Want to attend a bootcamp but it’s a budget buster?
A number of bootcamps offer partial scholarships, or sometimes even a full ride, to women in tech. What’s really important is knowing how to ace the scholarship application.
Bootcamps, after all, can give your tech career a boost at a fraction of the cost of a four-year degree. And it turns out that 33 percent of business leaders believe bootcamps provide a comparable amount of training as an undergraduate degree, according to BestColleges’ 2021 Bootcamp Trends Report. The survey also found 48 percent of business leaders expect bootcamps to play a key role in future training of their workforce.
What is a Bootcamp?
Bootcamps are booming. In 2013, there were 30 bootcamps listed in Course Report, a coding bootcamp directory, and now there are over 500 worldwide, according to the publication’s Coding Bootcamps in 2021 report. The average bootcamp costs $14,000 and typically runs from 6 to 28 weeks, with the average starting salary for graduates hovering around $69,000.
A growing trend among bootcamps is the option for participants to defer payment until they are employed, which reduces the need to plop down a large chunk of change or secure a sizable loan. But even deferred payment means you ultimately need to pay for the program. So, here are a handful of scholarships to help you get that free money — and what you need to know about each one.
Codeworks+GirlCode Scholarship
100 percent of tuition covered
Gear up for the next round of Codeworks+GirlCode Scholarships, which usually kicks off every spring.
The scholarships cover 100 percent of Codeworks’ 12-week Software Engineering Immersive bootcamp, which will run you $8,900, or its 8-week Web Development Immersive course, which costs $6,500. The courses are remote, with the exception of Europe which allows on-site classes and, as a result, carries a higher price tag to attend without a scholarship.
You need to first sign-up as a GirlCode member to apply for the Codeworks+GirlCode scholarships. The scholarships are awarded to 50 women around the world each year.
The application process is still competitive, even though a sizable slug of these women in tech scholarships are offered, Jon Norris, marketing lead at Codeworks, told Built In.
Judges evaluate applications based on three criteria. One is your personal situation and how much impact the scholarship would have on your life. The second is your attitude and personality. Lastly, your technical aptitude.
Your personal situation is given the most weight in evaluating applications, because Codeworks and GirlCode want to ensure the scholarships go to people who need them the most and where it will have the biggest impact, Norris said.
However, acing the second criteria is your ticket in.
“Just show us your personality. We’re quite a small school and we have a very selective admissions process, so a big part of our job is making sure each cohort is full of awesome, motivated and smart people,” Norris said. “If we like someone right away, we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that person gets the help they need.”
The immersive software engineering and web development bootcamps cover coding fundamentals, basic and advanced JavaScript, as well as frameworks like React and TypeScript. The 12-week software engineering program also focuses on the backend so grads can get full-stack roles.
Over half of Codeworks’ grads score a job within the first month after finishing the program and 100 percent are hired within the first six months, Norris said. He noted Codeworks’ grads typically receive a salary that is 14 percent higher than the average software engineer salary for their geographic location. In the U.S., the average software engineer salary is $102,000, he added.
DevPoint Labs
50 percent off tuition
The deadline for DevPoint Labs’ Women in Tech scholarship for its winter cohort session is fast approaching. October 2 is the deadline to apply for one of its 50 percent off tuition scholarships.
DevPoint’s full-time ProEd Web Development bootcamp normally costs $11,000, and its part-time Web development course typically runs $5,500. Both bootcamps are live, remote online sessions.
After filling out the application, you need to answer essay questions and include a letter of recommendation from a school official, employer, teacher or community organization representative. The third step is to jump on social media and follow DevPoint Labs or subscribe to its YouTube channel.
“The best thing you can do is take free online tutorials, provide sample work and show us you’re excited to learn,” Marc Price, admissions director at DevPoint told Built In. “You want to showcase your hard work and dedication. Coding is a skills-based industry, so focus on showing us past projects you’ve worked on.”
DevPoint typically receives five to 10 scholarship applicants per session who have gone through the entire application process. Two Women in Tech scholarships are awarded each session — one for its full-time Web development bootcamp and the other for its part-time Web development course. Graduates generally find a job in the tech industry three to six months after completing the program, Price said.
That was the case for Danielle Dona, a recipient of DevPoint Labs’ Women in Tech Scholarship. After graduating from a Texas university with a computer science degree, she found there were many career paths to take with a CS degree.
“I discovered I liked web development and started to watch some online tutorials and decided to look for a bootcamp to learn more about it,” said Dona, who at the time was working in sales at Best Buy after graduating from college.
She completed DevPoint’s Web Development bootcamp in January and began working as a web development teaching assistant in March at DevPoint.
If you miss the October 2, 2021, deadline for the upcoming winter cohort scholarship, the deadline for the fall cohort scholarship is July 10, 2022.
Flatiron School
$2,000 to $3,000 tuition credit
Planning to sign up for a software engineering, data science or cybersecurity engineering bootcamp at Flatiron School?
Then apply for Flatiron’s Women Take Tech Scholarship to potentially snap a $2,000 tuition credit. Flatiron may also provide an additional $1,000 grant, depending on income level.
Flatiron offers tuition credit to 75 women across the globe each year to help offset a portion of the $16,900 bootcamp tuition. In the U.S, the scholarship is applied to covering the deposit.
You can apply for the Women Take Tech Scholarship when signing up for the bootcamp and speaking to the admissions representative. All scholarship applicants are required to pay for the bootcamp upfront, or cover the cost through a loan or installment payments.
Here’s the key thing to address when applying for a Flatiron scholarship:
“Rather than spending time focused on why they’re qualified, talk about what they want to do next and why they are choosing this field and industry. That goes a long way for us because we feel like we can teach you the skills, but we can’t teach you the passion and commitment,” said Pooja Agarwal, chief operating officer at Flatiron School.
In 2020, Flatiron reported 90 percent of the women who went through its bootcamps received a job in the tech industry and had an average starting salary of $72,280.
General Assembly
$1,500 tuition discount
General Assembly is one of a number of bootcamps that offers automatic scholarships for women in tech — providing you meet the criteria.
For starters, you need to identify as a woman, transgender, genderqueer, gender non-conforming or nonbinary and be at least 18 years old to apply for the $1,500 Break the Glass tuition discount.
Your income level also needs to be less than $40,000 a year to be eligible for the women in tech scholarship.
And, lastly, you must be accepted into General Assembly’s Software Engineering Immersive bootcamp or its Data Science Immersive bootcamp.
The Break the Glass discount shaves off a portion of the $15,000 and $15,950 tuition for the Software Engineering Immersive bootcamp and Data Science Immersive course, respectively.
Fullstack Academy
$1,000 tuition scholarship
Fullstack Academy also offers an automatic tuition discount for its bootcamps.
You can score a $1,000 tuition deduction via its Ada Lovelace Scholarship that is open to all women attendees. The scholarship is offered through the Grace Hopper Fullstack Academy bootcamp, or through the Fullstack Academy’s NYC bootcamps.
The cost to attend the Grace Hopper Fullstack Academy or the Fullstack Academy’s NYC bootcamps is approximately $18,000.
The Grace Hopper Fullstack Academy seeks payment upfront from attendees, their employer, through government assistance, personal loans and scholarships. Fullstack requires you to either pay upfront or secure a private loan, as well as nudge you to seek scholarships.
Fullstack launched the Ada Lovelace Scholarship in 2016 and has awarded over $400,000 in scholarships.
And who was Ada Lovelace? Think back to 1843. This young mathematician published a calculation that could be used to generate Bernoulli Numbers, considered the first computer program — hence making her the first computer programmer.
Next question, will Fullstack’s scholarship and the other women in tech scholarships pave the way for the next Ada Lovelace?
