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.
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 Now5 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
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.
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.
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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
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 NowActualize 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.
What Actualize grads have to say
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 |
|---|---|---|
| September 10, 2023 | October 15, 2023 | Online Night |
| September 10, 2023 | October 16, 2023 | Online Day |
| October 22, 2023 | November 27, 2023 | Online Day |
| December 3, 2023 | January 7, 2024 | Online Night |
Tuition: $15,900
The tuition covers the complete program, including the Prework, 12 weeks of Live Training, and post-bootcamp Career Support.