App Academy

I started the program in July 2020, while the pandemic was in full swing, and finished it in October 2020. I felt like App Academy did a good job organizing the switch to a virtual cohort and while I still wish I had that immersive in-person experience, I think I had a good and rewarding experience overall. 

Pros: - The curriculum is well assembled and the projects do a great job of teaching the intended materials. I enjoyed working on daily projects a lot. - Almost every day, you pair-program with a new partner to work on a project. I liked this because it lets us practice our soft-skills which are very important in the real world. I worked with some amazing partners and we ended up having fun the majority of the time. - The instructors and TAs were helpful and were always available to point you in the right direction but never explicitly give you the answers. 

Cons: - Ruby was the first language taught to us in the curriculum, but they are switching to Python instead. While Ruby is a great language, I would have preferred to learn Python instead as it seems to be widely used in the industry. Alumni do have access to the Python module. - The last couple of weeks of the curriculum that lead up to the job-search part of the program felt rushed. We were introduced to an entirely new placements team but I found it difficult to reach them much less connect with them.

This review is a bit about App Academy, but it is also about my personal experience there. There are plenty of reviews talking about App Academy specifically and all the different things that make it great, but I think getting another data point on what my experience was can hopefully give you some sense on how you will be able to handle a bootcamp. (For the record, App Academy is amazing, the teachers are awesome, the documentation is 'mostly' great, and I tripled my salary after a month of job seeking)

Prior to joining App Academy, I was about a year out of college and was working as a software engineer recruiter. In college I graduated with a degree in Economics and took several computer science classes out of genuine interest. I soon began to realize that several months into my recruiting job that I did not like the work, but was still interested in software engineering. I did a lot of research and decided App Academy was the best bootcamp and I would strive to get in. I completed a web development udemy course as prep and a refresher, then applied, interviewed, and was accepted.

The class was technically the in-person New York software engineer track but it was online due to Covid.

I had some experience with software engineering and it's principals prior to App Academy, so the first few weeks of the course were nothing more than further review of things I had learned, but in a different language, Ruby (I believe courses now will use Python instead). Every day you have a lecture in the morning followed by projects to complete with a partner by pair programming. This is a good way to learn if you are both on the same level of understanding about the current subject, but can be frustrating when that is not the case. 

In the first two weeks of the course you have two exams, if you fail one of them you are suspended until the next cohort to study up and get a better understanding of the basics. If you cannot pass these exams or struggle to, you will not make it to the end.

After those two weeks, you are allowed to fail two assignments. The first one you fail you do not have to retake, however, the second one you fail you must retake it later than day. If you fail it once again, you will be asked to leave the cohort, and you are not able to join another. 

I thought it is important to include that to know what you are getting into, it can be very stressful for some people, so please to your own studying and prep before you decide to do this course because it is extremely fast paced. Fully understanding all the material if you are learning it for the first time is unlikely.

By the end of the course we had about 40 of our original clas size of 60 that graduated. After you graduate you are pretty much on your own, they give you a career coach but they are dealing with so many job seekers that they have minimal time for you per week (maybe 1-2 hours).

I graduated on October 23rd and instantly began polishing up my final projects, resume, linkedin and other job seeking sites. After I was happy with how I was presenting myself, I went hard at Leetcode and did a dozen or two problems a day, making sure I was understanding them, and hitting a variety of subjects. By the end of my search I was capable of doing all easy problems and most medium level problems. 

While doing leetcode problems I would apply to jobs mostly on linkedin and google jobs. Technically, you are supposed to wait to apply to jobs until your career coach gives you the OK, but i went ahead and started applying anyways because it takes so long to get feedback from them. About 2 weeks into my job search I hadn't received anything back from any companies until I got a take home interview question from Draftkings. I was able to complete that (it was about OOP and building a companies organizational chart, so DFS was involved). I had a HR call the week after, and the week after than I had a virtual onsite (more OOP questions, working with json-like objects, talking about my projects, and whiteboarding (design a messaging app). I thought it all went really well, and a week later I was given an offer, which I accepted since I had NOTHING else in my pipeline.

I felt I was pretty lucky to get a job only a month out of graduation, as the first interview i landed was the job I got (i had nothing else in my pipeline), and that will certainly not happen to everyone. However, it happened to me and I pretty much tripled my salary from my last job. Bootcamps are worth it if you are able to handle the amount of information being thrown at you and you are ready to work non-stop for about 6 months with no pay (3 months at bootcamp, 3 months avg job search). Hope this helped.

App Academy was a great experience overall. You really have to be committed 100% to get through it. I thought I was in over my head the first week or 2 but the instructors were the reason I stuck it out. They were not only great teachers but also excellent motivators. Once I got to the first project week I really started enjoying every day and was able to see the results of all of our hard work. I think a/A does a great job of picking out the best candidates for the program as everyone, staff, and students, were awesome to work with. I thought about self-learning programming early on, and after going through the 24-week online program, I know it wouldn't be possible to be where I'm at now had I tried. A word of advice to those who are already decided to go through the program: Don't cheat yourself, treat yourself. It is so much better to struggle early on and figure it out on your own or with a partner/instructor than to look at any answers. Mistakes will teach you so much more than getting it right the first time. You will make a lot of mistakes and that is a good thing.

I made the push to join App Academy after feeling lost and overwhelmed with all the free programs online. The "online" course is very current with the technologies they teach, and curriculum is always taking feedback from students and staff to find ways to improve. Since the start COVID-19 there's been a huge influx of new students, so I can't speak on the way things will progress... what I can say is that my instructional staff was clearly very passionate about the material and did everything they could to see students succeed. Be prepared to really commit the full 40+ hours a week for classes and self-study. I do wish more time was spent on learning data structures and algorithms, but what you do learn is very job-oriented. There is also a dedicated team of staff that will coach you through your job search!

I enrolled in a in person cohort but due to pandemic it was switched to zoom. The bootcamp was intense but everyday you are learning something new and practicing that in the pair-programming. TAs were great and really helpful. Many of them had gone thru the course themself so they knew the sort of problems and understanding that is required to be successful. Everyday seemed really long but at the end of the week friday seemed to come by really quickly as you are coding every hour. I feel like I am very confident in my ability to code and I have also discovered tons of resources which I will look into to further my coding skills.

App Academy did a great job giving us all the skills we need to become a good software engineer. The program is fast paced and students will only get out what they put into it. The high frequency of tests helped ensure that concepts were nailed down quickly but could also change some student's priorities to test taking rather than learning the actual concepts. The TAs were very supportive and helpful and there was a tight nit culture despite our cohort being switched to online only due to COVID. Overall would recommend.

As someone who was debating between attending App Academy or another bootcamp, I ultimately do not regret my decision to enroll with App Academy. There were several unknown factors at the time of my decision making (such as not knowing if in-person learning would become available at any point during the cohort), and I think I made the best decision I could with the knowledge I had at that point in time. With that said, there are several factors that I'd like to stress for others who may be making similar considerations:

PROS:
- This program will, at the end of the day, accomplish its goal of teaching you how to code. Or at the very least, will help equip you to continue learning more on your own after the bootcamp is over 
- It's recognized as one of the top bootcamps, which is significant since bootcamps can have a stigma associated with them in the actual workplace
- The TAs seem to genuinely want everyone to succeed, and the fact that they are all former students makes them more empathetic to the pressure on current students

CONS:
-  Curriculum or general operating procedures don't seem as polished as they could be. Several of the recorded video lectures towards the middle of the curriculum seem more dated, which didn't instill the highest sense of confidence in the product that App Academy provides
- Intense focus on passing assessments. As other reviews mention, the foundation of the curriculum is based on weekly (and towards the end, bi-weekly) assessments. Failing any of the fundamentals assessments (weeks 1 and 2) results in being deferred to another cohort, and failing any 2 of the 6 remaining assessments results in dismissal.  While this certainly keeps students on their toes, it also results in prioritizing just passing the assessment over understanding the concepts, especially if you don't have any prior CS knowledge
- Pair-programming for hours every day, especially over Zoom, is taxing. Pair programming is clearly a huge part of the App Academy experience, but as one of the first cohorts that was taught the in-person curriculum entirely over Zoom, it would have been preferable to see App Academy try to be more creative in addressing specific needs of an online experience 

All in all, if you're looking for a way to accelerate your journey into becoming a software engineer, feel that you have a good support system, and are ready to work really hard, a bootcamp might be the right choice for you. 

I was hesitating in the beginning if I should join or not because of the COVID situation. I wanted to join an in-person course and I knew it was not going to happen for a while. I was not sure if the school was fully prepared to change the course to fully online. Well, they made an amazing job with that! This was my first online school experience and I have to admit that everything was well managed. The only frustrating thing is that we paid the same amount even though we did not use any equipment from the school and the online courses are usually less expensive.  When they say you gonna be studying 80-100 hours a week they are right! After a day full of lectures and pair programming you will need to work on your homework, which takes between 1 and 4 hours to complete. Don’t except anybody to do the hard work instead of you.  The instructors are amazing and are always ready to help! Many times they answered our questions late night or during the weekend as well which is really cool.  The strike system is extremely annoying! You need to press buttons on an online surface indicating that you are working. If you get enough strikes, you are out! Many times I missed the 5-10 minutes “button pressing window” because I was working on a project and I forgot. For me this is complete nonsense.  Overall it was a great experience! I did not have any previous coding experience when I applied to the course. Now, I am about to graduate and I am satisfied with the progress I have made thanks to aA! I don’t think it is extremely hard to get accepted and to graduate but it is almost impossible to get all the knowledge they are trying to provide. You are going to get a lot of material in a short amount of time and it is going to feel like drinking from the fire hose. It only depends on you how much you get from it!

I fell for this bs. My fault. But they lay a very attractive trap. Would like to watch pre-recorded videos and then have some non-pro just repeat it the next day at you? Would like to learn on your own, be given the false idea that you have TA's available at the for an average of a minute-per-day, and then pay us $28,000.00 for it? Be very WARY of the 'do not pay until hired'; they will harass you day in, day out, if you are not 'making good progress' towards getting that impossible rookie job, and then give you claims for money you have not earned under the guise of 'well, you didn't make enough effort!'...
Be smart. Save your hard-earned money and learn on your own. If you are truly motivated you can find great free help online!

Stay away from these thieves!

I’ll start by saying how much the instructors clearly care about the process. Every instructor has been through a/A themselves and it clearly shows in their passion and ability to teach the material. The instructors were hands down the best part about App Academy.
The curriculum could use some updating to more in-demand technologies (I know they’re working on incorporating Python), but for the most part it was good, and you retain access to it indefinitely. It does drop off in quality towards the end of the instructional period and in the JavaScript portion specifically, but probably only drops as far as a ⅗ star score in some places in my opinion.
The job search curriculum is pretty good. If you’ve been through anything like it before, it’s an above average placement program. If it’s your first exposure to legit job-coaching, it would be very valuable.