[powersjcb]

Sure solo/self-paced can work for some people. I am not one of those people.

I spent a couple of months learning and working on projects in my free time. A consistent theme was getting stuck on a concept or bug and having no feedback to get past it. (Either, "give up, move on, come back to this later" or "oh, fix this one thing and its done".)

I guess, I could have made the transition without an immersive program, but I'm sure my outcome would have taken more time, had a lower starting salary, and eventually more cost money.

Retrospectively, there was $30k post-tax in opportunity cost of not working at a Mechanical Engineering job (bay area) for 6 months and the $22k tuition.