App Academy

I joined App Academy with no prior coding experience and I believe that I came out with a solid understanding of web development. The program was no small feat and you definitely need to put in the work, but for as little as just 4 months of your time, it was for sure worth it! Probably the biggest skill that I've learned early on in the program was how to use the debugger. This allowed me to debug my code as well as other people's code and figure out what every single line of code is doing. Definitely a great tool for beginners if they want strong fundamentals and just a better understanding of the code that they write.

App Academy has team of instructors who give lectures on SW topics and help with projects. These instructors and the job search coaches are recent graduates from AA who are also doing their own job search. The projects were fun to work on and helped me put into practice the knowledge and skills that I was gaining from the curriculum and from working with other peers.  AA makes sure you adhere to deadlines and stay on top of your projects and job search. This bootcamp is useful if you need some extra encouragement and direction in software engineering.

On the curriculum: 
You will learn Ruby, Ruby on Rails, SQL, Active Record, JavaScript, React and Redux. There is very little on CS topics and ultimately when you finish the curriculum, they tell you to go back and study data structures and algorithms on your own and via LeetCode because that is what companies will interview you on. There is an assessment almost every week for the first 2 months and will have very thorough practice tests and some will just be a simple practice test. Instructors will tell you to do each practice test at least 10x over the weekend and the assessments are mostly memorization of material. Every night there is homework to do each night to prep you for the project you will do pair programming with the next day. The quality of this material can vary greatly from topic to topic. 

Post curriculum:
Once you finish the 16-week curriculum, you have to do 3 projects (JavaScript, Fullstack and MERN, with MERN being a group project) which will become your portfolio projects. Once these are done, their job search team will guide you through the process of making job search materials. This will includes resume, cover letter, portfolio website, creating GitHub, LinkedIn and AngelList profiles, and how to give a personal pitch. So far I have received wonderful feedback from coaches (also past graduates). 

For those who are good at self study, you probably won't need AA because their curriculum is the same as their free online curriculum, or other free resources online. Communication with their team can be disorganized as they don't have a consistent platform to share information (including what is expected of each student). There were a couple things that caught us off guard and was a bit frustrating:  

* We were initially told passing scores for assessments are 50% but once you start, they tell you its 85%
* They do not use Slack Premium, so you will not be able to look at communication that is over 1 week old
* Deadlines for various tasks may be given in Zoom chats, Slack or verbally (inconsistent) - It would have been best if they used email
* They have a bot that emails nightly with information needed but they are not updated - often we received deadlines for previous cohorts
* All marketing says it's a 16-week program but after the 16-weeks, they begin the job search period which you are still required to attend for at least the first couple weeks after graduation, meaning you can't make vacation plans, this should have been better communicated prior to signing onto bootcamp

Ultimately, it depends on what you want to get out of a bootcamp. They provide a set curriculum and structure for those who need it, which I like to have. I really enjoyed meeting people from a very diverse collection of backgrounds and learning from each of them. I also had a lot of fun using the knowledge learned to do the final projects. Since instructors are past grads, there is quite a bit of turnover and I think each cohort's experience will vary greatly depending on the team of instructors. It's a very good start for anyone who doesn't have a technical background and doesn't know how to start, or what materials to study on their own.

Pros: 
- AppAcademy has a great network of alumni 
- Course is well-designed and allows students to explore different technologies / APIs during their projects 
- Career coaches are experienced professionals who teach the best methods in getting jobs

Cons: 
- Curriculum is outdated (Bootcamp utilizes version 5.2.3 for Ruby on Rails and uses Heroku Stack-18 which will be deprecated soon) 
- Not a course for individuals who prefer a slower pace or wants to laze about - tests will defer you!

App Academy was a great experience. I attended the 16-week program online due to the pandemic. The first 2 weeks of the course is independent self study of Ruby basics with the AA curriculum. TAs are available for questions if you ever encounter a concept you don't understand. After the first 2 weeks, a normal day starts with a lecture in the morning and pair boarding in the afternoon. The evenings will consist of homework assignments to prepare for the next day's material. While it isn't always mandatory to complete all the assignments, it does help you get ready for the next day. Be prepared to spend over 90-100 hours a week learning. Since the program is so fast paced, if you fall behind it's very difficult to catch up. 
Some of the AA material online is out of date from what’s being currently used. For example the curriculum teaches how to use the old React Router syntax instead of the newest one. Overall it does teach you the core concepts of many different technologies in a short amount of time.
I think the experience does highly depend on what TAs you get and how much of a self learned you are. The TAs I had were great and really spent the time to go over the material and answer questions. After finishing the bootcamp, App Academy assigns you a coach to help you with your job search. There are also many workshops and resources they have that really do help with the job search. The support they give you after graduating is one of the reasons I chose to go to AA. The system that have keeps you accountable and motivated during your job search.
If you are someone who wants a more guided and structured approach to learning coding, AA is a great choice. 

I did App Academy's 16-week program and got a job that pays $110k within a few weeks of graduating. What more do you need to know?

In all seriousness, this program is legit. I consider myself a strong learner with a good work ethic, but a/A pushed me further than I would ever have been able to go on my own. Personally, I think the high pressure of App Academy alone is worth the price. Do some back-of-the-envelope math for yourself, but, for me, the opportunity to get a job as a software engineer 4-5 months faster than it would've taken me if I were self-teaching (just a guess; it might've taken much longer) was easily worth more money than the cost of tuition. But the bootcamp isn't just about "structure and accountability", which is what people usually talk about when they're explaining why they did a bootcamp. The team project was extremely helpful when I was interviewing, and the job search support is A+, too. (Again, they push you to do far more than you probably would do on your own, like applying to 40 jobs in your first week on the market. They can also connect you to "partner" employers, though YMMV.)

Are there downsides? You bet! The time commitment is extreme. I gave up my social life for 4 months (plus a month of job-hunting). By the end, I was pretty ragged and feeling overworked. Also, the lectures in the morning were sometimes pretty awful, since many of the instructors are not great teachers and are reading from someone else's lecture notes. In their defense, most university-level teaching is awful, too, so it's not like you're going to find a better alternative. The upshot is that you need to be extremely self-motivated: Hit every target they give you, and compensate for any weaknesses in the curriculum/teaching by doing your own research. Is the lecture confusing or the assignment vague? Ask for help, scour the internet for other resources, and don't settle for being confused.

One more thing: Make sure you're ready. A number of students in my cohort didn't finish the program. As part of applying to a/A you need to complete their introductory curriculum, but I would recommend doing additional work (e.g. at least half of CS50x) just to make sure you really love this stuff enough to do it even when it's exhausting/difficult. Don't quit your job until you're sure you can take whatever a/A throws at you (and more)!

In sum, though, I loved App Academy, and there's no way I would be where I am today without their guidance and support! If you're serious about switching careers and becoming a software engineer, I strongly recommend App Academy.

I graduated last year with a CS degree, but knew absolutely nothing about actual engineering work. The first 3 weeks at a/A gave me more practical skills than my entire degree, and within a few months of graduation I was getting contacted by companies that I had never even applied to, including at least one FAANG company. What made the difference on my resume is not that I had a/A listed, but that I had actual projects with links to live websites and bullets talking about the technical details of what I worked on.

That's honestly the biggest strength in this (or any) coding bootcamp. Yes, I learned a ton from the instructors, the lectures, the curriculum, and even from my classmates. But what I needed to land a job was real experience working on real projects using the technologies that companies are looking for. Whether or not you have any prior coding experience, you WILL come out of this bootcamp with at least 3 projects that you can call your own and discuss in-depth with potential employees. There's nothing more exciting than reading at a job description a week after graduation and realizing, "Wow, I know how to do all of that."

My perspective is definitely skewed by the fact that I had a CS degree coming in. However, I can assure you that by the time we got to week 3, we were learning things way beyond what I was taught in college. And yet there were plenty of students around me with no coding background at all who were doing as good or better than I was. 

It's a very tough course. Expect that you will have to pour every ounce of yourself into it for 4 months straight, with the constant fear of failure hanging over your head. Make sure you are mentally (and physically) ready to handle that. But if you are, then you will do fine, and you will get a job afterwards. 

The most important aspect of the bootcamp is the ISA (income share agreement) model, which aligns their financial interest with yours--you only pay tuition after you get a job (while acting in good faith). The bootcamp is designed to teach you from the ground up, so prior coding experience is not needed. However, this also means that the bootcamp will focus on breadth instead of depth of material and topics covered. The goal is to provide you with the bare minimum required to qualify for entry level positions. Actual job search success depends on individual effort, but there is continued support until you do so. For many, acquiring a job post-bootcamp will simply be a numbers game.

Before App Academy, I didn't know how to use a terminal. But after graduating from the 16-week online program, I learned how to build full-stack projects and debug codes to make the app live. You get what you put in so make sure you allocate at least 100 hours per week to study and work on projects. What I like most about App Academy though is how supportive the staff and TAs are. If you have any questions or you don't understand something, they would try their best to help you. The only downside about the curriculum is that it's outdated. If you want to learn the updated technologies, you would have to read the documentations on your own. Even then, you can't use it on your full-stack project so that's a bummer.