When choosing a coding bootcamp, one of the first places you might look is the published outcome statistics. However, while some stats make for nice marketing, they don't tell the whole story. Here's an example:

Each program typically publishes a "graduation rate" to indicate the percentage of students that went through the program in the advertised program duration.

This is important but not in the way you might imagine.

Graduation rate being too high is a red flag.

When I was a technical mentor and campus lead at Hack Reactor, one of my main responsibilities was to ensure students would be capable of finding a job once they made it through the curriculum. If not, I had to intervene.

Intervention meant giving them extra time, asking them to come back for a later cohort so they could do some additional self study, or remove them from the program altogether. All of these things impact the "graduation rate", but are actually good for the program:

• Removing a student for unpreparedness raises the bar for the rest of the cohort and keeps expectations high.
• Does right by the student by not letting them slide into an unsuccessful job search.
• The overall number of students who do make it to the end are more likely to land a job.

While no coding bootcamp is perfect when it comes to intervention, graduation rate is a helpful stat that provides insight into a program's efficacy.