I love everything about holberton! Everything within this school inspires us to be better, to do better, to learn, to go beyond ... everything here is inspirational, from the walls to the people! =)

Holberton is setting the standard for training new software engineers with a two-year program that can take anyone, no experience required, and make them an impeccable Full-Stack Software Engineer.I was coding and working with peers on the first day at Holberton. This was a refreshing change for me after years of dreading going to class in public schools where my daily objective was to sit down and listen to a topic I was scarcely interested in. Holberton has overwhelmingly embraced project-based and peer learning and it creates a natural way to learn that I have never experienced before. At Holberton you’ll learn the most from your peers and mentors while working on projects and that will give you a tangible edge when you go to get an internship or job. Having the opportunity to learn from project-based learning with my peers surpasses sitting in a classroom lecture any day.There are no upfront costs to study at Holberton. The school charges a percentage of your internship salary and your salary once you find a job. You’ll still need to find and afford your own accommodations in or around San Francisco for the duration you are attending the school on site. This was a challenge that I found exceedingly difficult and at times it affected my ability to be at the school because I was looking for a place to live. Holberton has taken a step in the right direction and is working with companies like Google, Accenture, Scality, and CloudNow to help students defray living expenses.A great thing a new school can do is set themselves up to be able to adapt to what their students need and Holberton is exceeding at doing that. I was in batch 0 that started in January of 2016. Since my batch started, the school has made many improvements to projects based on feedback from students. Additionally, Holberton has worked to improve interactions with experienced mentors in the community. New students are only going to have more opportunities to exceed with Holberton.TLDR: If you want to be a Full-Stack Software Engineer, the elite program Holberton has to offer is exactly what you need.

Holberton School is an amazing place to learn full stack software engineering - from the fundamentals and low level software engineering to higher level programming. All assignments are project based and there are no traditional teachers. The students are expected to do their own research to learn the material to complete the projects. Instead of formal teachers, students are encouraged to first ask other students for help and teach each other.The school also helps prepare students for the soft skills they need as a programmer. There are days were the students practice interviewing through mock interviews with each other. There are also mentors who are available to do mock interviews with students once they are ready to start interviewing at companies for jobs and internships. Some of the projects are also done in groups, so students learn how to work together to complete the assignment.I am currently close to half way through the initial 9-months of the two year program. Some of my favorite things about the program are:- The staff is wonderful and genuinely care about the students.- Great network of mentors who work in the industry- Very diverse population of students - many people are changing careers, others are fresh out of college or high school - all learning programming- No payments up front - just once you get a job- Great space with plenty of whiteboards and variety of working arrangements (sitting and standing desks, study rooms, bean bags)For me, the only con I can think of is that it is very difficult to have a job while attending the school which means living on a budget. I dont really mind this as much, though, because I am having so much fun learning about software engineering and programming.

#1 program + time of my life here. Helped me get into the ever competitive Silicon Valley tech industry. Make the most out of your experience here and you wont regret it. + Nice LED lights

TL;DR Holberton is an incredibly rewarding but also challenging experience that will whip you into a full-stack software engineer in a short amount of time.I was in the very first batch of Holberton students, and right from the beginning, it was obvious that the school was something special. From the physical space, to the payment model, to their commitment to diversity and inclusion, everything about it is designed to fulfill its mission of creating high-quality software engineers to fill the serious need in the industry.To do that, theyve done away with the fluff that fills 4-year university programs, teachers, and lectures and created a jam-packed project-based curriculum that forces you to really engage with the ideas and topics youll actually need on the job. And the curriculum stays relevant - the staff is always taking feedback from students and mentors to see whats working, whats not, what new industry tools and standards are, so that students are really getting the most from their time.The network of mentors is another distinguishing feature. Guidance from people actually working in the tech industry is invaluable, and Holberton students get it in spades. Some mentors are active through online chat, some give presentations or workshops on their topics of expertise, and others come to the school just to help out. In any case, students get to ask questions and start building those connections right off the bat.The school environment is also really great. The staff is super supportive, and their passion for the school and students is obvious in everything they do. And the other students, from your batch or the ones above, are possibly your greatest resource. Peer learning is one of the most important aspects of Holberton, and just being surrounded by whats become the Holberton family makes the entire experience that much more enjoyable and rewarding.Overall, Holberton is a really excellent choice if youre self-motivated, hard-working, and looking to jump into the tech industry, but need a little extra guidance and support. I was able to find a full-time job after only 8 months in the program, so clearly theyre doing something right :)

Holberton School is an amazing experiment that turns education on its head. Traditional schools have information gurus who may not have real world experience, disseminating information in lectures. Holberton School gives students projects to complete. The students also receive the support of mentors who are currently employed in tech companies around the World.Holberton School is not so much a school as a community of learners. Id encourage anyone thinking about a career in software engineering to consider Holberton.

The curriculum is amazing! I love how the school is all project-based, makes me learn the material better and faster. The staff is a little distant, but everything else is great! Would highly recommend attending here if you struggle with learning programming on your own.

It is NOT an exaggeration when they say the program is intensive. There are tons of stuff to get through on a daily basis, and you have to put the time and effort to get the claimed results. It is a hands-on learning environment where you learn by doing rather than sitting in front of a lecturer and trying to retain that information. The curriculum is peer-learning based and there are no formal classrooms or teachers. You do have access to plenty of resources such as your peers from former and current cohort, staff, and mentors.Another great advantage is that the school highly encourages and supports networking opportunities by listing and hosting relevant events and meetups where you are exposed to people and opportunities to connect with.I personally really like the culture and environment of the school where you can approach anyone on the floor and ask a question and they will help you or guide you to a better resource.

On June 4, 2020 the State of California Bureau of Private Postsecondary Education filed a legal proceeding to shut down and revoke the license to operate of the Holberton School in San Francisco on the grounds of fraud, deceit, unqualified teachers, and illegal collection of tuition from students. Beware!!!

Holberton School is unparalleled in its curriculum which is focused on prepping its students to learn the full scope of coding to fully prepare them for a career in the software engineering field. The entire program consists of a two year dual-sided commitment in which you are given the time to grasp not only writing your own code, but in addition fully understanding how the hardware of a computer is able to utilize what you have been taught how to create. The curriculum accomplishes this by starting the students with a low-level language (C) to understand the logic of a programs inner workings. Once students have been able to grasp these concepts, a more complicated syntax of a higher level language (Python) is introduced; this enables the students to understand more thoroughly the mechanics of the web as well as the vast scope of other applications of computer programming. After my first nine months at Holberton I was able to get a job as a Software Engineer at a medical tech company, so it is personally proven that their innovative model of teaching and peer learning truly works. I would deeply recommend Holberton to anyone, regardless of their origins or experience that feels a true passion and desire for a vocation in this field; they will help you cultivate that passion into a life long career.

I love the Holberton school program for its hands-on approach and project based curriculum. There is no theory and you start coding on day 0. What I find super valuable is that we touch a great variety of programming concepts. You start with low level language C and get familiar with Bash and then you move to higher level programming languages like Python and JavaScript. We also learn DevOps, setting up and managing our servers, deploying codes. As for a beginner like myself I find this extremely helpful to figure what aspect of programming I enjoy the most. So first 9 months of intense studying brings you to a decent level, so you can apply for internships. You need to study hard and a lot, but its totally worth it. Especially looking at the success of previous years students you realize that the program is well designed to help you achieve your goal. Students from previous batches got jobs at major tech companies like Apple, LinkedIn, Tesla, Docker and many more. That is very inspiring and its a great motivation for me. And I am looking forward to upcoming internship and the second year specialization!

Of the many options out there for an alternative software engineering education, Holberton stands out as one of most challenging. They teach beyond the web dev curriculum offered as most bootcamps, and emphasize professional development (communication, collaboration) throughout the 2 year program. The opportunities available to graduates who have a broader base of knowledge and highly developed soft skills are future-proof!

I attended this school as part of its first experimental batch and did not have to pay tuition. I went into the school after learning about its innovative model with a lot of hopes, and it met all of my expectations. (The founders have just as much charisma as I thought they would!) Anyway, you will get a solid training out of this school, better than any boot-camp that lasts 3-4 months. You do have to keep in mind that it is an intensive program; it helps if you either have a good foundation in science / math (more for the type of reasoning involved than any other knowledge) or you familiarize yourself with programming. You also should check what resources you may have for relocating to SF if you do not already live there, as it is a very expensive city to live in without working for 9 months. Make sure you have the budget to do it!

My aunt goes here and she likes it so I like it. It is always great to learn more about programming and computers. You can never learn enough! 😊😊😊😊

A great school if you can learn independently and without structure - many bright students have come out as competent programmers. However, theres no shortage of false advertisement and questionable management. Because not many reviews mention the underbelly of Holberton, Ill note a few.1) Some staff are truly wonderful and supportive, others are egotistical and treats students like disposal; few dont care about students at all and uses the school as their own personal playground.2) Despite websites claim, theres basically no mentorship.3) Also despite websites claim, curriculum only covers Javascript for few days only. More time is spent on dev-op and C.4) Income Share Agreement will charge 17% for ALL jobs above 40k for ~3 years ... including non-tech jobs. You can end up in Starbucks and still have to pay... its a hefty amount of cash for no instructors, no mentors, scant job guidance, and no guarantee of a job in the tech field (and sadly, many graduates dont find one either).Cant emphasize enough how wonderful the students and alumni are though; many will become your rock as you navigate this career transition.Heres a few recommendation:1) Use best judgement/be honest about how you learn. Holbertons curriculum and learning structure is not for everyone.2) Reach out to a few alumni and ask about their experience.3) Have an idea of area of tech that interests you (Dev-ops? Mobile? Web development? Machine learning?) Curriculum off-the-bat may or may not suit your need.

By joining Holberton School I learned how to learn by getting hands on experience through projects. The curriculum is prepared so that it makes the student to think algorithmically, even if he/she doesnt have a computer science background.Also, Holberton has mentors and instructors around the globe who are always ready to help. Mentors and cofounders help to find out successful job through connections.

Learning how to learn instead of learning how to Javascript. Best coding school NA

Holberton School has an amazing vision of fixing the education system. Their curriculum gives you challenging projects that teach you how to fix problems and build software.There are no teachers at Holberton School and the program teaches you how to learn instead of focusing on one specific technology. That makes a huge difference in how we address the projects and how we learn from it. The school highly focuses on peer learning and makes sure that you get the basics right. Their coursework, with plenty of hands-on projects, is just what anyone would need to transform themselves into a full stack software developer.I am currently a student at Holberton School. In the first year, we covered algorithm, low-level programming, front-end, back-end, sys-admin and devops. In the second year, the program gets more intense and one can choose to focus either on System programming and Algorithms or Web Stack programming. I love the challenging projects and fear to miss the fun in either track and opted for both ;) . On top of those tech tracks, we also train on soft-skills like networking, public speaking and writing which gives us more confidence and also a huge advantage vs tech-only developers. I am hooked by the program!Coming to the no of opportunities one receives, we get a ton!. In my case, I got a chance to work as one of the data scientists in a project for the NASA Frontier Development Lab 2016 program which was hosted at SETI Institute.

This program aims to give you the learning experience you need to start a career in Computer Science. In my experience so far, it has exceeded my expectations.

I am currently a student at Holberton School. Holberton is a full-stack software engineering school. The aim of the school is to emulate the workplace as much as possible to ready us for careers in software engineering. The space is set up like a startup - one main open space that makes collaboration easy and accessible. Everything is project based - allowing us to get a feel for what its like to work with deadlines. We are given limited guidance which forces us to use our resources, work with each other, and ultimately learn how to learn. This industry changes so quickly, it is no longer sufficient to learn a single langue or framework. The industry is changing all of the time and It helps if we have experience in being agile .Our founders are honestly one of my favorite parts of this school. They are hard working and dedicated to this place. Each one of them has come from reputable companies like Apple, Linkedin, and Docker. They come with real world knowledge and have been able to transfer that knowledge to the projects that they have personally curated. They are passionate about what they do, and it makes this school a great place to come every day. Seeing how hard they worked to get where they are today, makes us want to work all that much harder.The school is located in the heart of the finical district in downtown San Francisco, 98 Battery St. I can’t think of a better place to learn this industry, and than amongst some of the most reputable tech companies of our generation.

Took a tour of the facilities, looks interesting.

TL;DR: Most realistic environment to learn full-stack software engineeringProsPeer learningProject-based, hands-onFull-stack curriculumNetwork of industry expertsStaff and mentors care about studentsProjects prepare you well for professional lifeConsInaugural batch faced a trial and error approachBeing lucky enough to be selected for Holberton School’s first batch, I agree with many reviews of my fellow schoolmates regarding peer and project-based learning. Along with their vast network of experts working in the tech industry, project-based peer learning make up the school’s strengths.The fact that the curriculum is full-stack (meaning, containing low-level programming, algorithms and data structures, web development, sysadmin and devops projects) is also a great advantage. The majority of the projects we worked on proved quite helpful for my first professional experience in IT; first as an SRE trainee, and now as a developer (I was originally interested in both roles, and later decided to focus on backend development). Some examples of these useful projects include building your own API for a website in the style of AirBnb while storing your data in a MySQL database, using Docker, load-balancing your servers. Do not underestimate the power of C. I believe practicing coding in C makes you a better programmer, or, as John Carmack puts it: “Low-level programming is good for the programmers soul”.In my humble opinion, the financial and personal investments to attend Holberton School pay off, as it was surprisingly easy for me to land a job after finishing the first year (at a European 3 billion dollar revenue company). You should know that I had no experience in programming prior to joining Holberton!Another positive point is that the staff and mentors do care about the students, you see this consistently as they regularly keep in touch with you (ensuring you ask for help and that you get the help you need, making sure you are ok, and not just projects-wise, also in your personal life ie settling in the bay area).The only downside I can find is that my batch being the first one, the staff could not have any previous experience with managing this disruptive type of school (which pretty much works like a startup, where everyone is encouraged to bring in new ideas). Consequently, they had to revise and adapt some of the projects that were deemed not very helpful (though one can say that it helped learning either way, and that in the workplace you might also face projects being abandoned or modified along the way). Even that disadvantage had a plus side; being the inaugural batch made us feel special, and the staff certainly took extra care of us!

My wife and I moved from Indiana to California so I could be part of the first batch at Holberton School. I had a strong interest in moving from a help desk role to software engineering. However, I needed to go from tinkering around with code skills I had learned on my own to being able to produce production-ready code. Holberton offered the chance to connect with and learn from mentors working for companies such as Google, LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Salesforce. I took the leap, and I can honestly say that I have not regretted taking that risk. Holberton provides challenging projects whether you are just getting started or have learned a thing or two on your own. The goal is to learn how to learn with other students in a fast-paced, growing industry. Because of the experience I gained at the school, I work for a major tech company in Silicon Valley. Its crazy to think how much has changed in just under two years.

I don’t think it’s worth 17% of your wages for 3 years. There are lot more coding schools out there that are more affordable, have better outcomes, and show more integrity and respect for their students.Honestly, this is hard for me to say because I did learn how to code, I liked most of the staff members, and I made some amazing lifelong friends while I was there. I can find a lot of things I appreciated about the program. Unfortunately, there were serious problems about it that far outweighed the benefits for me.A lot of alumni are split on the issue, but around 90 of the approx. 400 students with active ISAs have submitted complaints to the government. That should say something.Apparently, they operated, admitted students, and gave out ISAs without approval for their first 1-3 years, effectively risking all of our careers. The validity of their ISAs is still under review.Sure, you can learn a lot there and land a good high paying job, but if you’re one of the many students(my estimate is around 25-35%) who falls between the cracks, then they’ll ignore you and leave you out of their stats. Placement rates are far from the actual outcomes that I see from the people who’ve attended.I didn’t appreciate how one of the founders, Julien, used fear tactics and threats of expulsion to dominate students and silence any disagreement. I like my free speech. And it didn’t feel good being given an official “warning” and told I would be expelled for the next one, just because I politely asked Holberton to welcome feedback from its customers.As for Sylvain and Guillaume, they seemed like pretty cool, intelligent guys as far as I could gather.As for curriculum, it’s pretty much all self-taught. It made me realize that I could learn most of this stuff on my own. I would’ve benefitted more if I had an assigned mentor.And I signed up for the “full-stack program” with the hopes of focusing on front-end or mobile. We got 3 days of Javascript. And there wasn’t a career track for front-end until just a couple months ago. So they didn’t actually have a full-stack program when I signed up... but they sold me one.Holberton had so much potential to become something great. Instead it just felt like one really long meme that I legally and financially binded myself to. And the whole diversity in tech pretense gets pretty uncomfortable if you’re an actual minority with enough awareness to know when someone is pandering.

Nice building

The support and motivation here is INSPIRATIONAL !!!

Worst school I tried. there is no structure and instructors are not helpful. You know why 5 start reviews are fake, check and see if they reviewed any other place, even restaurants or book or anything else. NONE!!!!

This not a bootcamp, its a subsidized recruiting organization.

A school where you learn -how to learn!

Amazing program, great community!!

Very good school for coding in a very startup spirit!