App Academy Reviews
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Anonymous
It works.
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Like you, I was initially skeptical of coding bootcamps too, but I decided to take a leap with App Academy (especially since they offered a deferred tuition plan).
Prior to App Academy, I had zero coding experience. I spent about a month and a half studying to get in, then another month and a half to complete their prep work before day one. After admission, I had class from 9am - 6pm, followed by 1-3 hours of readings/homework for the rest of the evening. As other reviewers mentioned, it's quite the mentally and emotionally draining experience.
But stick with it. Their curriculum they offer is frequently updated. Their staff is accessible and passionate about what they teach. Their job support is awesome: daily whiteboarding and/or mock interviews, help with online presence (LinkedIn, AngelList, your portfolio, your GitHub, etc.), and personal career coaches help guide you through the process.
To be honest, I also did feel like some of their initiatives in promoting diversity and welcomeness felt a bit forced -- but hey, it's the tech industry. Bottom line: the staff means well, they value team players, and they're committed to giving everyone the same opportunity to succeed.
Eight months ago, I knew absolutely zero about coding or web development. In a few weeks, I'll be starting my job as a software developer. If you're ready to take the leap, it works.
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Anonymous
App Academy demands everything
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App Academy demands your full attention and it definitely requires it to make it through. As a history of being a terrible student, being pushed through these paces was definitely challenging. Hopeful bootcampers should always keep in mind that all bootcamps are not prepared with the same teaching knowledge and focus as can be found in most accredited schools. And thus there are many points where you may find it uncomfortable, difficult and divergent from what you may be used to. Bootcamps are first and foremost businesses. That being said, App Academy is highly regarded, rigorous and demands 10-12 hours a day. It takes some level of emotional support or mental fortitude to go the mile in tact.
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Anonymous
The Amount You Learn Will Surprise You
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The amount of material App Academy requires students to learn within 3 months is tremendous. If students don't keep up every day and manage time well, it is difficult to keep up. To put it into perspective, I took two quarters of C in college and the material I learned was roughly equivalent to the 1 month prepwork that is required after you get in before you actually start the course.
Pros:
- The material is well thought out and the curriculum is solid.
- You are surrounded daily by peers just as driven as you.
- Great staff and instructors. (Just as in any educational setting you'll find some spectacular instructors vs good instructors)
- Able to learn materials needed to get a job within a succinct amount of timeCons:
-The curriculum pacing in the beginning is a bit slow and suddenly week it speeds up quickly after week 4 making it difficult to catch up at times
- You are required every day from 9 - 6pm and with the homework is usually a 12 hour work day. This could be considered a pro if you don't have other commitments such as family, or spend two hours commuting daily as I did.
- No longer a 12 week bootcamp but a mandatory 13 week courseOverall, App Academy is a solid program, and the instructors are committed in seeing you succeed. They have a solid business model which makes them even more motivated to help the students. Would definitely recommend App Academy to anyone who has the passion and resources.
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Anonymous
works (pretty much) as advertised
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I went to App Academy and I have a job as a frontend developer now. I had foreign language skills and no coding background before App Academy, and I only realized that coding bootcamps were a thing about 14 months ago. After graduating on February 10th, 2017 I accepted an offer today with a base salary of $90k in the Bay Area after sending out almost 300 applications over the past two months. It worked for me as advertised so I'm satisfied.
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Anonymous
Great program, very fulfilling, very time intensive
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a/A was an amazing opportunity that I'm definitely happy and thankful I chose to take! a/A is a ton of work, and requires extreme dedication in order to be successful. However, I wasn't surprised at this because a/A is very clear that it is an intensive program. You will not succeed if you are not willing to make a/A your #1 priority. The more preparation you give yourself, the better. a/A provides some prep work, but if you push yourself to do more (e.g., study algorithms, javascript, oop, etc.) you'll be even more prepared. I never felt like I wouldn't be able to succeed here, as long as I was willing to put in the effort. I don't have a job yet, so I can't vouch for that aspect of it. However, the program itself was amazing and I feel very prepared. For the past couple months I have been learning at a really fast pace. I do not have a STEM background (majored in Psychology in college), so don't let it scare you off if you don't have a STEM background! From the very beginning I felt like a/A was SUPER organized. It's really impressive. They update the material with each cohort in order to stay current, and make sure that the material they are using is the best it can be. The whole program is highly organized, with homework given each night and specific projects to work on during the day (as well as lecture). I definitely felt like there were enough TAs to help us out while we're working. You spend the first several weeks of a/A pair programming on a daily basis. This was a great experience, and definitely helped me learn a lot from my peers. I definitely think a/A is a great place to be! However, we go through material extremely quickly. If you're the type of person who would want to go at a slower place a/A might not be the right place for you. There's nothing wrong with this, just differing learning styles! Most of the projects I started, I was not able to finish. This is how the program is built. It moves quickly, and you learn a ton.
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Anonymous
Great but a lot of preparation is needed for success
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The curriculum is very fast and you get grouped with like-minded people who also want to learn and get a job. The TA's are very helpful and they are constantly available to answer your questions during the daily assignments.
There are some things to be wary about, though. If you fall behind, you will be playing catch up and be stressed for the rest of the curriculum. For that reason, I suggest people who are looking to attend to prepare by making going through free online classes on Ruby, Javascript, and some basic SQL. Know about object oriented programming. The prepwork they send you if you get in is a drastic change of pace from the coding challenges that you will be doing to get in.
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Anonymous
This is the place to be.
The whole time it feels like we are just learning random things, but during the Full Stack Project everything comes together. This is the place to go to get started in the software development field.
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Anonymous
You Get What You Put In
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I just finished the coding curriculum of App Academy. I've been in tech my entire adult career and always had an interest in learning to dev. The opportunity to join App Academy came last year and I jumped at the chance and haven't looked back. The program is rigorous, expect to put in the hours, but you will get out of it is reciprocal of the effort and time you put into the program. That being said, I greatly enjoyed my time there and would highly recommend it to anyone who is serious about changing their career to development.
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Anonymous
A place to learn lots.
I recommend this to anyone who wholeheartedly wants to get a job as a software developer. Even though I can technically learn the material myself through YouTube and other free sources, It would have taken me several times longer. Be warned, only ~3% get into the course and people do get kicked for not being able to keep up with the curriculum.
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Anonymous
It's Over Already?
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App Academy is single-handedly the best decision I have ever made in my life. I've learned more these past few months than I have the last year of self teaching. The workload is draining as they essentially have you coding from 9AM to 6PM 5 days a week. But if you put in the work and make use of the staff they have there, you should be able to get by fine. Speaking of the staff, A1. The TA's are always there to answer any questions you may have and genuinely enjoy explaining concepts to you. Also, if you ever have a question after hours the TA's are easily accessible through Slack.
12 weeks may seem like a long time, but trust me when I say it goes by fast.
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Anonymous
Solid Bootcamp Choice
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You are expected to learn quite a bit about Ruby on your own before you are accepted into App Academy. Once in, you WILL be spending a lot of time learning and coding. A typical class day starts at 9am and ends at 6pm, but students will stay until 10-11 to finish the day's project or start on the next day's material. Expect this schedule for the next 4 months or so of your life.
The curriculum is constantly evolving to cater to the needs of the current job market. At the time I'm writing this, React/Redux is one of the hottest frameworks in the market, so the tail end of the curriculum is devoted to React. However, should another language/framework take over, the instruction team will configure the curriculum accordingly.
You will spend most of your day pair-programming with another student on the day's projects, switching every 15 minutes between typing and navigating (giving instructions on what to code next). The teaching assistants are available for help if the two of you get stuck on something.
The instruction team generally consists of graduates from previous cohorts, who, having gone through the same material, are constantly finding the best way to explain and present the curriculum.
The job assistance team regularly brings alums and industry insiders to discuss their experience with the program, and helps connect current students with alums at their firms. They will also help you with your communications to negotiate and maximize your earning potential, since a higher salary for you means a higher payment to them.
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Anonymous
Recommend!
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Background: I came from a/A from graduate school in philosophy. I'm currently in the job portion of the curriculum.
Pros:
The structure of the curriculum is great. I had some familiarity with Rails before, but their presentation of Rails was far clearer and intuitive from what I had gone through online.
Pair programming is challenging, I learned a lot from it.
The job curriculum is very helpful so far.
The TAs are all helpful and friendly.
Most people who attend a/A are smart and have a variety of different coding strengths which I learned from.
Pay less up front!
Recent cohorts continue to have good job placement rates.Cons:
Sometimes the schedule changes on short notice.
On the whole, it's more expensive than other bootcamps which friends who now work as software engineers have attended (Dev Bootcamp).Overall, I'd recommend it.
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Anonymous
Wonderful Learning Opportunity and People
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I was part of the September 2016 Cohort. I found the environment very encouraging with support from both your TA's and peers . I was very impressed with the quality of instruction as well as the sheer quantity of information we learned in such a short amount of time. For example, we learned recursion in one day. I would highly recommend a/A to anyone looking to learn, grow and switch to a new fulfilling career in software development!
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Anonymous
The Real Deal
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I am a natural skeptic, so I made sure to do a ton of research before attending App Academy. After going through the program, I can safely say that App Academy is exactly how they advertise. I learned more in 2 months than I could have hoped to learn in a year or more by myself. The course is exactly what I needed as someone who came to tech as a former attorney, and I feel prepared to work as a full-time web developer. I am truly glad I had the opportunity to attend and would recommend it to anyone serious about switching careers into web development.
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Anonymous
"A tough, but rewarding experience"
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The curriculum portion of the course is very rigorous and you end up learning a lot. Every day you spend most of your time pair programming, which promotes a great learning environment! The material is very quick and breaks only the surface, but gives you enough knowledge to read professional level code and learn on your own by the end of the program. The TAs are extremely resourceful and can help you with literally anything! They ask for feedback daily so that they can keep improving from one cohort to the next, which is really great!
The job search portion of the boot camp is jam packed with projects as well as material. When you are creating your projects from scratch, you realize the gaps in your knowledge and have to figure out how to solve them mostly on your own. This can be challenging and a little scary, but pretty reflective of what life will be like after you are finished with the academy. One of the best things about a/A is that you'll have access to all of their material forever, which can be a great resource later in life.
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Anonymous
Just Apply And Go
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App Academy is different from most bootcamps because of it's rigor, however what sets it apart the most would be the pricing model.
No other bootcamp does this. Quite frankly App Academy doesn't have to either. They're a top bootcamp. Even if they asked for all the money upfront like everyone else they would get thousands of applications still.
App Academy is invested in students getting jobs quickly.
If you want a job quickly, do App Academy. Of course there is no guarentee, but at least you know they're invested in it as much as you are.
The course is rigorous and tough but just keep the complaints and tears to yourself and get through it and you'll be in a completely different position from where you started.
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Anonymous
Amazing Experience
App Academy was an amazing experience. From learning the basics of Ruby through developing full stack web apps, the instructors are always extremely helpful and push you to be your best. I feel like my education at App Academy has set me up for success, not just right now, but also in the long run.
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Anonymous
Difficult and worth it.
Become a web developer in three months, if you can handle the rigorous curriculum.
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Anonymous
Got a job less than a month after graduating
Prior to App Academy I had no coding experience. I graduated a little under a month ago and just accepted an offer as a backend engineer for the advertised average graduate salary. Life changing.
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Anonymous
Questionable methods, undeniable results
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App Academy makes money when its graduates get good jobs, and the course reflects that. The quality of instruction isn't bad, exactly—I would rate it slightly below average. But if you are looking for one on one support, a vibrant community feel, or a thoughtful introduction to fundamentals, you will not get it there. What you will get is an extremely focused curriculum, a no-nonsense environment that motivates people who already have some natural ability, and a lot of very good advice about your job search. App Academy is changing so much and so fast that I hesitate to speak too much about its specific practices when I attended. We didn't get much immediate help with job placement. The partners they touted didn't materialize in NYC. But I got a very good job, essentially my dream job, by following their advice almost to the letter and working my ass off. The vast majority (though not all) of the people in my cohort also got good jobs. If you are smart and self motivated and you enjoy coding enough to do it on your own time before you go, App Academy will produce results.
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Anonymous
The most you can learn in 3 months
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I never thought I could learn so much in 3 months. The curriculum and staff is amazing! You learn really good coding style and best practices and will leave the program a strong enough programmer to learn whatever language or framework you want. It is a very stressful experience, not because of the constant work, but because they kick a fair number of students out of the programs for test scores. Also, I strongly recommend using erganomics as a preventative rather than a treatment, for carpel tunnel.
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Anonymous
Life Changing Experience.
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App Academy was an excellent and life changing experience for me. Sure there are some things that weren't perfect, but in the grand scheme of things, they are doing some really amazing stuff.
But prepare to work your ass off for up to 6 months, possibly more, during the program and probably even more during the job search. It is not a golden ticket into a job, but a helpful foot in the door of the industry, and the fastest possible way to go from zero to being able to write and understand code.
As far as outcome, I got a job as a Full Stack Software Engineer at $105K, and it took me about 1.5 months out of the program to land the job.
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Anonymous
Restarted my career in under 4 months!
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App Academy was an amazing life experience that I encourage anyone to attend that is looking to transition into the software industry.
After grinding in finance for 2 years, I was concerned that I would never gain the skills needed to join the fast growing tech industry. Enter App Academy. I attended the SF cohort in March 2016, and in roughly 3 months, they took me from a programming newbie into a software engineer able to push production level code. One month later, I landed a back end engineering position earning roughly $120K.
The secret to the program's success is that the incentives are aligned. UNLIKE ANY OTHER BOOT CAMP, App Academy does not charge you tuition until you are hired. Consequently, the curriculum is extremely hands on and tailored to you gaining the knowledge to be employable. You largely avoid the trivial academic exercises found in a traditional CS program and instead focus on building skills that make you an excellent programmer for companies.
PROS
- No tuition fees until you start working (only a refundable security deposit is due upfront, and it is credited towards tuition payments)
- Excellent lecturers and personalized support from TAs every day to help you when you are stuck on projects and offer advice to write better code
- Career-driven curriculum to help learn the most important skills companies hire for
- Beyond thoroughly learning web development, you understand the general concepts needed to teach yourself new languages and technologies efficiently
CONS
- Intense programming camp that requires constant effort during and after class hours
- Exceptional self-motivation and time management is needed to survive. You have to be willing to keep up with all assignments and tests, even while job hunting
BOTTOM LINE
If you are an extremely motivated individual that needs a fresh start in technology, App Academy is your best option. It is a roller coaster of an experience but the intensity pays dividends for you when you are interviewing and on the job. -
Anonymous
Went 3 years ago, Changed my life
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I was a graduate student in a humanities field, scraping by on ~15k a year to qualify for a professor position that I never really wanted and wouldn't have been prepared for. (Let alone could have gotten in the state the jobs market is in with academia).
I heard about AppAcademy back in the beginning, paid my $3k deposit and moved to New York, and worked my ass off for 12 weeks drinking copious amounts of coffee and learning to code. From the first day of coding to the last day of negotiating my final job offer, a/A was behind me all the way (although I did have to tap into a couple other networks to get hired at a place I liked).
Now I make ~120k a year doing something I'm good at. AppAcademy was and is completely brilliant for making its tuition dependent on first year's wages -- the incentives to create the right curriculum and provide the right support and totally aligned, and it really shows. -
Anonymous
It's Exactly What it Claims to Be
AppAcademy was great. They maintained a very focused culture. You get the sense they want you to succeed. If you come ready to work and learn, you will not be dissappointed.
My only complaints are that they failed to mention 2 things prior to signing up. The first being that there's a down payment. The second was that the last 2 weeks were purely job preparation.
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Anonymous
Started a new career
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There are definitely bootcamps out there that are predatory, and simply accept a high number of students, take their money up front, and then dump them out into the real world without much hope of getting a good job.
App Academy is not one of those, primarily because you only pay them after you get a job. Nearly everyone in my cohort had a high quality and high paying software engineering job within a few months of graduating.
It's a massive time committment, but I can't think of any way to do as drastic a career change in as short a time.
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Anonymous
First 2/3rds are world-class; last 1/3rd less so
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Pros:
- Well-managed culture, which fostered cooperation rather than competition
- Extremely supportive network, easy to get help, especially from alumni
- Curriculum is constantly updated to account for new industry trends
- Deferred, scaling tuition structure is extremely appealing (pay based on what you earn)
- Assessment structure ensures that students don't fall behind; from my experience, while the best students across top bootcamps are comparable, App Academy's 'worst' students are far better than the 'worst' students from other boot campsCons:
- Availability of resources drastically dropped in the last third of the program ("job search curriculum"); internal tools for this portion of the curriculum were surprisingly poorly designed given the nature of the boot camp
- Severe limitation of TA availability at times during practical coding sessions (being improved with reorganization and increased hiring)
- Drastically differing lecture quality (some were on par with my best college professors, others were absolutely useless -- fortunately in the minority)
- Algorithms curriculum is disorganized and not as helpful as it could be
- Assessments are too easy to perfect score, meaning the margin of error for passing is very low. Thus, students who fail seem to do so most often from dev env problems or anxiety vs. not understanding the material. Assessments should be made harder, with an easier passing score, to account for ceiling effects and to present a more accurate mean / median.Other Notes:
- More effort can be done to address burnout. Due to the fast pace and challenging nature of the work, many students stop to take a breather once the pressure is off... and never start again. Not listed as a 'con' because this honestly should be the students' responsibility over App Academy, but it is an area where App Academy can make a large impact. App Academy can organize group projects, accountability groups for job seekers, etc.
- Algorithms curriculum received a major upgrade around when I left; from what I can see, there is much more of a formalized structure now -
Anonymous
selective but bad program
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Pros.... you don't have to pay until you get a job is good for some people. The office is nice and centrally located. The ratio of TAs to students is good. Some of the projects are very interesting and unique to A/A (you get to create your own object relational mapper for example). They do cover data structures and algorithms which are important for interviews.
Cons... Their "money-back" guarantee contract is actually ridiculous. You only don't have to pay tuition if you search for an entire year after the program is over and don't find a job (you aren't allowed to hold even part-time work in your previous position for that entire year).
They test their students every week and kick out the students who don't perform well, so this inflates their statistics on percentage of students who find a job vs other bootcamps who don't kick out students. Plus it makes everyone way stressed out. Even so, their time to placement is way too long (after 3 months, ~50% of grads are employed), compare that to Hack Reactor's stats of 80%!).
They have terrible post-graduation job support that mostly involves pushing students to bulk-spam companies. Basically, forget about picking where you want to work, just get an offer anywhere that will give you one because let's face it, we're in a coding bootcamp bubble. There are now way more bootcamp graduates than there are openings for junior-level software engineers in SF and most employers don't think A/A graduates are any better/different from Dev Bootcamp/General Assembly/Coding Dojo, etc grads. All students are required to submit 200+ applications to companies.
TAs are 99% recently graduated students who did well in the course but have no work experience as software engineers or experience finding jobs in this field.
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Anonymous
Solid Engineering, Terrible Job Search
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The whiteboarding pair practice is unusual and useful for most people, though as a math major I'd been accidentally practicing it for years. The curriculum in Rails is nothing special but solid; the JS curriculum was as well, though they've switched to React since then. The algorithms sessions cover most of what you need to know and some cool stuff you don't but should.
The job search 'help' wasn't. They had one clueless person; now there are several failed grads who couldn't cut it as instructors playing high school guidance counselor.My advice: Sure, apply; they're fairly selective and you're in good shape if they accept you. But then turn them down, because they're not actually worth it.
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Robert Farb
Intense and rewarding
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I would definitely recommend App Academy to anyone looking to switch career paths into full stack development. The structured curriculum and pair programming definitely helped me get through the 85-90 hour weeks. It definitely takes self-drive to get through the program but I can assure you will come out with a great knowledge of Ruby on Rails, React, Redux and computer science fundamentals. The instructors are always there to help, and so are your cohort-mates!
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Andrew Langston
Rigorous & Rewarding
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If you are interested in software development and willing to devote yourself full time to the program, App Academy will give you the skills to succeed in a developer role. Be prepared to spend upwards of 90 hours per week learning the material, and be ready to do this for 12 weeks straight - as soon as you start to come to grips with one topic, lectures begin on the next. The pace is rigorous to say the least.
That said, the payoff is immeasurable and the experience unquestionably positive. I've never learned so much so short a span of time, all while surrounded by diverse peers of incredible ability. I can't recomend the program enough for those willing to devote the time necessary.
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Garbo Cheng Ye
AA Review
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Pros:
- people
- learn a lot of stuff( Ruby on Rails, React/Redux, Javascript)
- great TA'sCons:
- no time for anything else
- super fast-pacedAttending App Academy has been one of the most rewarding experiences I've had. There were many times where I felt completely lost, but the TA staff at App Academy was always super accommodating and willing to patiently teach any of us that needed the help. If you are willing to drop everything and commit 9 weeks to see if coding is for you, there isn't a program out there I'd recommend more so than App Academy.
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Daniel Moisoff
My time at App Academy
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I enjoyed the program overall. It was stressful though dealing with the tests and the daily checkin times. After completing the code intensive part of the curriculum I felt like I had a good understand of the materials, but I would need more time to cement the knowledge within me. The teachers were very helpful and a good support system to have when things got stressful. It was a worth while program.