App Academy Reviews
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Anonymous
Software Developer
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My time at App Academy was overall very pleasant. My cohort started just as coronavirus started to spread and we were only able to be in person for two weeks before we were forced into remote learning for the remainder of my time. While it was not the experience I had signed up for, I was still able to learn effectively and the staff really did their best to still keep the in person spirit alive. However, there were still a lot of uncertainty and change throughout my time that made it hard to get comfortable and fully focus on learning.
The course itself is very fair and App Academy sets you up to succeed as long as you put in the effort. Both the assessments and solo projects are fair and you’re provided with all of the resources to excel. You should, however, expect all of your time to go to either learning the material, or if you have extra time, to learn other topics on your own as there are some gaps in learning that bootcamps in general can’t really cover due to their short duration. That being said, the curriculum can definitely stand on its own and its crazy how fast you go from knowing nothing to building large scale websites in almost no time. The curriculum is very thorough for most of the course, although some of the lessons in the last part could use an update. Overall, I feel like I got the most out of App Academy and I feel ready to succeed, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to start a career in software development. -
Anonymous
Intensive
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App Academy teaches you how to understand codes in the minimal time possible. This means that they don't offer the theory that you learn if you study Computer Science in college.
But, tell you what, everyone who made it out of App Academy bootcamp is now a Software Engineer.
Due to the pandemic situation, my cohort only experienced the on-campus experience for ONLY 2 weeks and completed the rest of the program remotely online. -
Anonymous
Best investment in yourself!
App Academy not only teaches you how to code, they teach you how to learn new technologies fast and adapt to them quickly.
You will come out of their bootcamp knowing that you are now a Software Engineer.
I personally loved my experience during the program, I started seeing the outcome results while working on my first Full Stack Project.
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Anonymous
Great investment
Pros-
- It is an overall pretty good curriculum
-You are able to learn more languages/technologies than with most other bootcamps
- i think is the best bootcamp out now
- They prepare you to be able to build full stack apps
cons-
-very fast paced/ time consuming
-a bit pricey
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Anonymous
Fast-paced
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Intense and worthwhile course
Pros:
- Curriculum attempts to keep up to date with the most useful technologies for current job search.
- Cohorts are small enough that you can get the attention and help you may need when you're having trouble.
- The TAs / instructors in our course were the kindest and most helpful and attentive staff my cohort had ever had the good fortune of meeting.
Cons:
- Some of the written course material/readings could use some updating/proofreading
- *Do* expect to spend as much time per week on the coursework as most other reviews have said so
^ But *do* remember you are not alone. Support and uplift each other in your cohort. -
Anonymous
Brutal but worth it
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Applied to App Academy after spending about 7-8 weeks getting prepared for the admissions process.
Pros:
- Great curriculum and technologies
- Relatively small classes so you won't have to wait more than a few minutes for assistance if you or your pair partner get stuck on something
- Amazing staff (I can only speak for the cohort that I was in.) Our class unanimously loved our TAs and instructors since they would go above and beyond the written material to help us understand everything.
Cons:
- They told us to expect to spend 90-100 hours per week in order to succeed. This is not exaggerated at all and after speaking to other cohort members, there were many of us who would spend this much time minimum every week. I only list this as a con because it really does do a number on your mental state and body. You may get used to it a few weeks in but it is a tough course and exhaustion was commonplace. Know what you are getting into before you apply.
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Anonymous
Worth it
At the end of the day they fulfilled their original statement. I completed the challenging program, learned a lot, and got a job. -
Anonymous
Super tough, yet super rewarding and I am so grateful for this wonderful experience
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App Academy will tell you up front how tough the course is and how many hours you must put in. 80-100 hours a week is required as a minimum to really learn the material and pass the assessments. However, at the end of this experience you'll be completely surprised at how much you've learned in such a short space of time. You'll find it hard to believe that you went from nothing to a complete software engineer. I wouldn't trade this experience for anything, and if you're considering going through this rigorous process I highly recommend it! -
Anonymous
n/a
I had a very average time at app Academy. I thought the assessments were the worst part of this curriculum, it felt like I spent more time just trying to memorizing the practice assessments to try to pass the assessments then actually learning material. I would go to another bootcamp if I had to do it again. -
Anonymous
Very demanding, very rewarding
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Studying at App Academy was a great experience and definitely a game changer.
Before enrolling I had just a tiny bit of experience with Python, which was just enough to know that I wanted to get into software development. Now after, four months I feel ready to actually make it my profession!
That being said, it's not for everyone, if you're serious about getting through the program, you must be prepared to put in 80-100h/week. Also, the learning curve is steep, so you will feel a lot of frustration and growing pain. -
Anonymous
A rigorous yet rewarding experience
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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).
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Anonymous
Overall a great program to make you ready for a software engineer career
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Pros
- great curriculum and support to learn the materials
- pair programming and style of teaching is very efficient
- will create 3 projects which will teach a lot about how everything works
- will fully prepare you for what an actual job as an engineer will be (teach you many extra skills like debugging, rspec, etc)
Cons
- certain things can be learned online to save time and give more personal learning experience
- job search period can get a bit hectic -
Anonymous
Overall Amazing Experience at App Academy
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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 -
Anonymous
Positive
I would recommend this course to anyone who is positive they want to get into software development, since this school really will pay off for that specific demographic. . -
Anonymous
Not easy, but worth it!
Pros:
Solid software development curriculum, very structured
3 final projects that they help you complete seem like good additions to have in a portfolio
Great instructors
Cons:
Job search curriculum has not been helpful whatsoever
No major guidance through algorithms -
Anonymous
Overall Positive Experience
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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.
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Anonymous
Well structured, but the end result is really up to you
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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.
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Anonymous
Rigorous and exciting
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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. -
Anonymous
Worth your money and time bootcamp!
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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. -
Anonymous
student
App Academy offers a solid good 12-week intensive program. It helps someone with zero coding experience becoming a pro coder !! People around here are also great ! There are also career advisors to help you with job placements!! GO THERE and LEARN programing, and YOU WILL LIKE IT !!!! -
Anonymous
Student
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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. -
Anonymous
Great environment to learn coding..
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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! -
Anonymous
Software Developer
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For people who are looking for a career change this is a great way to jumpstart your career as a software developer! You are given the tools to make yourself a desirable employee but what you get out of App Academy will depend on what you put in. If you're willing to put in the work and 90-100 hour weeks, you will come out with a great foundation to start your new career. Coming from a technical background, the material was not terribly difficult to comprehend but the amount of new material thrown at you constantly made it difficult to keep up. This was a great experience for me and would highly recommend this to anyone currently searching for bootcamps or looking to improve their knowledge of programming. -
Anonymous
Amazing experience
App Academy was a great way of diving into software engineering and meeting like-minded people. It’s not over the top difficult and I’ve found it to be extremely rewarding. The instructors are very knowledgeable and friendly so any confusion will always be short-lived. -
Anonymous
Great if you're ready to push yourself
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If you're motivated and ready to put in the hard work, app academy's course structure will help you learn a lot in a fairly short amount of time. Don't expect to get too much help from the TAs in the later part of the course, because students to TA ratio is quite high and takes about 2-3 hrs in average to get a question answered. But it does teach you how to seek out answers the hard way. Overall, it's been a great experience, and I definitely learned a lot. -
Anonymous
Best decision ever
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My time at App Academy was filled with chaos but I enjoyed every minute of it. I learned concepts and technologies I would need to learn how to be a back-end and front-end engineer. There were weekly assessments which were kind of stressful but if you put the hours in they're not that hard to pass. Towards the end we got to pick a website and make a clone of it, it was up to us to design the back-end and we used the actual website for our front-end design docs. The TA's were exceptional and helped out in any way that they could. This program is definitely not for the faint of heart or for people who can't put 80+ hours per week towards this. Although they teach you technologies such as Ruby on Rails, React, and SQL theres no way they can teach you everything there is to these technologies, the most important skill you pick up and hone during your time at the program is the ability to pick up new languages and frameworks extremely fast. I got a job at an App Academy hiring event and my career coach was extremely helpful with navigating the whole process. All in all, it was the best decision I've ever made and I would do it all over again. -
Anonymous
Great learning experience
I never regret getting into App Academy, it was challenging but definitely awarding. I learned a lot of skills including backend and frontend to prepare myself to become a full-stack engineer. As long as you work hard and put effort, you will gain a lot out of the program. -
Anonymous
Finished at aA
Very fast class with helping with a group of good people. At the end will help you build your projects for CV. Some of the job search lecture is kinda pointless, but with the personal support that they give you, it will help you find a job. Do wish it will have more React and Redux that they will go over. -
Anonymous
Great
The curriculum covers so many topics that are actually useful for getting a job. It is very face-paced so if you're not a quick learner, you'll struggle a lot and might even fail out of the program. Like all others said in their reviews, this is definitely not for everyone. To get most out of the program, you need to be mentally, physically, financially, and intellectually ready. -
Anonymous
Fantastic time most supportive TAs
I had a lot of fun and learned a lot. It took a lot of work though! Really do look at giving appacademy a go! They have the best people for sure and an ideal location in the city of San Francisco... I really liked it and felt it helped me learn a lot of new things -
Anonymous
Great experience
Rigorous training that will get your skills up to industry standards in a few short months. Three large projects at the end of the course give you a good amount practical experience and knowledge so you can build your own projects, for either your own portfolio or for future employers. Deferred tuition plan ensures you do not pay salary until you find a job. -
Anonymous
Good curriculum, great job search support
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I think their curriculum is great and very well planned out. Very small portions are not up to date and some of the videos aren't the best, but all the written material is a great starting point to point you in the right direction. For the price, it would be great if they could somehow get more experienced instructors and lecturers, but maybe that's not feasible. The job search support/guidelines seems very thorough/top-notch.
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Anonymous
Okay to Great if you're new
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Pros:
Friendly Staff, a good conducive environment to learning. Students help each other, and staff are often willing to go the extra mile to help you. Staff have varying levels of expertise.
Projects are mostly interesting, difficult, but ultimately, rewarding. You'll be building your own websites from scratch by the time you're done.
You get an introduction to many topics (Ruby Rails SQL JS HTML CSS React Redux MongoDB ...). You're introduced to many relevant programming topics, and the curriculum will get you going on building a website.
Career coaches and staff seem helpful, friendly, and it seems like the job assistance portion will be great. I will update this review only when I interact with them more.
Cons:
The program is fast and can be intense. You often only do get an introduction. The curriculum towards the end starts to diminish in quality as it's still new and trying to keep up with the current market. This often means that you just reuse their code and read through the documentation. Another con is that towards the end of the program, as you get more complicated in your projects and errors, the staff won't be able to help as much. It's justifiable because you do need to become independent and that you can't be expected to know absolutely everything that could have gone wrong, but it can also be frustrating when you've been debugging for 2-5 hours.
There's a lot more to do after the program ends if you want a job, and I think if you're completely new to the program, you may want to factor in an extra month or two to wrap up projects and prep for interviews.
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Anonymous
Bootcamp Experience
It was challenging at times but well worth it. If you are thinking about doing a bootcamp, I suggest looking up the right bootcamp for you. It is not for everyone. It is really like drinking from a firehose. But you will meet a lot of people along the way.
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Anonymous
App Academy Delivers
Rigorous curriculum. Knowledgeable staff. Amazing community. App Academy provides a transformative experience that enables aspiring developers to take it to the next level. I'm confident that the skills and lessons I've learned in this program will allow me to hit the ground running and immediately provide value.
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Anonymous
App academy is a fast-paced no frills experience
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App academy is a fast-paced no frills experience. This course expects a lot from its students, both in time and in dedication. I have a lot of respect for people in non-tech related backgrounds with the courage and drive to make it through this course. I come from a technical background and came out learning a great deal about how to think critically, write clean and modular code, and create full-stack applications.
If you are curious about how to create applications AND the fundamentals that make up programming, App Academy would be a good fit.
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Anonymous
Well Worth It
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You will learn more than you thought was possible in 3 months. The environment cultivated by the curriculum, the TAs, and your fellow students is one where there's almost a compulsion to keep working to just keep up. In 16 weeks you will be able to build full stack projects, both solo and as a group and have a solid foundation in JS, Rails, React, and more. The curriculum is solid and definitely speeds up the initial learning pains of learning a new project/building applications from scratch. They have built a formula that works, and having structure and guidance in the madness that is software development and job search was certainly one of my favorite aspects of the program.
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Anonymous
My life has changed
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Pair Programming allowed me to learn the intricacies of backend development in the most immersive manner. Looking back to the first day, I barely was able to grasp the concept of implicit returns in Ruby, and now I am able to genralize json data from an into a series of position and scaling algorithms in the D3.js library. This Journey has been surreal. App Academy is an extremely difficult course, yet very gratifying.
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Anonymous
Challenging and fast-paced
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Definitely a full-time commitment. Coursework really pushed you to learn a ton of new things in a short amount of time. If diving head-first into programming and making a big life change is your goal, this is a good place to learn quickly, even if it sometimes feels like being thrown into the deep end. Made a lot of good friends. Heavy emphasis on paired programming. Assessment policy is very strict and there is more to learn than there is time in the day -- expect it to feel stressful and be ok with not being able to finish everything.
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Anonymous
It works!
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I can attest that App Academy works: I went in knowing only what I dimly remembered from intro comp sci back in college, and I’m about to start my first job as a software engineer.
I’d say the greatest strengths of the program are the challenge, the support, and the accountability. The principal three-month curriculum is incredibly intense—expect 60-hour weeks at absolute minimum—but it takes you through the skills and concepts you need to know and forces you to put in the necessary work to really learn them. The instructors and TAs, though they can occasionally be overwhelmed (many are graduates of the course), are always on hand to offer helpful feedback that’s often critical to bringing together your understanding of a concept. It’s all about putting you in a structure that incentivizes you to actually put in the work, and this continues even after graduation, as you get individualized coaching and reporting tools that make sure you regularly apply to jobs and continue working on projects and coding challenges. This is especially valuable because the job search can take time—around three months in my case—and you’ll absolutely have more to learn after you graduate. Twelve weeks can’t cover every nuance of software engineering.
As far as downsides, the instruction is sometimes shaky, as I said above, though years in business have polished the curriculum to the point where you’ll usually have pre-prepared resources to help you out if worst comes to worst. Your continued participation in the course depends on you passing the regular assessments, which is a major source of stress even if you have a handle on the material and prepare well. The assessments themselves also can feel more like tests of memorization than genuine reflections of how much you’ve learned. Last but not least, despite App Academy’s stated (and admirable) goal of bringing people from more diverse backgrounds into the tech industry, most of the classes seem to be overwhelmingly male, even more so than the industry as a whole. That won’t be an issue for everybody, but it’s worth mentioning.
Still, I have no regrets. It was an extremely valuable learning experience for me and, obviously, it got me a job.