App Academy

Within 2 months I went from zero programming experience to being able to create an entire website from scratch. I think it's incredible what App Academy has taught me in such a short time span.

Of course, given such a short window, it's impossible for them to teach you everything there is to know. The real value of the program is they teach you how to think and to learn programatically. 

App Academy promises only one thing, to be able to make anyone into an entry level software developer. It will not be the end of your learning experience but it provides a hell of a start. 

I love the program, but it is not for everyone. These last 8 weeks have been the hardest of my life. You can't afford to fall behind because there is a very real possibility of failing out.

If you've read all of that and you still think App Academy is for you, then I could not recommend it more. It has been an excellent experience and I'm genuinely excited to change the course of y life.

App Academy is everything they say it is.  It is demanding, rigorous, rewarding, all-consuming, high-stress, hysterical, difficult, very fast, and transformative.  I’m in the last couple weeks of the program, and it’s just now sinking in how wild a ride this has been.

Like most things worth doing, it takes all day. I worked on code from 9a until midnight most nights during the program.  This level of commitment is really non-optional for most people-- maybe really fast folks can turn in around 10:00.  There is no coasting.  You will be confronted with high-pressure, timed assessments at 9am on Mondays.  You will pair almost every day for months, which means you will be communicating constantly about things you don’t understand yet. You will switch languages every two weeks, and App Academy will often introduce new material before old has had a chance to sink in. A majority of the class has literally had dreams about code. I had one just last night about launching an ICO to finish a non-existent interactive blue screen of death app.  They know how to get you fully committed here, and they do it very well.

Many reviews fixate on the assessment structure.  The people who failed the high-pressure, closed-book, timed assessments generally had severe test anxiety or attempted to party a lot or tend too much to other responsibilities during the cohort.  It was much more rare for them to not be smart enough, the admissions process is selective enough to filter out those who lack the raw talent to succeed.  It is up to you to do enough self-care, including healthy food, sleep, and exercise, to keep from psyching yourself out of the program, and it’s largely a matter of personal style about whether engaging with deliberately induced stress motivates you to try harder vs makes you unproductive.  

The curriculum is always changing as tech evolves, and the staff works very hard to try and keep everything as current as possible.  Most students leave more knowledgeable in Javascript and related frameworks than the Ruby you start in, and they’re teaching the latest versions of React, ES6 syntax, etc.  Having a path rough hewn ahead of the class through the endless dark jungles of code knowledge has been extremely helpful in helping me stay focussed and to avoid wasting time-- they really do know how to point you directly towards engagement with concepts that will get you producing good work, learning more fundamental concepts, and collaborating well with others.  I really do believe that learning this material would have taken me at least another year, probably with several unproductive detours on the way.

While being demanding and highly structured, App Academy also asks for a lot of independence and initiative.  Much of the curriculum is written in a relatively terse style that demands the reader both be able to read closely through dense instructions and to be comfortable doing more and more independent research as the curriculum goes on, just like a real dev.  The teachers are available to get you unstuck, but you’re encouraged to learn more about solving your own problems every day, and when coding in pairs, you will do tons of mutual troubleshooting, basically proving to each other that you can both teach and learn-- it is very normal to just engage with whoever’s closest to you about whatever bug you’re in the middle of, and people uniformly treat that as an opportunity to practice teaching and cement knowledge than as an interruption.  The job search requires you to have a lot of discipline and follow-through, with strict requirements for volume of applications and development of portfolio materials without a ton of hand-holding.  Ultimately, it becomes very clear that you are ultimately responsible for your own education, relationships with others, and destiny, which is both empowering and scary.  

It’s overwhelming and lovely.  There is just so much to know.  By the end of it, you will have several days like mine today, where I white-boarded for interview prep for two hours and wrote this and also built a full Redux cycle for a new feature in a full-stack app I’m finishing up which involved creating a postgreSQL table through a Rails generator, with AJAX calls to the API sent by React actions routed to the DB through Thunk middleware feeding the Rails MVC which ultimately produce JSON parsed through jBuilder in to a Redux store which is rendered by React Components with Vulpix routing and styled with Sass written in a modified BEM pattern with Javascript click handlers and animations facilitated by a library called Anime-- all so I could render a nice gradient fade-in effect for state changes in a 20x20 pixel bookmark button rendered for logged in users on a site I built from scratch in nine days.  Only one of those languages and frameworks mentioned above is actually a Pokemon-- the rest of them are actual pieces of tech taught in the course that I wrote today in an independent project, and I can’t believe I’ve come this far from being barely able to write basic Ruby programs three short months ago.

App Academy isn’t for everybody.  But if it’s for you, it is one of the best things you can do for yourself.  :)

Overall Experience

I personally thought App Academy was incredibly fun precisely because of how challenging it was and it really was challenging. You are surrounded with incredibly bright people, with very interesting backgrounds, and you will push each other to get better everyday. 

Curriculum

The curriculum is easily the strongest part of App Academy. It is truly incredible how much knowledge you will walk away with if you are able to pace yourself and be consistent in doing all of the readings and preparing for the lectures everyday. They offer a lot, but they also require a lot out of you and it is difficult to keep up unless you are able to motivate yourself everyday.

Luckily they provide intrinsic motivation due to pair programming and assessments. Knowing that you have to work with a different person everyday helps you make sure to try to get a good understanding of the subject matter so that you don't slow your partner down. Most importantly knowing that you could be kicked out by failing too many assessments will also motivate you to keep up. This was a main motivator for me attending, because I knew it would always keep me on my toes.

At the end of the main curriculum you will be able to build a fullstack web application that is dynamic, complex, and impressive. That ten day project will be one of the most tiring experiences of your life, but you will be quite proud when you are done. Be sure to celebrate with your cohort mates when it's over.

Diversity

I added this category because I think it's important to note that App Academy is below average when it comes to racial/gender diversity. My cohort was about 5% women and 10-15% non white/asian. This did not affect my experience at all, as someone from an under-represented group, but I cannot speak for everyone and thought it should be noted for others considering App Academy.

Instructors

The instructors are usually App Academy grads. There is a question button during pair programming, which calls over a TA to assist you when you and your partner are stuck. They are all very cool, helpful, and the lectures are incredibly informative. The lectures will usually go over the reading and assignments for the night before and introduce some new material for the day ahead, so make sure you come prepared. 

Job Assistance

The Job Search Curriculum in the last three weeks can feel a bit anticlimactic. You've just spent 9 weeks going 100mph and then all of the sudden things slow down quite a bit. It can be a good thing because everyone is a bit burnt out from the fullstack project, but I wish there was a way to keep a similar pace going. Here you will work on your portfolio, build a nice online presence, learn how to approach networking, applying, negotiating etc. 

Don't come in thinking App Academy is going to provide you with all kinds of contacts and connections. I don't think they have any more ability to get you a job than any other bootcamp. However, they have a great reputation with companies in NYC and SF and a huge alumni network in those respective cities. I attended App Academy in NYC and I can tell you there are companies that only hire App Academy grads because the curriculum is more in depth and the projects are more impressive. 

Outcome

Personally, I applied to 305 jobs, had 6 phone screens, 3 on-sites, 2 offers, and landed an awesome job at a startup in NYC 3 months after graduating and I couldn't be happier. 

The job search is an absolute grind, but don't get discouraged. Just stick with it, apply everywhere, and don't say no to yourself! You never know who will get a job, even if everyone applies to the same one. There is a lot of luck involved and each person is unique even though you all graduated from the same course.

Be financially responsible, make sure you have enough of a safety net so that you can focus, and it'll all come together in the end.

App Academy was definitely the hardest 3 months of my life. At times it was a bit brutal, with 10% of our cohort getting kicked out before the end of the program. The program is certainly not for everyone, but if you are a fast learner AND can dedicate pretty much your entire life to the program, you can get a job as a Software Engineer after this program. You certainly are expected to work as much as you everyday. Everyone is incredibly smart and motivated; I went to a top school in the United States, but found my peers here to be heads and tails above my university peers.

That being said, they do deliberately pace the course so that you can keep up -- pushing you to the brink and then giving you a few days for the material to sink in. I was also able to take a small handful of days off, but some are unable to do so. 

I had absolutely NO computer science background before attending, and ended up getting a job within the first month following the program, so this program DEFINITELY fulfills its promises. 

I recently completed the 12-week software engineering track at App Academy’s San Francisco campus. Before attending App Academy I had some experience in coding but I have never studied computer science or attended any coding course. What I think is great about App Academy:

1. The course is very well structured. Course materials increase in complexity and difficulty as the course progresses and by the end of the course, a student should have a very good understanding of both the frontend and backend mechanics of a web application, all in a matter of 12 weeks.

2. Each day I work with a different member of the same cohort to resolve some coding challenges. I enjoy working as a team and I also have the opportunity to learn how to work with and adapt to people with vastly different working styles.

3. There are weekly assessments which I think is a good way to test what I have learned in the preceding week.

4. The campus is located in downtown San Francisco which is very convenient.

Other things that you should know about App Academy: The course is intensive and the learning curve is steep for most students (unless you have a very solid background in coding, but even for some members of my cohort who had fairly solid prior experience in coding they still found it challenging). Completion devotion to the program is expected from every student

On the whole I am very satisfied with my experience at App Academy although I would hope the program to be a bit longer (say a few weeks more) and to add a reading week in the middle of the course so that students can review or study an area in particular.

Honestly the one feeling I walked away from my months long studies at App Academy was enjoyment. I surprisingly enjoyed every day of the App Academy curriculum. I was worried that I would not be able to sit through a full day spending 1-2 hrs in lecture and then simply coding away at a desk and yet the curriculum and the way it was laid out + pair programming made every day a joy. I benefitted immensly and thank G-d I begin a new job next month after being on the job search after the course for a little over a month.

Everything you've read about App Academy is probably true. The hours are long, the course is intense, and for some people it's probably the most difficult thing they've every had to do. But more importantly, most people who have gone through it will agree that it was the best decision they've ever made and I can definitely agree. 

One of the greatest things about App Academy is the fact that they have the same goals as you: to land you a job. This is especially true when students (most usually do) take the deferred tuition model, which means not paying full tuition until accepting a full-time job offer. You can really tell that everything they do is to try to set you up for success. The work space is available 24/7 and there's always a TA available to help, whether it be in person or on Slack. 

It is important to note that while everything is laid out for your success in the course, how far you'll go is 100% dependent on the work that you put in. Due to there being no grades (aside from weekly assessments), it is sometimes easy for students to overlook some homework assignments and projects. If you're someone who likes to barely scrape by and do the bare minimum, then you're going to be in for a bad time. I had a few pairs I worked with that did not complete any readings and seemed very behind and those people ended up being the ones asked to leave after failing two assignments. On the contrast, those who study JUST for the assessments and put other parts of the curriculum on the backburner may pass all of them, will sometimes end up hurting themselves during final projects and end up having to relearn a lot of concepts that were not covered in the assessments. You really do get what you put into the program and knowing/balancing what concepts to focus on becomes a really important thing to learn over the course of the 12 weeks. 

Overall, App Academy was definitely worth it for me. If you're looking for a change in your life and you think that web development may be for you, I would urge you to apply. If you get through the application process and get accepted, the only thing that you will need to get all the way through the course is having the right mindset. 

My background and context: I come from a very non-technical, liberal arts background and my first time ever coding was about 5 months before my cohort started, while I was preparing for the JumpStart course (if you get invited to take part in JumpStart, I HIGHLY recommend doing it - you get a great taste of what the real program is like, including overall instruction-style, assessments, pair-programming, basic material, etc. and it reportedly greatly improves your chances of getting accepted into the program). 

Review: Overall, I would say that App Academy lives up to its ranking and is a great experience for turning someone like me, with absolute minimal tech / coding background, and in just 3 months turning this person into someone who can create a web app from scratch and can comfortably apply to jobs in that field. That being said, everything everyone says about the workload and intensity is completely accurate and you need to take it seriously. I gave up the vast majority of my life's activiities outside of a/A out of necessity - you really need to put in every weeknight and most of your every weekend into catching up if you're behind, getting ahead if you're not, or studying for the next week's assessment. Being someone who wasn't as naturally gifted or previously trained in the field, I had to work much, much harder and put in way more effort than those people so that I could still contribute and be productive in my daily pairings, projects, assessments, etc. 

Pairing - I found the pair-programming experience to be one of the most educational and enjoyable aspects of the program. Every day you are assigned a new partner to work with for the entirety of that day. You work through (and rarely complete) all of the day's projects together and over that time end up learning a lot, both about the person and about the day's material. Whether you find yourself to be the faster/more knowledgeable of the pair, or the slower/less knowledgeable, you end up learning at least a few things by day's end. Sometimes your partner will know a few cool keyboarding shortcuts in Atom that you hadn't seen before, or they will know some tidbit about Javascript formatting that you end up following yourself every time after, or they will have some alternative strategy to solving a problem that you find much easier to follow than the normal methods. I didn't have a single bad pairing experience in all 7 weeks of my pairings, half the time you end up eating lunch with your partner and talk, and most of the time by the end of the day you end up befriending one more person in your cohort. While everyone is learning the material at different speeds, you find that there are no "dumb" people in your cohort, every one is highly intelligent in different ways; they are the 2% that made it in with you and each is inherently capable of getting through it. 

Assessments - The assessments were definitely one of the more difficult aspects for me. The assessment policy is: out of 6 assessments in the first 8 weeks of the program, if you fail 2 of them (failure usually being defined around 85%), you are asked to leave the program, that day. This is where I find my only cons with the program. Having to leave the program that day, in front of all of your classmates, is downright brutal and borderline humiliating. If anything it motivates you that much more in your studying to avoid such an experience but I still think it is overly harsh - a simple email that night instead would be a less degrading situation, in my opinion. I also don't like that because of this intense "Survivor"-style policy, I was often put into the very difficult situation of having to choose between fully completing the readings/videos, and hw assignments for the weekend, or studying sufficiently for that week's assessment to avoid expulsion. While I tried to balance this as best as I could and ultimately did make it through, I hated having to make that decision each week and having to compromise my getting-ahead for that week. 

To get you through all of it, there is an amazing team of warm, highly-gifted instructors and TA's who come to your aid either in person or online at the push of a button and explain concepts and bugs to you until both of you are confident that you fully understand, all of your highly-motivated, chill-mannered classmates, and of course, Google :).

For context: I came straight out of college with a degree in pure mathematics, a significant history of programmatic thinking, and a few years of basic programming experience and game development in some unconventional languages under my belt, so I ended up being one of the faster ones. However, I'll write the review from the perspective of my classmates since I understand that the majority of applicants don't have technical backgrounds. I'll cover the scary before I cover the positives.

You need a lot of grit, determination, and motivation. The overall pace of the course is extremely fast, and it challenges your studying habits and your ability to overcome nearly incomprehensible material being thrown at you at lightning speed. 9 hours of class time per day along with hours of homework each night means that you end up eating and breathing code for 70-90 hours per week. Weekly assessments are given to ensure that everyone is on track, and two failures means you get removed; about a dozen people from the cohort didn't make it to the end and it kinda sucks seeing them leave. You could feel the stress hormones through the roof, and over half of the cohort experienced failing one assessment and the doomsday mindset that followed. There was an unfortunate tradeoff between fully understanding the material and studying for the assessments, and most people opted for leaving the understanding to after the assessments were over. I did not experience the stress that most people did, but it's common enough to be worth mentioning. 

That being said, the amount that you end up learning is quite impressive. No one could learn all this through self-study at the pace that they teach it here. At the end of nine weeks, I found myself with a fully functional single-page web app built on Rails and React/Redux, which was super cool (too bad they don't teach this kind of stuff in college). The pair programming was also a great experience - you find yourself developing soft skills and becoming more eloquent at communicating, which are of utmost importance to the job search. My classmates were all super chill and bright folks, and it was an absolute pleasure to be working alongside them and pairing with them every day. I can't say I miss pair programming, but I can say I enjoyed it a lot and experienced a lot of growth that I never experienced when I was self-teaching programming.

I feel prepared for the job search, and I know that I will be much more successful in the search than I would have been had I tried to pursue this path through self-study. 

The bootcamp prep course with Alvin (and David as our TA) did exactly what it said on the tin - got me into my top choice coding bootcamp (within 2 months of starting the course)! The curriculum takes you from complete beginner to Bootcamp ready, moving at a pretty quick pace at first, but with plenty of time to solidify and practice what you have learned over the 4 weeks. The material is thorough, however there are a few topics you will have to invest a little more time into if you are interested in schools other than a/A - but nothing you can't handle with each invidividual school's prep material. 

Alvin and David were both awesome. Patient, supportive, serious about the work but also lighthearted in their approach. I think the money is a worthwhile investment if you are serious about getting into a bootcamp and want to jumpstart that process.

General Summary:

I wholeheartedly enjoyed my twelve weeks at App Academy. The program provides an intense, unique experience. Basically, it lasts twelve weeks: the first nine weeks comprise the “Technical Curriculum” and the last three the “Job Search Curriculum”. However, after being admitted and accepting your offer, you have to complete a one-month online course called “Alpha Prep” before starting.

The technical curriculum is intense. In seven weeks, you will learn all the material you need to be able to develop your own React/Rails web app from scratch in the eighth and ninth weeks. On a daily basis, you will have many projects (whose material you covered in readings and videos the night before) to work on with your partner. You’ll learn Ruby, Postgresql, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, and React/Redux.

However, pair programming and the “question button” system serve to alleviate some of the stress of the course. Pair programming is basically you coding on a single pc (and keyboard) with a partner. Every fifteen minutes, you switch “drivers”, i.e., the person who is physically typing on the keyboard. For the first couple of days, you might feel uncomfortable having to code all day with a partner, but the benefits of doing so become apparent soon after. Having to verbalize and communicate problems to someone else rather than hacking away at the keyboard forces you to become methodical in your approach, and it helps you ask better questions when you’re stuck.

The “question button” is a button on the internal web app that puts your name on a question queue. The TA’s are pinged every time a person is added, and they come by to field students’ questions on a first-come, first-served basis. The benefit of this system is that it allows all students an equal opportunity to have their questions answered and it deals with the issue of less vocal or visible students receiving less attention.

The job search curriculum begins in the tenth week. By that point, you will have learned all the skills you need to develop fully functioning web apps from scratch. However, simply because you have learned the technical material doesn’t mean the course becomes less intense. In these three weeks, you will work on your résumé, cover letters, online presence, personal pitch, and whiteboarding problems. In this aspect of the course, you will receive a lot of support from the career coaches. They will review your projects portfolio, résumé, etc, in depth and will give you detailed pointers on how to improve each item.    

Pros:

The TA’s are always on call, and they generally are able to pinpoint your problem within seconds and do not leave you until all your doubts are assuaged.

Almost the projects serve some practical use, and the emphasis on repetition ensures that you internalize the material.

Pair programming makes the experience more enjoyable, and it ensures that you rarely get bogged down with trivial bugs.

The career coaches provide a lot of support in the job search. They help with your portfolio, personal pitch, networking skills, online presence, and negotiation.

App Academy’s alumni network is helpful and supportive.

Cons:

The curriculum is constantly being updated so sometimes you will find some inconsistencies in the material. This problem does not appear so much in the 12-week program itself, but it is definitely noticeable and distracting in the Alpha Prep course.

As much as I love pair programming, you will have days where you work with someone you find intolerable. Fortunately, this only happened to me three days out of the roughly 35 in which you pair program, but this experience is variable.

There are six assessments throughout the course, and they are a bit stressful because if you fail any two of them, you are asked to leave the program with your initial deposit refunded. Moreover, because they are graded automatically, they are unforgiving--meaning that a single typo can cause code with otherwise sound logic to fail their automated tests. However, the expectations of the assessments are straightforward and you are given plenty of time and material to prepare for them.

Caveats:

If you are not an independent learner, you will have a hard time at App Academy. Despite the great amount of support you will have, there is a lot of material and little time. If you assume App Academy is like a traditional educative program where the student plays a more passive role, you will likely struggle through it. This is not a criticism of the instructors (I hold them in high esteem), but it is simply the nature the program.

You will not have time for anything else. This is not an exaggeration. I taught myself to code for half a year before attending App Academy so the first three weeks were relatively light for me. That being said, I was only able to have weekend evenings free during this time. When it came time to create our web apps from scratch, I literally had no time for anything else even on the weekend.

Some people assume that the job search curriculum is less intense than the technical curriculum. This is not true so don’t get your hopes up!