App Academy

The atmosphere of App Academy is, you get out what you put in. If you want to slack off or work until your fingers bleed, App Academy will let you do that. There is no authority figure who is going to get upset or disappointed if you don't do the work. There is so much work every step of the way that you can commit 90 hours a week and not finish everything you are assigned. At the same time however, you can get by on 60 hours a week, like I did, and not get as much out of it. 

Your mindset is the best indicator of your success at the program. Self-discipline is a must, and if you remain diligent, you come out the other side as a software engineer.

I'm currently 2 months into the App Academy program, and it is just as tough as they say. I feel like I've grown a lot since I first got here. I never knew I could learn so much so fast. It has proven to be a very beneficial and formative experience.  Although it is hard, the staff and everyone else involved are very supportive. The atmosphere is very open and welcoming and I never once felt like an outsider. The work load is extremely tough,  during my time here I rarely left before the 12 hour mark. Needless to stay my work ethic has never been better. Anyone with the right aptitude can get in. My whole life changed when I got accepted into the program and every day I'm just happy to be here.

I graduated Prep Course at App Academy and don't regret it AT ALL! I tried studying by myself before and couldn't do it properly because you are new and you don't understand what to learn and what to skip. You spend days to understand the piece of new information which you even don't need. Sometimes people saying "It is so a lot of info on the internet, why you pay extra money for studying in-person?". So I can say, it is not just info, it is the new conception of thinking, and sometimes it is hard to get this new conception. That's why you pay money to get it faster, to spare time. Nobody saying you MUST go to the Prep or Bootcamp, you can study everything by yourself but you will spend 1-2 years to get a point where you will be ready to show your skills and knowledge to be hired and to be paid. What if you will put exactly the same effort and Prep and Bootcamp? You spare time! You will find a job already in 6 months after you start. Here is the difference in one and half of the year if you would do it by yourself. It is tens of dollars...  

So for me, it was hard to decide for Prep... now I don't have any doubts about spending this money for Prep and especially for Bootcamp.

Anyway, at the Prep App Academy, Alvin and David will prepare you for Bootcamp, they will tell you what to do and how to do, and you won't waste time for trying to pass a technical interview. Especially because you can't try every week.

And the last thing was very important to me - I stopped frustrating! That's it!!!! I started coding with confident and solid understanding what I am doing. 

Highly recommended, especially if you just started your way to the programming! 

A/a prep course is great exp. Alvin is awesome...but they fall short on alot of things

1) They are the most expensive prep course-$2,999.00 …….(hack reactor’s prep by the way does the pre-course work with u so u can just join after is $250….FullStack is $650) 
A/a has great teaching the they take the time to go thru everything with u but u learn a lot less topics..

2) $2,999 roll over to the immersive course is pretty much a loss as well...They never tell u the fact that it doesnt roll over unless u do the deferred payment plan which is $28,000, the $2,999 doesnt roll over if you do the upfront playment plan which is $17,000. So you the roll over is only valid if your willing to pay $11,000 more.

3)They are very limited they skips concepts like testing recursion things which are need to get into hack reactor and full stack.

4)The guarantee to get into the top coding bootcamp always includes a a bootcamp that is very easy to get into and sometimes may not even require a technical interview.

A/a Immersive Review

1.) Even though they claim to update their CURRICULUM according to industry trends it hasn’t really change much. After speaking with alumni from A/a they themselves have told me they would have rather learned full stack javascript…and that it is easier to find a job with full javascript rather than ruby….

heres are two link on industry trends…. 
https://stackify.com/trendiest-programming-languages-hottest-sought-programming-languages-2017/

http://www.codingdojo.com/blog/9-most-in-demand-programming-languages-of-2017/

 
2.) Their CLASS SIZE is one the largest of the coding bootcamps in NYC…this is what I saw when I was there and what their instructor and students told me when I asked…Now does it matter YES absolutely now they will say we have a good teacher to student ratio but that only because they hire their own grads to as TA which isn’t really the same as instructor….second on hiring day you have a 60 -80 of your peers in competition with u to get into a company….. Hack Reactor has less 30 students per cohort and they do this on purpose to bring out great quality grads…full stack is less as well I’m not sure on the exact number..

3.) CLASS HOURS App Academy is open 24/7 BUT their daily schedule is Mon to Fri 9a.m. to 5p.m……Hack Reactor and full stack is Mon to Fri 9 a.m. -8 p.m. and Sat 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

4.)TUTION …App Academy had recently switch from 22% first years salary to a flat 28,000 on the deferred payment model…which is ludicrous…they they say its because of state regulations... but 22% of 100k salary job is not $28,000 even if u have a 100k job u really only bring home about 70K…this ridiculous that they would charge such a high amount.

Most of my friends from the prep after learning all these thing would not attend App Academy. I also spoke with the prep cohort after ours almost all of them after going through the prep and finding out all these details decieded not to go. we all felt A/a was shady for leaving out the detail about the 2,999 not rolling over on the upfront payment plan.
if u have any question u can email me at theonetwothreefive123@gmail.com

For a long time, I liked the idea of working in tech, but thought it was nearly impossible without a CS degree. However, when a friend told me about App Academy, I thought it was an interesting opportunity, although I was skeptical at the time.

The program itself is very intense, and will definitely consume your life for the 12 week duration. In the beginning, you'll learn about various CS fundamentals and the inner workings of several languages and frameworks, so just when you finally become comfortable with one thing, something new comes up. I think this is good preparation though, because working as an engineer requires one to constantly learn and adapt, so it's a good habit to develop. Towards the end of the curriculum, everyone makes their own projects, which is a great culmination of the skills you learned. Overall, I enjoyed my time at a/A, and I thought that the program was taught well and that the instructors were great.

The job search is definitely the roughest part of the journey, but a/A is there to help, and it does require a serious amount of discipline and patience. In the end, almost everyone I was in the program with has jobs that they enjoy, and I'll be starting mine in a bit. I think attending a/A was one of the best decisions I've ever made, and I'd do it again.

I was part of the May 2017 NYC cohort and had an amazing experience. I put in a lot of hard work, often not getting home until after midnight but It was so rewarding that It felt like I was just having fun.

Cons:

1. The rigors of the job search. For me, the most difficult part of the entire process was the job search. I enjoy coding and solving problems but I absolutely hate sending emails and writing cover letters to try and 'sell' myself. This is not something specific to App Academy, but it is something to be prepared for. It took me over two months until I got an offer that I was happy with. About half of my cohort had to wait even longer. I know that doesn't sound like a long time but it IS when you're going through it. There were times that I didn't get any responses for weeks at a time and felt like I would never find a job.

Pros:

1. The tuition model. I applied when the tuition was 20% of the starting annual salary of the job I accepted. (They actually proactively lowered it to 18% because some students in my cohort had applied at that rate). For me, the low-risk payment model removed one of the greatest barriers to entry. It also gave me confidence that our goals were aligned and that success rates advertised were accurate (I too was skeptical before I experienced the outcomes first hand).

2. The students. Once I got in, I began to appreciate that App Academy sets a high bar and selects only the top 3% of applicants. Learning with a group of talented and intelligent students becomes a real advantage when you get stuck, don't understand something, or just need to discuss a concept.

3. The curriculum. The learning at App Academy follows a pattern of learning new material for homework, clarifying the details in the morning lecture, and hands-on experience in the afternoon projects. The curriculum is kept up to date with the latest stable technologies and focuses on applying the knowledge. For me, this helped in retaining what I had learned and cumulatively building upon it.

4. The career coaching. My App Academy career coach was AWESOME! The career coaches help students polish their resumes, online profiles, and cover letter templates. They also help to find and fix the bottlenecks in the job search. (For me it was the online profiles and resume. For others, it was practicing technical interviewing or adding features to their showcase projects). They give personalized advice and help keep graduates motivated when they're going through a rough patch.

App Academy is terrific. I almost failed out of App Academy due to failing assessments, and spent more time job searching than most of my classmates. But because I had a really solid support system, from the friends I made to the job placements team, I finally secured a job that I'm excited about. 

Back when I started in September 2016, if you failed two assessments, you were kicked out of the program. I was a pretty poor test taker due to high anxiety. When I failed my second assessment, I prepared my things and said my goodbyes. Thankfully, App Academy scheduled a retake, and I aced it. Now, I hear the retake policy is more lenient. My advice: take the practice assessments as many times as you can, and the chances of failing are much lower. 

I spent 10 months searching for a job. When I started my job search, my soft skills were weak, and my technical skills needed a lot of improvement. I practiced around 3 times a week doing practice interviews and white-boarding with my friends using Skype. My coach taught me how to sound prepared and confident on the phone, and checked on me weekly to see how I was doing with my job applications. 

The job search team also schedules mandatory workshops for job-seeking graduates to learn new skills and review concepts. They provide a really comprehensive list of networking events and meetups in the Bay Area where you can meet potential recruiters and other engineers. They're also some of the nicest people I've met; sometimes they'll just chat with you in the hallway and ask how you're doing. They always make sure they're available if you ever have any questions.

Full disclosure, I'm not the typical bootcamp student because I had lots of previous coding experience and even some development work. Went to a/A because I was doing QA and hated it. My previous experience undoubtedly helped me land a job after the curriculum was completed but a/A helped me gain a lot of skills and knowledge that I was lacking before.

App Academy was the hardest I've ever worked in my life but in a good way. I really felt like I was learning and retaining what we were being taught. Be prepared to work you a$$ off! It's 9-6 every day for 13 weeks and you will spend every moment outside of class studying. Get a haircut before the course starts because you won't have a free minute!

Also be warned that your continued enrollment in the course is subject to a strike system and doing well on coding assessments. The assessments are no joke and we lost about 8 people because of them. I studied every weekend for the assessments and had no regrets on that front. Strikes are for absences and lateness so be on time! People have been dismissed from the course this way.

The curriculum was interesting and my new job has even drawn on what I have learned there so it has definitely been valuable. I really like that they are constantly revising the course to ensure it is up to date and relevant. Almost every day was pair programming on projects which I think is a great way to learn since you don't have to struggle by yourself. One downside to the constant updating is that some of the curriculum is rough around the edges and it often seems like we were only working on a given topic for 2 days at most before we moved on. It's easy to feel overwhelmed but your fellow students and teachers are always there to help you. They have office hours everyday and people often stay late to do homework together if you need it.

It's also great that part of the course is focused on job search and interviewing skills because I never felt like I knew anything about this. It was very helpful to learn about writing resumes and cover letters. The job coach I had was really insightful and I owe him a lot. You'll get lots of whiteboarding practice too which is great because it's so awkward the first time you do it.

I met a lot of nice and interesting people and there's great diversity in the student body. The instructors are really dedicated and a/A recruits TA's from previous cohorts so they are on the same level.

In summary, I really liked the course and I think if you are serious about becoming a developer it's a great choice. Some of the curriculum needed refining but they are constantly improving everything. Lots of support and teachers are great! Be warned that it is INTENSE in every sense of the word.

App Academy’s prep program is exactly as advertised - a comprehensive, well thought out program devised to get you accepted into the top bootcamps. Through refined lectures and problem sets, Alvin and David made sure that I was on track to succeed in my interviews, and understood the content. Not only that, but they were very accessible should I have questions before class, and I would recieve nearly instantaneous responses to my questions through Slack. Following prep, I was accepted to every bootcamp I applied for, most notably App Academy, Hack Reactor, and Fullstack/Grace Hopper, thanks to the amazing support and instruction I received through App Academy’s prep program! 

App Academy has really made me appreciate my decision to commit to web development. If you are considering applying here, you really need to understand where you are and why you are making this commitment. If you don't fully commit, the program is not going to wait for you. If you understand this going in, then App Academy can help you go over the hurdles to become a full-fledged web developer. 

My favorite aspect about this program is that every lesson builds on itself. There will be times that you feel like your behind, but that should motivate you to keep up. Eventually when you reach the end, you will realize how much you really know and how ready you are to move forward with your new career path. 

I would highly recommend this program to anyone.