Horizons School of Technology — Well Worth Your Money
tl;dr Horizons School of Technology is more than worth the money for any college student looking to break into tech or launch their startup post graduation.
When I graduated college, I took a big risk choosing to pursue my own venture rather than accepting a safe job as a product manager. I had been running an on-demand delivery startup that was expanding to three college campuses, but I knew my computer science skills were not up to speed to scale my user base. As I searched for a solution, I was initially skeptical of Horizons. I didn’t know the founders, the success of previous students, nor the quality of the education. It was also a big risk to dedicate 50–60 hours a week to coding rather than working on my startup full-time.
However, after the first week of the program, I knew I made the right choice. It was, by far, one of the most difficult challenges I’ve ever faced. Every time I thought I’d caught up, Horizons increased the intensity. I was coding 55+ hours per week and working on my startup an additional 5–10 hours per week, but I loved every second of it: the grind, the people, the technical challenges — I continuously felt more and more power to create products from scratch. I never learned so much in a condensed period of time, and, if I learned this material myself, it would have taken me at least a year to get to where I am now.
Although a lot of the Horizons course material can be found online, there is one important quality not learned through online courses: grit. It’s hard to stay motivated with the high initial learning curve — especially when learning how to debug without throwing your computer against a wall. Horizons alleviated this problem by having knowledgeable and motivated teachers explaining concepts, giving life advice, and meticulously searching through your code when it wasn’t functional. Having people around to help was a big step in overcoming the initial hurdle.
Additionally, I think the biggest draw to Horizons is the quality of the students they recruit. I was lucky enough to attend a good liberal arts college and was used to being around smart and hard-working people. Horizons was another level up. It wouldn’t be rare to see more than half of the students working past 9pm on a hard coding project, or making apps that don’t only have the potential to make a profit, but also make a positive impact on the world.
Last, the most unstressed part of Horizons is the commitment of the founders. It was rare to see Darwish or Abhi leave the building earlier than 10pm, and they always offered their help and checked on our well-being. I could email Darwish questions regarding how to be a better CEO or how to change my business model, and he would make a meeting with me the next day. They also constantly asked for feedback by sending out daily forms to determine what we thought of the lessons and how they could improve. I would tell them about a problem and they would have it fixed the next day. They were that good.
Darwish and Abhi may be young, but they are hitting just the tip of the iceberg in terms of their growth. I have no doubt that their coding bootcamp will expand exponentially in the next five years and they will continue to disrupt the education that we, unfortunately, do not get taught in college. I left Horizons with high-level coding skills, mentors, and fellow friends and colleagues to expand my startup. For anyone looking to break into software engineering or to create their own startup with the resources to succeed, Horizons is the place for you.
Quinntin Ruiz
Horizons Alumni ‘17
