App Academy

If you are willing to put in the work, App Academy does a great job at what they advertise. The first month is easy if you have any programming experience whatsoever, but it really ramps up after that. Most days are spent pair programming, which is a great learning experience no matter who you are paired up with. After class, you spend the rest of the day learning the next day's material. New topics are introduced almost every day and you can find yourself falling behind easily if you even slack off for a day or two.

Overall, you can expect to come out of App Academy with new and improved programming skills, a portfolio, and tremendous job search resources (despite a generic job search curriculum).

App Academy has a team of wonderful and dedicated teaching assistants. AA fosters a welcoming environment. They prepare you to become better programmers through pair programming. This is helpful to have a new partner everyday because your pair becomes your motivator. If you're the one that are struggling on that day's topic, then your partner can help you understand the topic better and if you are the one helping your partner, it only helps you solidify and strengthen your knowledge 

I attended App Academy after graduating from UCSC with a minor in Computer Science. I 

Pros:
Technologies being taught are applicable to the industry which is nice. It's not the exact same, but the technological concepts are similar.
My cohort might've been the odd one out, but 95% of the people I met were very smart, kind, and hardworking.

Cons:
The program, at the end of the day, is still very bureaucratic. They do things that incentivize making money.
The ratio of staff to student is kinda bad.
Very difficult for students that fall behind to catch up again.

 The main learning section of the course was really well structured, which made it ideal for me (someone who needs critical timelines and an uncompromising schedule to not slack off).   The fact that you have to learn basics yourself and interview to get into the program inspires more confidence than other bootcamps who will follow up call you to make sure you are still interested.  App academy seems to survive on its reputation, and I know multiple students in just my cohort who came to A/a because a friend or sibling already went through the program with success.  I was really surprised at myself how much I learned so quickly.  I tried self-learning for a year, but couldn't get to a point where I was comfortable knowing what to learn to do what I wanted.  However now, I don't know everything, but I feel confident I know how to learn any language/framework with enough time due to the solid foundation App Academy provided.
It's not necessarily a fault of App Academy, they do the best they can in such a short time frame, but I wish there were more employers willing to at least give me a phone screen to prove I know my stuff.  You just can't get the reputation a 4 year degree will get you at a bootcamp.  Especially considering how undergraduate internships are the new start of the pipeline to full time employment.  The job search portion is arguably more grueling due to financial stress and comparative lack of structure.  You still have weekly targets to meet, but there just aren't enough qualified coaches to help you through the post-graduation section of job-searching (especially considering most coaches are previous App Academy graduates who are only working there until they can find a better job offer themselves).
Overall a worthwhile experience, and this is written from someone still in the midst of the job search.  If you have the money or time to attend A/a, and you are capable of self-motivating after the main program, it's arguably one of the fastest ways to get into the software engineering profession from a different career.
 

App Academy provides an extremely rigorous and fast paced coding curriculum and is an efficient way to be indoctrinated in software development. However, be prepared for an exhausting 6 months, working constantly. Sometimes, help from the TAs can be hit or miss and it is helpful to find those TAs whose teaching style works for you. That said, I believe they have set me up to build a strong portfolio and the job training and management portion of the course is promising. I didn't know it was possible to learn so much in such a short time. If you make it through, you are part of the community forever.

AppAcademy really helped me to learn the fundamentals and all necessary tools to be a practitioner in software engineering.
Pros:
-it's well structured and the instructors are really good in helping people like me who is new to programming.
-it's intensive but at the same time well paced in the way that fundamentals are important in AppAcademy's teaching. Good amount of time was allocated to fundamentals. Then each student can practice more or less based on needs
Cons:
-we learned really a lot in a short time. Consequently, it's so easy to forget.

My cohort started with about 80-90 students and 73 are about to graduate this week. There are ~9 TAs which makes the TA:Student ratio around 1:8.  Not all the TAs are available to help (they may have other responsibilities), so that might explain why it would sometimes take hours to get our questions answered like other reviews have mentioned. They say they do that on purpose to try to get us to find out answers ourselves like how we would in the real world. Indeed, my googling skills have gotten so much better since I've started App Academy. While having such a big class has its downfall, I am actually really glad I get to meet so many wonderful people. Majority of the curriculum involves pair programming so you get to work with a different person everyday. The support we get from each other makes me feel like we are a big family going through a big challenge together.

I thoroughly enjoyed being in class, working with peer students and sharing knowledge with each other. TA's are very helpful and they make all efforts to make students understand the concept well. Assessments make you feel the pressure, but they will make sure to give all practice materials to get through the assessments with ease. Pair programming is best and a/A wanted students to get best out of it focussing on understanding the material rather than project completion.

Projects at the end are really helpful to have deeper understanding of the material from the start. If you are willing to spend all your time and effort for the duration of the course, then go for it. Good Luck!