BostInno
A Coding Camp Specifically Designed for College Students Is Coming to Boston
By: Olivia Vanni
In recent years, we've seen a slew of coding bootcamps pop up across the country, predominantly attracting professionals looking to get into the tech scene. And now, a coding bootcamp specifically meant for college students, from Horizons School of Technology, is starting taking applications for its new Boston program this upcoming summer.
“A lot of programs, like those offered by General Assembly, are focused on career-switchers, people in their 30s,” Abhi Ramesh, co-founder of the Horizons School of Technology, told us. “We’re focused on college students… and consciously started in Philly because there’s a closely knit college community there. The next city on our radar had to be another prominent college town, which was Boston. For us, it’s more important to be in our target ecosystem.”
According to Ramesh, Horizons is trying to fill in the gaps left by college computer science curricula. He said, “Schools are gradually realizing that traditional, theory-focused computer science curriculum leaves gaps between what students are learning and what they need to do in the real world… We’re far away from the point when university computer science courses can offer what they need for practical applications.”
Rather than focusing on the theoretical, Horizons wants to bring college students into the tech trenches. In fact, the curriculum was put together by engineers who have been there, done that at several prominent companies.
"The Horizons School of Technology provides immersive software engineering and web/mobile development courses geared towards high-achieving college students and recent graduates," Ramesh wrote in an email." Our full-stack Javascript curriculum, developed by ex-Salesforce, Optimizely and D.E. Shaw engineers, is designed to teach students how to build web, mobile (iOS and Android) and desktop applications. We have a 4-month spring program and a 3-month summer program in San Francisco, Boston and Philadelphia."
Horizons also wants to give students context by bringing in professionals working in today’s dynamic tech community. In the past, they have brought in people like Fred Ehrsam, CEO of Coinbase, and Ken Baylor, head of compliance at Uber, for their speaker series.
The cost of the Boston summer program will be $9,000. And if students are in need of housing during the program, Horizons will set that up for them for another $800 per month.
“We’re not big fans of traditional student loans and…don’t want to layer on more and more debt for students,” he said.
Instead, Horizons has a fellowship program, through which it’s able to take on a certain number of students for free - housing included. Ramesh said they’re talking with corporate sponsors so they can find a way to expand their fellowship offerings.
“We also offer internal financing based on need for select students who definitely qualify for the course but can’t pay for it upfront. We figure out a way to defer their tuition, so they can pay it back in installments afterwards, hopefully with the internships and part-time jobs they get as a result of the program.”
College students interested in attending Horizons so they can kickstart their own startup may find an extra incentive. Ramesh said:
Entrepreneurship is becoming much more popular in our programs. A lot of coding camps are focused on training people to move on and get an engineering job. I think 50 to 60 percent will be doing that in our program, but we’ve seen a larger contingency interested in learning to code to build their own product… We’re incentivizing that more and we want students to know they can apply as a team. As a group, we’re to investing in them after the program. It’s something new that we’re doing, but we would be investing our own funds, like an angel investment.
