Nashville Software School

NSS has some very good aspects, but overall it's not good for everyone.
I'll start with the pros:
The instructors are very knowledgeable and helpful.
The curriculum includes a very good base on what you need to know.
The course is a little longer than most bootcamps which helps form a better foundation.
It's mostly about community.

Now for the cons:
It's too fast for those who are brand new to coding, students who have studied coding before hand for a year will be successful. 
All the resources are free and are available to study on your own. A google search will show you many of the resources and even tutorials that are similar to the exercises done in class. 
You're paying a lot of money to be part of a community than you are for the actual skills.
The skills you need are still learned on your own, the instructors are good but they can't help every single person due to the amount of students in a class.
There are free groups to be a part of outside of NSS that anyone who wants to learn can join.
NSS is very politically left-winged. I found it very annoying receiving lectures on critical-theory points which doesn't help your programming skills in the slightest. 

Conclusion:
I can't fully endorse NSS. If you really want to attend a class and study well in that environment then NSS is a good choice for you. If you don't like a classroom environment, then NSS isn't for you. I'd recommend studying on your own for awhile before attending NSS or any bootcamp. If you study on your own for a year or more then you're possibly already past what NSS can teach you anyway. Join a coding group on meetup.com and study on your own instead of dropping +$10k on free resources.

Nashville Software School has been a great decision for me in my career. It is definitely hard and 100% a place that you get out of it what you put in. 

 

I decided to go to NSS after spending some years in the music industry on the production side of things. I was taking a look at where my life would be in a few years and I saw myself doing the same things at the same places and didn't picture another way it could go in my current profession. 

Through some friends I heard about NSS and started thinking about it. After a few months of treehouse and codeacademy - I started to become pretty interested and decided it was something I wanted to pursue. Its been fantastic and I wish I would have had the decision sooner.

A few things to keep in mind -

-As with anything worth doing, you only get out what you put in. The staff there is incredible, but no one will give you your dream job if you dont work for it. They do their best to provide oppurtunities for employers to come by and for you to meet people, but it is up to you to actually make things happen. 

-My advice as you go through the course would be to make flash cards with new concepts. Whether it be at the end of each day or each week, make notes of what you leanred - what that weird CSS selector does, how to iterate over dictionaries in C#, how write an AJAX call, what OOP is and specifically how YOU HAVE USED IT, whatever - make notes and review them. This is not so you memorize all the little syntactical nuances that come with each language (though that will happen) but more so when you complete the program you have an overview of what all you covered that you can review. This way when going into interviews you can be confident in what you know as well as confident in what you dont know. You will be less likely to be like "oh yeah I remember doing something like that in an exercise 4 months ago but I cant remember specifically how to do it" because you've been drilling it every night when you get home from class. 

TALK TO PEOPLE - Find some companies you want to work for? Cool, find someone that work there on linkedin (this is much easier if there is a former NSS grad who works there, typically they're all about puttin some knowledge on those who are coming up) message them and buy them coffee. Ask them about their jobs, what they did, how they got there, what youre struggling with whatever. Make as many connections as you can. 

Put the work in and you'll do fine. Just know up front that it is a lot of work. 

I started at NSS with no background in development and little practical exposure to the field; I just knew coding (the smidge I'd done of it) was fun and that I was ready for a change. I graduated two months ago from one of the bootcamps, and the process was by far the most intellectually--and one of the most emotionally--challenging experiences I'd ever had. But it's paid off; I went from an underpaid humanities slob to a professional software developer in less than a year.

As other reviewers have mentioned, the curriculum is adaptive and evolving, which can be frustrating in the short-term but ultimately mimics the state of the industry. In other words, it's good practice.

The instructional team and staff are fully invested in student success AND the program is that rare beast in coding bootcamps: full-stack. I cannot overemphasize what a difference this makes to potential employers. It's also infinitely affordable--sure, no one seeking an immediate career change is likely to have an extra $11K kicking around, but do even a cursory price comparison, and the affordability is clear. 

To speak to a point made in a prior review: it's simply untrue that the school does not pass job leads along to student graduates. If this were ever the case, it isn't anymore. I landed my current position through one of those leads, and I know the staff work hard to establish connections within the Nashville dev community.

My one caveat to future students: while the program is targeted toward and successful for many people like me, who come in with no relevant background, the pace is unforgiving, and those of us who had engaged in more independent study prior to attendance were generally much better-adapted to the curriculum.

If you're considering NSS, both your ego and your education will be infinitely better off if you not only complete the recommended prework, but spend as much time as it takes you to learn the core tenets of JavaScript before you start. 

Regardless, NSS was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

 

NSS is continually evolving and improving its curriculum, I was part of Cohort10, and found it fairly easy to land offers for employment. Ultimately, there are some folks who just do not have the problem solving ability to cut it even after they graduate, and will struggle finding a job, so you should do a self assessment to find out if you have the problem solving skills prior to applying. 

 

As far as the school is concerned, I find myself light years ahead of fellow junior developers in what I have been exposed to and the hands on coding experience gained from attending NSS. 

 

I graduated from NSS a just shy of two years ago from the date of this review (cohort 5).

I learned Node and Ruby, front-end, and back-end coding, and testing.  Overall, this was a super-positive experience.  A month or so after graduating, I got a great job.

My background was already technical, but I had never really done any web development before.  The corsework got me up to speed in a hurry on the basics.  And, by the end of the course, I could spin up a website and deploy it.

NSS was a great investment of my time and money.  The job I got was a direct result of the school connecting me with an employer.  I'm still working for that employer today.

If you are motivated and ready to work hard in the basics of web development, this is the place for you.