Deep Dive: How NGT Academy IT Bootcamp Is Setting the Pace in Tech Education

A few years ago, it was estimated there would be more than three million unfilled cybersecurity jobs in the United States by this year. Today, that prediction has proven true as the demand for these experts increases, especially with an increase in cybercrimes reported since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

Getting cyber security training is the right move, but people often incur debt to get degrees. That can be enough discouragement for many who wish to cross into a career in IT security. Enter, NGT Academy.

What Is NGT Academy?

Since its creation, IT bootcamp NGT Academy has worked to fill the vacuum in the tech space by training students to get high-paying jobs in cyber security. It is on a mission to help one million people get tech jobs by 2030. And it’s doing so by helping students obtain affordable tech education.

NexGenT started NGT Academy with one question in mind: “Could we take people from zero to engineer in a matter of months instead of years?”

In an interview with Career Karma, Terry Kim, NGT Academy founder and CEO, said: “At the time, I was working at Arista Networks. I started a pilot program called the Zero to Engineer course and I enrolled about a dozen students. Within three to six months, I saw these mentees level up their lives and their careers. That’s when the idea was born.” 

Unlike what you often see in other bootcamps, NGT Academy offers a different value proposition: to make a career change with affordable tuition and flexible payment plans and use a hands-on approach to learning.

How Is NGT Academy Different from Other IT Bootcamps?

What makes an excellent bootcamp? In the US today, there are hundreds of bootcamps, each claiming to be uniquely suited for you. Often, they advertise several enticing features and impressive outcomes that leave prospects confused about which choice to make.

If you ask yourself: “What do I truly want from a bootcamp?” you may say you want a program with community-like learning or assurance of a high-paying job after graduation. And you’re right. According to the World Bank, coding bootcamps may provide high-quality tech jobs, boost business creation for those with low incomes, and complement existing tertiary educational programs.

But aside from remote learning, career support, and the likes, NGT Academy offers unique features to its students. It builds its curriculum around an intensive hands-on learning approach to help students understand the job demands in the real world.

The quality and experience of the school’s instructors are another standout feature. It has a team of engineers and cyber security practitioners with professional experience to help students have a seamless learning journey. Even co-founders Terry Kim and Jacob Hess have a combined industry experience of over 35 years. 

“I’ve had so many trainers that were never in the field. I think that model is broken. It needs to be changed,” Terry said.

Diving further into its unique approach to learning, NGT Academy helps make IT education accessible and affordable. With those qualities and several other offerings, it hopes to transform lives today.

Military-Grade Curriculum

When Terry was in the Air Force, he trained novices to become experts within four months. And he successfully trained several cohorts through his distinctive style. He introduced lots of project work for students so they could quickly address real-world problems. 

“In the military, we had to train 18 to 20-year-olds in four months to become battlefield-ready to set up mission-critical networks. It was very important that we train them on the real tactical, practical skill sets,” Terry said.

Introducing that concept to NGT Academy, Terry and his colleagues crafted a syllabus to create a balance between theory and practical work. The goal was to make a learning plan that makes students job-ready as they graduate.

For the Cyber Security program, the curriculum begins with an introduction to networking to give students a basic understanding of how network architecture works. Then, it advances to other topics covering:

• Scanning Networks;
• Social Engineering;
• Certificate Management;
• Encryption;
• Wireshark;
• Hacking Wireless Networks;
• Vulnerability Scanning, Network Vulnerabilities;
• Protocols & Services;
• Keyloggers, Sniffers;
• System Hacking;
• Password Cracking Tools;
• Evading IDS Firewalls & Honeypots;
• PKI Concepts;
• CompTIA Security+, and among others.

The Network Engineering bootcamp program also provides a ground-up approach to learning. Students configure and deploy a LAN with routing, switching, wireless, Voice over IP, and security. Then, they learn how to plan, design, and implement their Full Stack Network with a headquarters location and two branch offices after understudying some real-world examples.

Eventually, they advance to more complex topics, using a practical approach to education.

Hands-On Approach to Education

NGT Academy maximizes a hands-on approach to learning. Students spend more than 50 percent of the entire program duration working on real-world portfolio projects. That translates to more than 100 hours of intensive practice—all so its graduates can adapt to the demands of the modern-day workspace. 

Mentorship from Top Industry Professionals

In addition to other distinctive offerings, NGT Academy has virtual mentorship services for its students. Through this program, learners access top industry professionals who provide necessary guidance and motivation. 

Multiple Payment Options

NGT Academy has two payment options for students to help finance their studies. First, it has an upfront payment plan which requires students to pay their entire tuition before the program’s start date. 

Students that opt for this plan will pay $12,500 at the beginning of their program. After that, they will not have to bother about settling extra charges, which usually come with the learn-now-pay-later schemes. 

Although it is the most cost-effective, not every student may afford such bulk on a swing. NGT Academy provides the Income-Shared Agreement (ISA) plan for such people, which helps the school accommodate a more diverse student community.

The ISA is an income-tied loan offered to students to cover their tuition costs while they study at $0. The plan triggers a repayment clause once students get a qualifying position. That involves paying a fixed amount from their pre-taxed income every month for a specified duration, which differs with the institution, course, or amount of tuition.

NGT Academy’s ISA repayment terms demand that students pay 10 percent of their gross income for 48 months to cover the cost of tuition plus the additional charges that the loan attracts. The payback begins once you start earning at least $3,333 monthly.

Students can contact an admissions officer to discuss their options further.

Robust Career Services

As much as NGT Academy focuses on presenting quality skills to students, it also aims to prepare them to search for and land lucrative jobs. It does so by training learners for job interviews and helping them build an attractive portfolio. 

Further, the school embeds methods in its curriculum to better prepare the students for life after bootcamp. It provides two weeks of dedicated career training covering several topics, from writing a cover letter to creating a solid resume and acing a job interview. It also gives students access to one-on-one sessions with a career coach plus a bi-weekly live class for additional support.

NGT Academy’s Employer Network

The NGT ACADEMY Employer Network comprises leading enterprise employers from the private and public sectors and recruitment firms specializing in IT and cyber security. With this network, the academy provides a framework to present its graduates to potential employers, thereby increasing their chances of getting a top job.

This benefit, however, is exclusive only to qualified students. Contact a customer agent to learn how to use the NGT Academy Employer Network and its qualification requirements. 

Flexible Design to Fit Your Needs

NGT Academy provides a robust curriculum for both full-time and part-time learning availability. That way, students can easily choose between the variants depending on how much time they can commit to studying over the six months learning period. These formats are both available for NGT Academy’s Network Engineering and Cyber Security programs.

The courses are also delivered in both online and in-person modes to accommodate all learners. However, the in-person option is available only on its campus in downtown Phoenix in Arizona.

Whether in-person or virtual, the part-time programs provide the same syllabus as the full-time variant but longer duration. It takes 24 weeks to complete the NGT Academy part-time programs, while the full-time programs run for 14 weeks. Further, all programs cost $12,500 under the school’s upfront payment plan.

Do NGT Academy Students Get Hired?

NGT Academy does not leave students clueless about how to get a job after the bootcamp. Instead, it provides robust training and job prep services to help students for life after the classroom. 

According to its website, there are about 50,000 learners on the platform. Also, it features testimonials of some alumni describing their experience at school and how it helped change their lives. 

Chase Mitchell, one of the program’s first students, shares his story.

When he started, he had $50,000 in college debts. At the time, his annual income was $30,000, and he was also starting a family. His journey through life was a rollercoaster ride: from getting into a life-threatening accident to losing his mother at a young age and witnessing his father break his back to provide for him.

Chase had gone through the worst of life. However, he saw the Zero to Engineer Facebook ad and applied. After the training, he worked his way up the tech ladder and is now a senior network engineer at a tech giant.

Another alumnus, Makeia Jackson, said before NGT Academy, she was a stay-at-home mom. She was at home not because she wanted to, but because she couldn’t get a job even with her tech degree. Like Chase, she got to know about the platform from a Facebook ad, and she pressed further to learn more about the academy. 

It was then that she met Terry for the first time while attending one of his webinars. In her words: “Seeing Terry and Jacob, I just see honesty and the passion of them trying to help other people without having to spend so much money, without putting themselves into debt with college degrees.”

Not long after, she applied and got admitted into a Cyber Security cohort at the school. And after a few months of learning, she applied for a job and got a call for an interview. For her, that was a huge milestone, and she attributed the success to NGT Academy. 

“If I hadn’t done the NexGenT courses, I don’t think I would have gotten the interview or the phone call,” she said. “I went in, and they asked me what I knew, so I just told them what I was learning at NexGenT.”

Eventually, she got the job as a Cyber Security technician at Corsica Technologies.

NGT Academy says it has helped students land over 500 IT jobs in the United States last year, paying an average salary of $72,362. Beyond landing jobs, the program trains students with skill sets to help them thrive in their workplaces.

Looking into the Future

Talking about NGT Academy and its plan for the future, Terry said, “We’re spending a lot on AR and VR technologies to blend our reality even more. Next year, we’ll be launching some VR projects for our students which is super exciting.” With the innovation, students will enjoy a closer-to-real-world experience even when they learn remotely.

Terry said it is his vision to make NGT Academy the biggest IT bootcamp in the world.

“I see NGT Academy in the next few years being the number one IT academy on the planet, where we really can democratize education and provide this opportunity to anyone that has a high-speed Internet connection,” he said.

NGT Academy offers unique value to its students and transforms their lives through its teaching method. By October, NGT Academy will launch the next cohort in full-time and part-time network engineering programs. Follow this link to book your spot at NGT Academy.