App Academy

I come from a background working as a QA Engineer in the kind of start-up I believe App Academy prepares you to develop for. The day-to-day curriculum is set up in such a way that students who are brand new to the material have a manageable and well thought out roadmap, and people who are familiar with the concepts can explore more in depth material after finishing their daily tasks. In this way I believe that the curriculum is beautifully geared towards giving students the full reward of their hard work and providing people who have a good work ethic and genuine interest in technology all of the tools they need to succeed.

The career counseling is also extremely valuable for prospective job seekers. The amount of emphasis put on knowing the material well enough to have conversations about it, as well as interviewing techniques to set you apart from other bootcampers, is critical to opening up opportunities for jobs that are denied graduates of other bootcamps. I have seen graduates from coder-mills come out of their bootcamps and spend 2-3x longer than the average App Academy graduate before finding employment, due to the fact that they were not set up for success.

In summary, I'd recommend App Academy for people who are not only capable of working hard, but are extremely passionate about software engineering/app development. It is an unbelievably intensive curriculum where doing the minimum should not be enough to satisfy you, because you don't attend this bootcamp with the expectation of getting a degree or good grades, you do it out of a love and passion for the trade you're training for.

Among the sea of bootcamps, most are coder mills that don't teach their students how to problem solve or think critically. App Academy is different and it provides a perfect platform for motivated, smart, and driven people who will take the intense program by the horns and get the most out of it.

I'm a little over a month out of the program and I received three job offers with salaries I never dreamed I'd be making, and I can confidently say that I put in the work to get these offers, with the great curriculum and instruction at App Academy.

While this bootcamp, like almost all others, focuses on a specific tech stack, they emphasize problem-solving and provide a platform for those who want a deeper dive into CS. Showing up, doing the projects and homework, and applying for jobs will help you get a job. But if you want to get a stellar job, you have to have the grit to get through the difficulty of the problem, often with a lot of self-motivation to learn more on the side.

I had some experience with coding (nothing professional), so it wasn't a steep learning curve, but I still felt challenged every day and it all fell into place during the job search when I started to do well at interviews.

This program is NOT for you if you're expecting a magic bullet or if you think just graduating will land you a job. It's hard work, but the rewards are there for those who will put in the time.

I am now celebrating my one year anniversary as a software developer and this would not have been possible without App Academy.  After four years in a field that was not everything I expected it to be, I decided that I wanted to make a change; and I assume since you are reading this review, you are thinking the same thing.  Once I decided that I was invested in making this transition, and a bootcamp was the best way for me to make the change, I began to compare various programs and the main thing that differed App Academy from the others was their payment plan.   Due to the time requirements for all these programs (80+ hours a week) it is pretty unrealistic to expect to keep any resemblance of a job/income and living in NYC without one is pretty tough to do.  App Academy helps remedy this by not requiring any payment (other than a security deposit) until you land that first job.  Not only did this make living in an expensive city with no job more do-able but also gives them a "horse in the race” when you start your job hunt.  This includes continuous interview prep of white boarding, alumni Q&A, review/critique of your portfolio (resume, cover letter, GitHub/coding projects, personal website, and LinkedIn profile) as well as an in-house job fair at the end of your cohort.

Regarding the curriculum I found that while interviewing, most companies are not looking for you to know a certain stack but have the ability to learn a new stack (if needed) based on what you already know.  Most bootcamps offer a full stack curriculum in order to give you the needed marketable skills to prove you confidently know what you should and that you can learn something new if needed, and App Academy is no different. When I attended, the stack was Ruby, Ruby on Rails, SQL, Javascript, Backbone.js, jQuery, HTML, and CSS and since then they have updated to React.js instead of Backbone.js, but don’t worry, all new material is available to you as alumni so that you can use it if you would like to learn a new framework.  Like anything you do, you will get what you put in and App Academy gives you everything you need in order to succeed and become qualified in all the topics you cover.  From day one you will need to properly prepare for the interview process where you will complete online exams, a live coding challenge, and a live interview; and the testing doesn't end there.  To make sure that everyone is where they need to be so that no student is disadvantaged while pair programming there are (bi)-weekly exams that you must pass in order to continue with the program.  Preparing for this will include hours of studying and practice on the weekends and after class… this will definitely be 80+ hours a week.  All of this is not to discourage you because if you really expect to become proficient in so many languages in such a short amount of time, this is the only way to do it.  If you are ready to put in the time for 4 months and 100% sold on becoming a developer I think that App Academy will be perfect for you.

TL:DR - App Academy offers a comparable stack/curriculum to other bootcamps with everything you need to succeed if you are really 100% committed to the program.  It WILL be 80+ hours a week to get by and pass their weekly progress exams and 100+ if you want to really excel at everything.  That being said, I would not be at my current company without it and the payment plan they offer allowed me to even think this transition would be possible.

App Academy is difficult. Extremely difficult. You will be challenged quite possibly more than you ever have been before. You will fail, often. All of that being said, it is one of the best educations in the field given the timeframe you go through it and if you have the discipline and gumption to see it through. I went from someone with no prior coding experience to one of the top students in my class, able to make a fully functional (and if I say so myself, pretty damn cool) web app in the span of two weeks: from initial conceptualization to adding in final easter eggs. App Academy gave me the tools to accomplish this through both it's curriculum and it's great support network of both instructors and fellow students. We're all in the same boat and eager to help each other out where we can. If you can put three months of your life aside for App Academy, and only App Academy, you will succeed.

I thought that program was great overall. It provides directed learning, and many examples to draw from for understanding and study purposes. Much of the learning is done during paired programming and on your own in homework or your own projects. Be prepared to study a lot and focus intensely. I would have liked to have seen more use of popular libraries into the curriculum, but I suppose it makes sense to cover the fundamentals that would prepare one to learn any libraries on the job. I would highly recommend the program; it more than satisfactorily gives you the skills you need to get a job.

My cohort finished about a year ago, and everyone I've spoken with is super happy with the jobs they got afterward. I would recommend this bootcamp to anyone who is a self-starter. I was self-taught for over a year before the course started and that helped me out a lot. Even though we covered nearly everything I'd taught myself in the first 3 weeks, I came in with the confidence that this was something I would want to do as a career. At a/A there are no grades, nobody holding your hand or giving you constant praise. The staff is supportive of course, but they are there to teach you the skills and traits to become great at this trade, and that includes self-sufficiency.

I was planning to go to grad school for comp sci before my friend introduced me to App Academy. I was skeptical at first of programming bootcamps, but App Academy seemed really legit so I gave it a shot. Coming from a programming background, I was surprised by how challenging and how much I learned in just the first week. The curriculum is very challenging and keeps you on your toes the whole way through. By pairing with a new student every day, you tend to pick up in each other's good programming practices. At the end of the program you know how to create a website from the ground up and build it well. The curriculum is constantly evolving as new web frameworks and best practices emerge, and as an alumni I still have access to all the materials. App Academy turbo charged my career in the best and most competitive city in the world. App Academy was the best decision of my life.

App Academy is definitely not for the faint of heart- from the application process, to the prep work, to the course itself and ultimately the job search, you will be challenged and pushed to your limit. That being said, I met some of the most intelligent people I've ever known here (my classmates) who were supportive and helpful, and the curriculum is top-notch. In the end, it took me exactly one month after graduation to find a job, and I am loving my new career. If you want to make a change, a/A is the place to do it.