Chicago coding bootcamp
Actualize Coding Bootcamp

Actualize Chicago

The most established Chicago coding bootcamp

Our Program

Prework

5 weeks of at-home exercises

To help you get ramped up for the main course, you’ll be watching our videos that introduce you to fundamentals of computer programming. You’ll also submit exercises to a Prework Instructor, who will leave constructive feedback on your work, and answer questions via video conferencing and email.

Live Training

12 weeks of in-class instruction

The Live Training is the main course, led by your Lead Instructor. Every concept is taught and immediately followed by exercises that allow you to truly grasp what you’ve just learned. You'll also work on an individual Capstone Project, which is demonstrated at your cohort's graduate Showcase. Check out some examples of our graduates' Capstone projects!

Career Support

Post-bootcamp structured job support

After graduation, Actualize provides you the opportunity to work on your job hunt in a structured environment with expert career guidance and accountability. You'll engage in our proven Job Hacking system, which includes professional networking and personal branding, and working on real coding interview challenges.

Learn to code

Prework

During Prework, you’ll be ramping up for class by watching videos of our CEO, Jay Wengrow, teaching the fundamentals of coding. Jay’s experience as both an educator and developer come to the fore as he breaks down each concept into a digestible chunk before moving onto the next.

Each video is also accompanied by a series of exercises, which you’ll submit via a specialized application called the Student Portal. Each exercise is reviewed by a Teaching Assistant, and you’ll receive constructive feedback where necessary.

You can complete prework on your own schedule, although you should block off at least 20 hours to dedicate towards it.

Apply Now

5 Week Prework Schedule

The 5 weeks of prework are done remotely on your own schedule. Exercises are due at the end of each week.

Open Schedule

Up to 20 hours / week

Weekly Due Dates

Exercises due each Saturday

Personal coding instructor

Live Training

During the Live Training, the Lead Instructor flips back and forth between instruction and exercises. Instruction is more than lecture; the Lead Instructor demos a new concept by sharing the screen with the class on a large projector, and leads an interactive discussion on the subject.

Immediately after the new concept is taught, students are presented with exercises that give them the chance to utilize the new concept in various scenarios, allowing them to truly grasp it. During the exercise, the Lead Instructor and Teaching Assistants are available to help out when any student gets stuck. And right after the exercises, the class goes back into Instruction mode and moves onto the next concept.

This model of an instruction-driven class is very different than the typical coding bootcamp, which are exercise-driven. That is, in other bootcamps, students are taught new concepts by being given exercises, and the staff is on site to help students when they need help. There may be some ad-hoc lectures, but the students are essentially teaching themselves most of the material through exercises. The Actualize approach is to teach every concept through expert instruction, and follow the instruction with exercises on that concept. This approach allows us to cover the same amount of material as other bootcamp in a fraction of the time.

Code Academy

Curriculum

During the Live Training, we teach software engineering using full stack web development. While we teach with specific technologies, what you’ll really learn is how to think like a developer, and be able to pick up anything software-related on your own.

While the particular languages and frameworks we use to teach are those that we feel are best suited towards teaching, they also happen to be very popular in the industry today. They include Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, React, HTML, CSS, SQL, and Git. You’ll learn back end development by utilizing and creating APIs, delving into database design, and working with Ruby on Rails. You’ll learn front-end development using JavaScript and React, a powerful JavaScript library.

Download our detailed curriculum below.

By submitting your email, you will receive additional communication from us on learning to code as well as the coding bootcamp industry.

Nights-and-Weekends Course

The 12 weeks of live training for the Nights-and-Weekends course takes place on Monday through Thursday evenings and all-day Sunday, which means you'll be able to keep a full time job while attending the program.

Sundays

9:00 am - 5:00 pm

Mon - Thu

6:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Daytime Course

The 12 weeks of live training for the Daytime course takes place on Monday through Friday.

Mon - Fri

11:00 am - 4:00 pm

Sat - Sun

No class

Coding bootcamp

Career Support

The Actualize Career Support program is built into the bootcamp, and around your schedule once you've completed the bootcamp. Upon graduating, you'll meet regularly with your Career Advisor for accountability, strategy sessions, and mock interviews. You'll also meet weekly with a coding mentor to support continued learning and portfolio-building throughout your job search.

Apply Now

Actualize HQ

We've made our Chicago campus at 215 W. Ohio St. a fun and exciting environment, conducive for learning and creating a family-like atmosphere.

  • Chicago coding bootcamp
  • Chicago coding school
  • Chicago code school
  • Chicago code academy
  • Chicago learn to code
Laptop

What Actualize grads have to say

  • Attending Actualize literally changed my life. I had been stuck in a dead end job for years and was just going through the motions. Not only did I have a great experience learning, I also made some life long friends along the way. I now have a great job at a startup and the opportunities to continue learning and growing are endless.

    Jason
    Support Engineer
  • Not only was it perfect for me as I was not in a position to leave my job, but the support and teachers there were undeniably the best I could have asked for. All the teachers are former educators who also have a deep breadth of coding knowledge. I can't rave about this enough!

    Caroline
    API Specialist
  • I've gone from student to teachers assistant to software engineer to tech lead and I'm currently in control of my own destiny in a way that I've never been able to brag about before. This was completely life-changing.

    Jamie
    Associate Software Engineer

Start Dates and Tuition

Since COVID-19, we are temporarily not accepting new applications for our in-person course. We hope to open up applications again as soon as it is practical to do so. We encourage you to check out our Online Live course, which is an identical program, other than the fact that it takes place over live video conferencing. As with an in-person course, you will be led the entire time by an expert Lead Instructor and a classroom of like-minded students who will be taking the course with you. You can check out all the details here.
Prework Start Date Live Training Start Date Location
March 31, 2024 May 6, 2024 Online Day
May 26, 2024 June 30, 2024 Online Night
May 26, 2024 July 1, 2024 Online Day
Tuition: $16,900

The tuition covers the complete program, including the Prework, 12 weeks of Live Training, and post-bootcamp Career Support.

We have several payment plans available, including monthly payments over the course of three years. Learn more here.