App Academy

Joining App Academy was one of the best decision I have made in my life! When I first heard about App Academy, it was hard to believe that the curriculum would require 80-100 hours per week of studying, which is definitely TRUE! During those 16 weeks of your life, you got to be able to talk and breathe programming. My experience at a/A was just amazing, it taught me more than I could have ever learned on my own.  Lastly, it is doable, if you have the want to become a Software Engineer, highly recommended. 

Coming in from a non-technical background I didn’t know what to expect but I was shocked at how much I was able to learn over the course of just a few months. The curriculum was well balanced and the culture was friendly and uplifting. The resources were abundant and  while the learning material could get overwhelming sometimes, we were encouraged to reach out to our circle leaders for help and general support. The instructors themselves were helpful and devoted to our success which was a big part of my enjoyment of this course. As my cohort started around the time states were shutting down, we only had two weeks of in-person learning, but their response to the shut-down was prompt and well thought-out so I did not feel robbed of the learning experience at all.  Overall, the course is a great way to learn, but the pace and intensity may not be for everyone. 

Going to App Academy was a great experience, however it has it's ups and downs.
The staff is composed with amazing TAs, they are very approachable and friendly, and you can relate to them, because most of them experienced going through the curriculum. 
Some projects were great to work on, others had some unclear instructions, however, you could always ask questions and the staff would gladly help you.
The only complaint I would have is with the final project we had to submit, they could provide us with more information on setup, materials to reference, etc.

Overall: prepare yourself for exhausting 4 months, but keep in mind it is rewarding. The amount of information you learn is insane, and really makes you feel proud of what you've done.

Coming from a non-technical background and going through the fullstack "in-person" curriculum, I can say that I know so much more than I did at the beginning of the course. The speed at which I learned and level of understanding I achieved would definitely not have been possible without the help of the instructors and the assessments. Instructors were quick to answer questions during the course (less so during the project phase, but that's part of the curriculum design) and their explanations were always fantastic.

My biggest complaint is on the curriculum design because some parts of it were a little confusing or outdated. To my knowledge, they are working on a course redesign and I have faith that future classes will have the best materials. In the times when the projects/instructions were unclear or confusing, you really had to pick up the slack, work twice as hard, and learn to be self-reliant.

As to the hours and course load, I thought that the second half of the course was significantly faster than the first half. Some concepts in the first half of the course took a week or more to learn, but most concepts in the second half were given maybe 2-3 days at most. That threw me off, and initially I disliked it tremendously and was prepared to voice my concern. However, having gone through those sped-up portions, I can say that in hindsight, I saw why the pace was as it was. What you learn in the last 2 weeks of the course is comparable to first 6-7 weeks combined. It's quick, but you come out of it feeling like "wow I didn't know I could do that".

Overall, I would recommend the program for those looking for a career change, but only if you are self motivated and willing to put in the effort to go far outside the scope of the class curriculum.

I'll start by pointing out that without App Academy's tuition deferment program, it would not have been possible for me to take this course. That is the first huge win for App Academy over other programs. The second big win is their online program. I don't live in San Francisco or New York. I don't live in a town where there are any coding bootcamps, as a matter of fact. So if it weren't for the online, again, I would have not been able to take the course. It has been incredibly stressful and it only got more stressful as the months rolled on. But if you try as hard as you can, you can get through it. You just can't give up. The course itself teaches you a lot of really marketable skills and I think they do a really good job of teaching those skills. Is it perfect? No. At this point it is hard to look at my own criticism and know whether it is valuable or just the product of my 6 month long high stress level. I guess if I don't get hired, it will probably validate those criticisms, but as I go on linkedin and see all of the a/A grads getting hired, it seems like if you follow the steps and commit yourself, that you will be rewarded. I think it is a very valuable course and I highly recommend it.

I joined App Academy with very high expectations of what the curriculum, staff, and program would be. I was disappointed at every turn. 

Time and time again, a/A staff proved to be highly disconnected with each other, and there was a deep sense of disorganization. (One eg: for about a month my instructor (someone who'd graduated from a/A 1 year prior, with no other software dev experience) actively wrote the day by day curriculum that we were actually taking.) Having attended the online curriculum, I can only speak to that: there were few to no attempts made by staff in order to foster a sense of community among the cohort, even as they spoke of such measures being undertaken (in an official capacity) in the in-person cohorts.

These faults (among others) might be admissible if the curriculum was very strong. The fact of the matter is that the written material for the Ruby course (still as of this writing freely available through a/A Online) is an amazingly written curriculum. The JavaScript portions (over half of the material), however, were a far cry from this standard. It was evident the material had not been updated, in some cases, for years. 

One of the things I truly disliked about going through a/A was that there were several times where I asked my instructor for help with a problem given in the curriculum, and they were unwilling (in one case) or unable (in another two cases) to help me. Now, I can't really fault someone who is out of school for a year, and who doesn't have any real life experience whatsoever to not know the intricacies of what I was asking (which at least in one case went above and beyond the curriculum), but I found it egregious that there was no system of escalation in place. Was there really no technical instructor in a/A's roster that could take some minutes to walk through an implementation of Knuth's Algorithm X?

These are only a couple of the gripes that I had with the system. They had feedback tools available, which I used in order to tell them about all of these incidents in turn, as they happened. I never once saw resolution, and no one ever reached back out to me about my issues. It seems to me that this shows a/A is simply very disorganized at a very high level, in need of some serious reshuffling of priorities.

As I write, my cohort is graduating in 2 days and we are starting the job search portion of the program. I have hopes for this portion still, because I figure that getting me a job is really a/A's core business, far and away from teaching me to code. However, all remains to be seen.

I received my BS and MS degrees in the sciences, so I was someone who have never touched or even really seen a line of code. I was working in the science industry, really doing well, and hadn't really thought about career change.  The world of software development wasn't something I had ever thought about it. While I enjoyed my job, I was getting bored. Somehow I started to review some YouTube videos/ read articles related to software development. It was then I started to code. I found coding enjoyable, but challenging. I researched many bootcamps. I finally decided to apply to App Academy and got admitted. 
I had read many reviews of App Academy , so I was aware that it was going to be intense. While I was prepared, I was still surprised by the amount of material and work we covered every single day. I studied nearly 12 hours every day (some days even more!). While it was extremely tiring, I was really enjoying learning and understanding new concepts. It was even more rewarding when I was able to apply the things I had learned into my full stack projects. My instructors were really helpful and explained the concepts very well. The work was intense, but it was all worth it! This is definitely one of my most challenging, but rewarding experiences.  I found the online class to be very beneficial to me. The instructors were available whenever I needed their help and the curriculum was organized really well. 

The entire time at App Academy I felt like I was behind on all the material but that was because I was comparing my progress with others in my cohort which was a huge mistake. If I compare what I knew when I first started to what I know now that I'm at the finish line there is a huge gap. I would definitely recommend App Academy to anyone trying to get into the industry. The teachers are great, they are all extremely helpful and genuinely care about your success.  The other students are even more so. Definitely worth the time and the effort!

The main benefit of going to App Academy is the rigor and accountability. You sign up for this bootcamp because you're ready to rock and super serious about getting a best-in-class curriculum to get your first engineering job.

I was afraid the online program wouldn't be as valuable or effective as the in-person, but I ended up being very challenged and happy with my result. Just a few months after graduating, I got a backend software engineer position at a big tech company with a great compensation package.

The TA's and instructor were super available and helpful throughout the program and my career coach was as hands on as I would like during the job search.

Cons: Would have preferred more data structures and algorithms material. For our job search, I would have liked more of a focus on quality of applications (like securing referrals) than viewing it as a numbers game. Also would have liked more solo projects instead of constant pair programming.

Pros: Really solid curriculum. I felt like I was a legit programmer after graduating. Was able to get to the final rounds with several reputable tech companies within the first few months of graduating. Really enjoyed the people. The intensity will up your game. The program attracts mostly high achievers.

**Crucial to remember** No bootcamp, including App Academy, will get you a job. You have to do the work. Even after you graduate, you have to keep practicing, studying, applying and interviewing. App Academy gave me an amazing foundation. The rest is up to you.

I finished the App Academy Online Program recently. Here are my pros and cons:

Pros:
- Great technology selections. They did their research well, all the tech stacks they teach are very relevant to current tech job market.
- Very tentative teaching environment. Instructors, TA's are all very responsive. You can always reach them and they are knowledgeable on the materials.
- Great job search coaching. They set up your portfolio with tech relevant projects, help you with your resumé and interview questions. They also host job fairs from time to time.

Cons:
- Slightly light on the academy side. They breezed through Data Structures and Algorithms and provided resources if individual wants to learn more. But to be fair, given the program's duration, there's not enough time to stuff everything in.
- More team building activities with classmates would be ideal.