App Academy

I feel like saying that I enjoyed my time here would label me as a masochist, but yes.. I did enjoy my time here.  I was looking into getting into coding, but didn't know where to start and what stacks to learn, so I decided to give App Academy's 16 week Full-Stack web development course a shot since I've heard of all these good reviews, and so far, I'm not disappointed.   To get in, first you have to pass their interviews.  After you get in, things start a little slow, for the first week, but then speeds up really fast.  Especially after the first two weeks, which is the foundations part of the curriculum, after which, the real meat of the course starts to show and the pace picks up even more.  It's extremely vigorous, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  If you manage to pass all their assessments you'll be rewarded with newfound knowledge in programming and the ability to build cool apps.  After completing the course you enter your Career quest, in which you will be provided a Career Coach  who will coach you on applying for jobs and interviewing.  All in all it's been a great experience that leaves you feeling fulfilled, and I'm also impressed and how they turned this in-person course to an online one.

Pros: Teaches you all the things you really need to know. Teacher assistants are really useful and the projects they provide for you to do are helpful. The teaching strategy is to repeat concepts until it's cemented in your memory, which I believe is rather effective.
Cons: They stop giving you meaningful assistance when it comes to your personal projects at the end of the bootcamp. You're pretty much on your own, but of course you have your fellow students as resources but they're also trying to complete their own projects. They claim that the independence on the projects is to emulate your experience outside the bootcamp (without Teacher Assistants).

In 16 weeks at App Academy, you will be thrown in lots of Computer Science concepts over various programming languages, given job searching prep work, and projects to demonstrate your programming knowledge. From my experience, those projects were fun and the knowledge gained has helped me to figure out additional technologies to incorporate into my projects! Even though this journey through this bootcamp has been challenging, it is worth it in the end. Aside from the amazing material you get, you also will get to meet amazing cohort-mates from various backgrounds. Overall be prepared and be serious, which I can't emphasize enough, to put in lots of work to understanding and practicing those computer science concepts.

Pros:
- The instructional material were up-to-date, fun, and challenging.
- Really helpful instructors to help you understand Computer Science concepts.
- Plentiful of help for your job search

Cons:
- Some Computer Science concepts taught (either in lecture or in instructional material) are hard to understand or not self-explanatory.
- The transition from programming projects to job searching was awkward. I can say the same when switching between programming languages too.

Tips I could give:
- Try to learn some new programming languages/concepts ahead of time (even better if before the bootcamp). I highly suggest learning Python.
- Have a set schedule as you do not want to overwork yourself, especially when you're going to be studying new concepts daily.
- Be prepared to be expected to learn new concepts instantly.

As a student, I felt that I only scratched the surface of each topic, then did my best (with my pair-programming partner) to apply the knowledge on daily projects. During the initial week-long full stack projects, I didn't have a clear idea on how to start. However, my Principle Instructor (Ian) and the TA's (Javier, Dean) were always there and extremely helpful in guiding me in the right direction and helping to debug. By the time the capstone project came around, I felt equipped to develop a full stack project -- to the extent that I taught myself a whole new framework in just a few days to use in my project.
a/A simplifies complex topics across the full stack into simple, but not always digestible pieces. You will spend only a few days on topics that are taught over a semester in college. At times, you are likely to be overwhelmed by the pace. On the flip-side, you are also likely to be too immersed to even think about it. It may feel like you are being rushed to cram new material each day, but you would be surprised to realize how much you are actually learning under the hood. In addition to the basic knowledge, you are learning how to learn new technologies quickly and effectively. This resourcefulness is probably the most valuable return on your investment of time, money and effort.
My thoughts upon completion of the program: I thought I was running a marathon, but it turns out I was being taught how to tie my shoes really well for five months. The marathon has only just started.

pros:
they bet on you with income sharing
there are instructors to help (within reason)
good breath of material
career support
they force you to learn
great for people who want to learn and feel confident they can do it

cons:
It might feel expensive after you finish
at times you might feel overwhelmed if you don't have any tech background. but still doable. be ready to sacrifice something.
sometimes the curriculum feels rushed or disjointed

App Academy was an over great experience for me. I enjoyed the curriculum and met amazing people in the process. Due to the pandemic, the in-person program became online. It's a serious program that requires focus and dedication. I've had classmates with no background in coding like myself as well as those who have engineering degrees from top schools across the nation. I self-studied for 6 months prior to starting the program. If you have little to no background in coding,  this would be extremely helpful. They also have a pair programming rhetoric. I paired with someone nearly everyday for projects.

PROS - you can learn so much within 16 weeks with effort and dedication
CONS - Some curriculum is outdated. They are working on updating that material. 

If you plan to join a/A, say goodbye to evenings and weekends. It is a lot of work but it's all worth it! 

Overall I really enjoyed my experience at appAcademy. Albeit this is a review for the In-Person track, my cohort was done completely online due to COVID, which I believe provided a multitude of pros and cons. The curriculum was great and it is exactly what you expect: it is 100% a full-time commitment ranging between 9-11 hours a day roughly (prior to your projects; you'll put in even MORE time). The learning curve and experience was absolutely enjoyable for me; I loved going from a introductory level of knowledge in the technology taught to a proficient developer with 3 projects under my belt that I'm proud of. 

Pros: 

• Online helped give flexibility to one's time (we had someone with an 11 hour difference in our cohort); yes it is tedious to have a time difference but you can 100% make it work. I did (I was 3 hours ahead).
• Teach you the basics and work their way through technology FUNDAMENTALLY. An example of this occurred in the React section of the curriculum; we didn't learn best-industry practice using hooks but rather containers. This made my understanding of containers/hooks significantly better. Learn to walk before you run.
• Instructors are well-versed in what you're learning. They are grads of the bootcamp themselves. They know what you go through, and understand the struggle with what they teach you. Use them, they're great.
• Project time was by far the most fun I had during the bootcamp, yet also the most stressful; you can use the tech you learnt over the weeks to build a brand new application from a blinking terminal. Having that a mandatory section of the bootcamp made me really experience my own learning which I feel grounded my foundational understanding of those topics.

Cons:

• Like I mentioned earlier, it is 100% what you expect: a full-time immersive commitment to learning and breathing code. You don't have much time for anything else, especially during the project time. You get what you put in.
• We were always told that the bootcamp is "not a race" but rather a "marathon". I will tell you that is not accurate. It is a very fast paced marathon. You put in long hours and need to be committed to learn the material efficiently and quickly. If you don't put in the effort, you will not succeed.
• During project time, instructors were VERY "hands-off"; I felt like my group and I should've been able to find guidance after reaching a roadblock but we were turned towards crowdsourcing instead. Yes, asking peers is very valuable but when every minute counts during crunchtime, a simple 2 minute solution from an instructor is better than 3 hours of researching a work-around that could need to be changed down the road.

I hope this review gives you good insight into what you're getting yourself into. If ever you'd love to hear about more of my experience, I'd be more than happy to tell you about my experience. Good luck on your coding journey, you'll enjoy it at appAcademy!

Over the course of three months, a lot of material gets squeezed into such a small time frame and it initially seemed like such a daunting journey to embark on. But with all the great support I got from the staff members and also the amount of work I had put in, I strongly believe that it's an experience worth my time and money. The material was both challenging and fun, especially with how much material is taught. And beyond the bootcamp, you get to meet a lot of amazing people!

Pros: Challenging and fun material, lots of opportunities to practice concepts, and you get plenty of help early on.

Cons: Sometimes the lecture feel too broad, and a lot of the CS concepts get glossed over (data structures & algorithms) and is more of a self-study type of deal

Tip: Manage your time if you plan to tackle this bootcamp! Getting enough sleep will go a long way and it helped me succeed and complete the course at full value

I am very glad I attended App Academy. I had been dabbling in different web development technologies for years. For example, I knew how to build web-scrapers with Python and Selenium. But I never had any formalized knowledge of the best practices to build a full-stack application. By the end of the 16 week curriculum, I was able to clone the core functionality of Quizlet.com as my final project. It was one of 3 large projects that we did.

In all we covered broad CS topics like data structures, algorithms, authentication patterns, tree traversal, among many others. And we learned specific technologies like Ruby on Rails, SQL, HTML/CSS, Javascript, React/Redux, Node & the MERN stack. We practiced using git & github extensively. We learned Test Driven Development thru technologies like Rspec & Capybara. Most importantly, we learned to learn. For example, when it came to the MERN stack & MERN projects, the instructors stopped holding our hands and made us practice picking up a new technology ourselves.  

My cohort was supposed to be an in-person cohort, but it turned out to be online only due to Covid. At first I was upset that I wouldn't be able to interact with my instructors and classmates on a daily basis, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise - with the amount of work we had to do every day, I couldn't imagine having to spend another hour or two each day commuting.

I would give a 5-star review, but I do think it can be improved in a few ways.

1) A large part of the curriculum focuses on Ruby and Ruby on Rails. I believe that this is part of the design, in a sense, because Ruby is an easy introduction into the world of programming. We had people that came from completely different backgrounds and had little prior programming experience. However, it's looking like Python & Django are becoming more popular now and I wish we had some exposure to these frameworks as well. It appears that future aA cohorts will, in-fact, be going this route instead of RoR.

2) While aA has a wealth of knowledge on App Academy Open - the main tool for content for our curriculum (it's where all of our projects, homework, and readings were housed), that portal is not very organized. If I wanted to go back and reference something we learned 4-5 weeks back - it was hard to find. I wish they made all the projects & topics we covered searchable.

To say that App Academy was intense is not an understatement. About 1/3 of our initial cohort didn't make it to the end. But it was very rewarding to have completed it.

I went into App Academy without any prior coding experience. Coming out, I feel sufficiently prepared to answer tech answers intelligently, and absorb new technologies with some kin of framework. For those thinking about applying, remember that you get exactly what you put in. App Academy is not necessarily impossible to pass, but it is entirely up to you how successful you want to be coming out. You can "pass" the course with 60 hours a week, but in order to get the most out of it, 90+ is definitely preferable.

I have loved my experience at App Academy. The curriculum has been rigorous but thorough. Not only did we learn the fundamentals, but we learned how to think like a programmer. We learned how to solve problems and how to ask the right questions. The curriculum extended beyond just coding and languages, and included many lessons on white-boarding, pair programming, soft-skills and job search principles. The instructors are knowledgeable and approachable, and there is always help to be found if you look for it. I have enjoyed my time at a/A and cannot recommend this program enough to all those who are trying to find the right fit.