App Academy

The App Academy curriculum is filled with a ton of good material that I wasn't always able to cover because of how fast the course went. That said, I definitely learned more than I would have at any other institution or on my own.  The fullstack, JavaScript, and flex project are the three projects we work on during the curriculum and really  shape our portfolios. The JavaScript and flex projects are  part of the job search curriculum which I feel should be structured a little better in regards to the schedule. The JavaScript and  Flex projects are crucial to our portfolios but we only get a week for each  while having to attend multiple lectures throughout the day but I suppose that's why it's called a boot camp. The TA's for the first part of the course were amazing and are the highlight of App Academy--the job search TAs are amazing as well but they seem slightly understaffed.

For three months, all you'll be doing will be is eating, coding, and sleeping. You won't have anytime to do anything else since you'll be swamped with work everyday. To become a good developer in three months, you'll definitely have to be putting in work and it'll be rewarded at the end. My time at App Academy was amazing. I met a lot of great people coming from all different kinds of backgrounds and from all over the world. In the beginning, I was struggling a bit, but with all the TA help and peers around you, you'll have all the help you need. I can't even express how much knowledge I gained over the first two months at App Academy (with one more month to go in the curriculum). So if you ever think about switching careers and  you have an interest in web development, i'll definitely recommend applying to App Academy. 

There's no faster way on the planet to pick up this skillset. The load is heavy, equivalent to taking 24 credits of upper division credits. Expect to spend 13+ hours a day focusing on new material. Expect to be confused most of the time. Expect to have a blast with your new best friends. You will not have time to achieve mastery of a topic before moving on to the next. If that's a problem for you, walk away now and pick a slower-paced course. You get the first taste of a new topic in the homework, the second taste in the lecture, and the third taste during the daily pairing project. There's a lot of stumbling, and that's ok -- the course is based on repetition, so you do pick up the skills, so long as you put the time in. That said, it's only when you look back on what you've done that you can really appreciate how far you've come. Embrace the confusion, and come out successful.

This program requires quite a bit of work and effort, but it is worth it. Coming in, I had very little notion of what it meant to write good code or build web applications, but I have learned a lot through this process. The highlight for me was the curriculum. We start off learning basic Ruby syntax and object-oriented programming, move on to (a very light sprinkling of) algorithms, then Rails, user authentication, javascript, and finally React/Redux. In retrospect, the structure of the curriculum makes it feel like you learn the building blocks of web applications from the ground up. I have a lot (a lot!) to learn, but aA has definitely brought me to a good place in terms of self sufficiency. 

Things to note: 
- If you fail two tests, they will kick you out (no exceptions). They want everybody to be at least getting 85/90% on everything. This is sad if you start to befriend someone who then leaves...
- Shortcuts are great. Learning small shortcuts on Mac has improved not just my coding flow but also my own experience browsing the web. 
- You really have to spend a lot of time on the program. I had been living in NYC for a couple years before aA, so early on I just got used to telling friends that I couldn't hang out for like another month or two. That being said, if you do a good job studying you can usually buy yourself some weekend time (e.g. I attended  few parties and weddings during the course). 
- Expect collaboration. You are pair programming everyday, which means taking turns 'driving' an 'navigating' every 15 minutes or so. I usually enjoy solving problems alone, but I actually really appreciated this aspect of the program. The few days where we worked solo ended up being pretty lonely...

Full disclosure: I'm getting a hoodie for writing this review. I don't believe that sways my opinion, but I feel it's fair that you know the context.

I'm writing this review having just completed my first 9 weeks of App Academy. In the last 9 weeks, (really 13 since there's about 4 weeks of prepwork assigned before the course starts), I've gone from 0 experience as a web developer to having created my own full stack web app using a Ruby on Rails backend with a React with Redux frontend. I can't speak yet to the quality of their job search curriculum, which I will go through over the next 3 weeks, but I will say that their full stack curriculum is absolutely effective for a few reasons. First, you should know that some of the students, roughly 15% in my cohort, were dismissed for not passing assessments before completing the curriculum, so being accepted is only the beginning of the journey. The ones who made it through are absolutely better programmers for having gone through the program. Many of my classmates started with little to no experience programming, and are full-fledged web developers now.

I think this is mostly due to the amount of reps as a programmer that you get through the course. Every day, there are 2 hours of lecture, and then you peer program for 5-6 hours. Then there are homeworks and readings to do before you get to class. Shower, sleep, and repeat for 9 weeks. Peer programming is a process through which you sit down and talk through and try to solve problems with someone else. There are many factors conducive to learning and skill development at play during this time.

First, learning to verbalize your approach to a problem is immensely helpful to refining and solidifying knowledge. Second, having the accountability to keep trying to solve the problem and having help when you need it keeps the learning process moving. Third, an understated part of programming is looking up and researching documentation, which you will get a lot of practice doing. Last but not least, you are experiencing the same thing while you drive and your partner navigates, so you have the benefit of differing perspectives every day. Before I started a/A, I thought these skills were something I could learn on my own, but would be faster with a teacher. That's partly true, but it's also true that your fellow students aid in the learning process immensely. If I were describing a/A to a prospective applicant, I would tell you to look at it as an opportunity. An opportunity to work hard and learn. That's all it is. It's intense, but if you make it out, you will have absolutely developed hard, bankable skills as a programmer.

Hi, I took the 4 week AppAcademy "bootcamp prep" course which wasn't very difficult and I was able to complete all of the exams without really studying. That being said,  I do feel that the course covered Javascript pretty well and I may have learned one or two things I didn't know beforehand. However, I didn't have the greatest experience after the course ended. There wasn't help with applying to schools and I felt totally unprepared for the non-technical interview which may have been partially my fault (even though I read all of the material for the interview and spent much time writing out what I was going to say). I think they could have covered this at least a little bit in the course I spent $3,000 on. Please make an informed decision when attending any school of the like and don't make the same mistake as me.

I was asked to leave App Academy after on Week Five Day Three, but I’m still leaving a four star review. Is it true that “Students from all backgrounds find success” at aA? Yes, I believe this is true. But please, heed this warning: if you don’t already understand computer science concepts, you will need to be a *very* quick learner.  I’m not talking about Honor’s Society in high school, deans list in college quick-learner/smart. That’s me, and that’s not smart enough. If you don’t already understand computer science concepts, you need to be the kind of smart where the only reason you finished your BC Calculus final in 45 min instead of 40 was how your hand cramped holding your pencil.

If you’re not that smart, that’s also fine, you just have to be *prepared*. Breadth first search algorithm? Depth first? It's not rocket science, but don’t let aA be the first place you’ve ever heard those words strung together. If you don’t have a clear understanding of sorting/searching algorithms, what restful routes and APIs are, how to build a CRUD web application, how object oriented programming works and why it is useful - STOP and just study those concepts before you get there. I thought that it was okay that I didn’t know these things because App Academy would teach me.

But it’s important to remember App Academy uses a peer learning model. Like in Montessori, the teacher sets up the classroom and the students learn from each other. You aren’t really "taught" exactly - you teach yourself, which in the end is much more powerful. You get so much more out the experience by actively explaining concepts to other students, which is not going to happen if you just found out what authentication is five minutes ago. The power of peer learning is incredible, and I learned *so much * at aA that I can’t say I regret attending, despite being “dismissed for academic reasons” after one month.

Guys, don’t get dismissed. There were 63 people in our cohort, I think 13 were dismissed. I don’t wish it on anybody. To give up everything, quit your job and move cities, to make friends with incredibly kind and intelligent and hardworking people, and have to leave because your brain couldn’t apply this new information fast enough - it is really a bummer. Avoid it at all costs. In the end, I didn’t want my money back, I wanted to stay.

My preparation strategy was if I knew the alpha prep course, I would do fine. This is not enough. If you can, build a CRUD rails app before you get there. (Masher Hossian has a good tutorial on Udemy. Pay attention to how database associations work.) Understand every big concept in those games in the prep course. Yes, the prep course is terrible, everything is out of order and you’ll spend hours trying to understand confusing code that isn’t explained. But building a game with specs is the second test, and don’t waste your one free fail on that one, like so many people did. If you can, go through the Khan Academy Computer Science course. What’s an algorithm, what are time/space complexity, what is a data structure? Yes, these concepts will be covered, and once you know them, it’s like a whole new world has been opened up to you.

It’s fine to be new to these things - everyone was at one point! Just remember the day you decided to become a software engineer is the day you committed to practicing everyday and relentlessly studying everything you don’t understand, regardless of whether you choose to attend aA as part of that journey.

When compared to the theoritical lessons taught in most of my classes while in the UC system, I loved how hands-on and immersed this experience was. The curriculum taught practical skills that's used almost everyday on the job, and the learning experience made the transition into the real-world quite seamless.

It was intense - looking at 90+ hrs of work per week - and challenging, but it was necessary and shone a light on whether or not I was capable or if this career was fitting. Their tuition model is definitely attractive; it's low risk, since you don't owe tuition until you're hired post-graduation.

I've dabbled in programming before and enjoyed it, but I was never sure enough to go through with it in a 4-year system. The bootcamp essentially let me test the waters and learn something new in just 3 months time, with very little to lose. I finally have a full-time career in something I love doing, and if you're at all curious if this is right for you, I'd recommend App Academy.