding when I was at the point of wanting to give up. Mai understood what I needed, took on my feedback and found a solution to my worries. What else can you ask for? 

Overall, I have a lot of good things to say about this course and have enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. The only negative I would say is that I underestimated how much of your time the bootcamp takes up... however it's not wasted time when your learning. 

Having spent the last 20 years raising my family, and then trying to return to the workplace, I found all my skills were out of date.  I didn't have a technical background, but have always enjoyed creativity and problem solving, so web development was suggested to me as a possible path to take.  I came to this boot camp pretty much from a standing start, but have loved the challenge it gave me.  I think it is fair to say it was an emotional rollercoaster at times, ranging from exasperation when trying to grasp concepts that were so new to me, to times of elation such as when I successfully fixed stubborn bugs.  

The teaching and support staff were incredibly patient with me, answering my numerous questions, of which there were many!  So much information to take in over the length of the course, but a good basis for further development.  The student success manager was lovely, and always helped to put things into perspective.  The careers director had his work cut out with me, as my confidence was pretty low having been out of the workplace for so long, but he was able to give me some good pointers, which helped with interviews.  The comradery between the other students in the group was a great source of support as well as entertainment at times too!

The biggest thing I take away from this course, is that it really is possible to completely retrain, even as you approach 50 years of age, and the only barriers are those you create in your own mind. 

This course was the first step on the rung of the ladder to employment, and I am so pleased now to be moving up that latter as an apprentice software engineer.  

Do you want to make your dream of being a software engineer a reality? If you're ready to put in the hard work–I mean hours of studying, learning, debugging and reading each week–then take a leap of faith and sign up to The University of Birmingham's Coding Bootcamp and you will realise that dream! 

What makes the course special, other than its best-in-class and market-relevant curriculum, is its teaching staff and support team as they have the drive, passion and expertise to help you go from a zero to full stack developer. 

My whole experience from the initial application process, invitation to the women in tech scholarship, completing the course, being awarded the outstanding student award and being approached for two job opportunities before i completed the course, to now working with BT has all been more than I could have hoped for. I was very hesitant of bootcamps and thought a CS degree was the way to go but i couldn't afford to leave my full time job and go back to full time study; i parked the thought and completed some free online courses but became stagnant in my learning and motivation. After hearing more success stories and the rise of companies employing bootcamp students i knew it was time to take a leap of faith and i'm so glad i did! 

Let's start with the first-class instructor, Andy, and TA's Steven and Ben, who are real working professionals with years of industry experience and gifted with the best teaching style that really help you to grasp even the most complex of topics – they have been instrumental in my success and taught me everything i know to be job-ready. Then you have the wonderful, bright and determined student success manager, Mai, who nurtured me throughout the course, helping me battle the constant 'imposter syndrome' and help manage my work / study schedule to succeed and complete the course – you always want a 'Mai' in your corner! Working behind the scenes is the amazing careers director, Dan, who builds relationships and interest with employers such as GymShark, CapGemini to name a few; Dan's advice and guidance during my interview process with GymShark and BT was on-point! Lastly, if you're lucky enough to have fellow students / peers like i did, then you get to share the highs and lows, and learnings with like-minded people. 

Overall, a fab culture, real-life projects and learnings, staff and experience! Worth every penny and hour!  

Taking the leap of faith and signing up for this bootcamp has been one of the best decisions I have ever made. It has completely transformed my life. Transitioning from a life science background I had no idea what to expect. What lead me to change paths was my passion for design, problem solving and an interest in learning new skills. Since I had no experience in tech I was exposed to something completely different and the learning curve was huge but totally worth it. I am also a mother and finding a balance between learning to code through the bootcamp and my personal life has also been a challenge in and of itself. During my time at the bootcamp I learned both frontend and backend languages and technologies, I built multiple applications and worked on group projects. I was able to discover which part of web development I am passionate about and that is frontend, and now I am honoured to gain my first tech role as a Junior Frontend Engineer at Gymshark. None of this would have been possible without the incredible team (Andy, Ben, Steven, Mai and Daniel) at the University Of Birmingham Coding Bootcamp. Each member of staff played a significant role in supporting me through this process and helping get a great job. 

Production line was my entire experience, but I took free python course and decided to carry on with bootcamp as most junior devs were talking about it - thats how I found it. From a person that recently started working as full stack dev I can say that the curriculum is up to date. I was taught the most relevant technologies in the industry. It would take much, much more time without all the good people that we had around though. Our instructor was an experienced person and TA always helped me to find different point of view on the problem. Weekly assignments can be difficult but there is tutor as well to help. Thanks to Career services I was able to polish my resume and portfolio and get my first role in software.
Being a professional was my goal and I was able to achieve it through bootcamp. I stopped questioning my future at work and I can introduce plans that were delayed because of production industry instability.

I am still studying for Security+ now because the course covers very little of it.  I bought a textbook after the course and read it twice I learned much more in one chapter than 7k of terrible tuition. The tutor frequently got lost during simple demos and frequently the students would help him, he showed he had not prepared for the classes they accidentally gave us access to the teacher walk through guide, it appeared like he was just reading it to the class, he had another job and this was his side gig, he stated you can get a job in cyber that asks for 2-3 years experience with this course that is completely false you might get a help desk job if you are lucky, UOB offers £50 amazon vouchers for student reviews so be careful with the ones you read, My advice spend £30 on the textbook and 300 - 400 for Comptia training with exam included and save 6500 plus on this course it will basically waste your time if you want practical skills there’s HTB and others, you will not come out ready to start in a SOC role and you will not even be able to perform ethical hacking as the things they show only work on their own vulnerable machines and real hackers don’t use the tools they teach because they are basic and easy to detect, plus now you are on the hook for 7k and the after course support doesn’t even exist the guy who was supposed to help me didn’t know I was entitled to a voucher for the Security+ exam didn’t know I was entitled to my certificate of completion that he said was coming 2 months ago but never appeared, I would ask a question about these things and after being ignored for weeks have to ask again, I even had to ask them to grade my final assignment so I could graduate, clearly the whole thing is a bit of a scam take the advice above and totally avoid this bootcamp and by the way many of my colleagues have returned to their old fields and have given up completely on cyber they chat to me all the time because the debt collection agency keeps emailing them and they feel robbed.

My experience was terrible. The Student Success manager we had at the beginning who was Enrique was fairly okay. But he had left and our new Success manager "T" was not helpful at all. She would never reply to your queries or pleas for help. And when she did, they were half answers. The pace of the course was terrifyingly fast and the support was limited. The career progression was useless as they did not provide any real way to access potential job opportunities. All in all I would say you are better of going to university or studying independently.

I enjoyed taking part in the Data Analytics Bootcamp. I did it part-time online so I would have time for the information to sink in, but I still found it quite intense! However, I found that if you focus on completing the assignments every week, that really helps you learn and solidify concepts.

Before joining the BootCamp, I was not aware of all the available help! I was very impressed with the 24-hour support with assignments/general questions. In addition to this, we had the option of booking a personal tutor for 50 minutes every week. This extra support was amazing and it makes the program worth it because I never felt alone in my studies. If I was stuck on something, I tried as much as I could to resolve it myself through my own research, but when that wasn't enough, my tutor was ALWAYS incredibly helpful. 

The program moves quite fast & at times it felt like there wasn't enough time to absorb all the info/master it. I really had to focus on learning enough so that I could complete the projects and assignments. My feedback to the course coordinators would be to remove the front-end web development section from this Bootcamp (especially the Javascript) and give more time instead to mastering Python, SQL and ESPECIALLY Data Science. 

Overall, I am very glad I participated in this Bootcamp and now feel I have a solid foundation in data analytics.