App Academy

I'm decided to give coding a try after realizing that I did not want to pursue a career as a Physician Assistant. At first, I was really skeptical about joining a bootcamp. Questions like "Am i smart enough to code?", "Can I really learn all that in three months?",  and "Will I get a job?" were always in my head before I decided to do this. Currently, I'm a few days from graduation from a/A and I think it was the right choice. I am smart enough to code, I did learn a lot in the three months, and I believe I will get a job because most graduates on average find one within 1 - 6 months. The process of the bootcamp though was really time consuming and you are literally coding every single day for basically the whole day. However, it is only in this type of environment where you can learn so much in three/four months, where you can really get grasp whether you would like a job in this industry or not. A lot of the reviews I've read before a/A said that it was really stressful, but I personally did not feel that way. I feel like if you do what you're supposed to do, and follow the curriculum,  you can go through it not be stress. Plus, you also get to meet a lot of cool and smart people along the way. Shoutout to BCho and Sam.

 As a new developer, you will learn a lot from App Academy and they will teach u everything you need to know to start building full fledge web apps. After spending 3 months of learning the full stack, it was satisfying to finally make websites that I could be proud to show off to employers. Expect App Academy to challenge you, it is called a boot camp for a reason. If you are completely new to programming, the beginning will be tough since you will have to reprogram your mind to think like a computer. If you put in the hours and commitment, software development can be the most rewarding discipline where you can build anything into reality.

App Academy is an incredibly fast-paced and time-intensive program. The way their course system is set up, once the immersive starts, you are pushed into the deep end and must devote 100% of your time to learning to succeed. They do a very good job of integrating solo work, pair programming, and whiteboarding to truly learn how to work with other people. The curriculum gives just enough of technology to truly understand it, then moves on to a new subject right away. Things move at a very fast pace, and it's very easy to get behind early if you take it too easy, and if you do this at the begining it snowballs.

The main draw of App Academy over other programs is that they are invested in your success. They make the curriculum hard on purpose because they only want people with the drive to succeed. There is more curriculum than anyone could reasonably get through in a normal day, so be 100% prepared to have no life while you're working through it. The 80-100 hours per week that people talk about is not an exaggeration.

All Things considered, the past 24 weeks have been a grueling but very rewarding experience.

App Academy was probably the most challenging and most rewarding experience of my life. In the 4 months that I was in the course, I learned all the tools necessary in order to call myself a software engineer. I went from knowing absolutely nothing about coding to creating my own Instagram app clone.

My favorite part of App Academy at was the networking and the amount of friends I was able to make in such a short span of time. By the end of my cohort, I was acquainted with most of the students and had developed meaningful relationships with them. In addition, my cohort mates were an excellent asset when it came to asking for help when the TAs were busy helping other students.

App Academy's deferred tuition model was the reason I chose to attend. As a risk-averse individual, I was instantly drawn to this business model because I knew this meant that they truly believe in their program. If I was ever stuck on a project, the TAs, who are very knowledgeable of the material and super friendly, would help me within a moment's notice. While they do not guarantee you a job after graduation, this is probably the closest thing to a guarantee that you can get. All of the career coaches are invested in your success and will give you all the tools and resources you'll need to succeed.

This program was very rigorous and time-consuming, but I am proud of myself for having made it through to the end. I now have a great foundation coming out of it and can't wait to showcase my skills during the job search.

App Academy has been amazing. It is hard, rigorous, and oh-so rewarding. The curriculum is focused but not to focused. All of your learning prepares you not only for the job search, but for continuing your curiosity on your time by giving you so many many jumping-off points to explore on your own. Working on the portfolio projects at the end is even a good example of this.

In this review, I'm going to cover some general questions based on my experience with the App Academy online cohort.

1. Should you apply for a coding boot camp? I can't give you a straight answer for this because it depends on your situation. But in my case, it was worth it for me, since my goal was to learn about full-stack web development and software engineering to be as fast as possible. I think App Academy does a great job at that, and you will be surprised at how quickly you can learn here. It would have taken me far longer of self-studying to be where I'm at today. Not to mention, I've also made some great friends along the way that I talk to every day.
2. How should one prepare before applying to App Academy? I did the intro-to-programming section offered on https://www.aaonline.io and felt that I was ready to schedule a technical interview with AA. I was not, I failed my first interview and was lucky enough to get invited back for another. After failing, I realized that I needed much more practice. I practiced on https://www.codewars.com every day up until my next interview. You need to time yourself and talk out loud through the problem-solving process, preferably to a friend or family member. You should also be very comfortable working with arrays and hashes in Ruby and solving problems that may require nested loops. Sidenote: https://www.leetcode.com is another excellent place to practice. 
3. How many hours per week to get through the program? Like many have said before me, this boot camp is no joke. Even if you put in 80+ hours per week, you will only be scratching the surface of the topics covered. But this is the tradeoff of getting yourself job-ready as fast as possible.
4. How stressful is the program? If you have no programming experience, you will need to study hard to pass the six assessments. They cover Ruby algorithms, Ruby Object-Oriented Programming, SQL, Ruby on Rails, React, and JavaScript. If you fail two of the assessment tests, you must retake one of their choosing. If you fail the retake test, you will be booted out. Yes, it's stressful, but keep your focus on the material and the great job that you're going to get out of it, and you'll be fine.
5. How is the curriculum? I think that some of the newer content at the end of the curriculum could use some improvement. But for the most part, it's fantastic. I know some people may be turned off by Ruby and Ruby on Rails, but don't worry about it, you will also build full-stack applications with the MERN stack.
6. How are the instructors? From my experience, they were knowledgable and friendly. Leave the ego at the door and pick their brains as much as possible. They are a valuable resource. 
7. What is a day like at App Academy? At 8 AM we would meet on Zoom, the instructors would cover the daily material before splitting us up into random pairs to work on the day's projects. Throughout the day, we had access to the instructors to ask them questions. About an hour before the end of the day, we would all meet to cover the material in the day's project. Before the next day, we would then complete the assigned homework.

Great experience and I would do it again.

Saying that App Academy is a full time commitment is the understatement of the year. This was an incredibly fast paced program with a focus on learning how to code featuring patient instructors and competent classmates.
It is amazing how much I have learned at App Academy and what's even better is that I now know I have the skills needed in order to learn quicker than ever before.
Highly Recommended.

App Academy is the best decision I have ever made. It is a very grueling experience, you need to be fully committed when you decide to take on this endeavor. If software engineering is your passion then this will be worth the time and effort. I don't want to get into the technical details of the program, there are plenty of resources available for that. 

Coming from someone with zero experience, I was legitimately scared to even apply to App Academy. I came from a startup and knew what it was like to work nights and weekends so the hours that I was seeing (90-100 / week) in order to excel at aA wasn't too worrisome, but with no coding experience I thought there was a chance I'd fail out.

There's no sugarcoating it, if you apply to aA say goodbye to your social life, let your family know you won't see them for a couple months, and you probably have to cancel whatever plans you have lined up in the coming months. But it's worth it. I started in April, and my end date (when the job search STARTS) is October 4th. It's September 30th today and I'm enjoying my week off because I accepted an offer last week. I worked incredibly hard to be where I am right now, I began interviewing early after being reached out to by numerous companies and received an offer before the job search actually began. I'm INCREDIBLY confident had I not applied early I would be in the same position, as the career coaches and material were SPOT ON from what I saw in my interviews. I would have actually had more success had I waited to apply -- I was under-prepared for numerous roles, which would have been taken care of if I had waited -- so I have nothing but positive things to say about Eli and the entire job search portion.

There is no way of knowing whether or not you're made for this unless you go and do it, so give it a try. The only thing you have to lose is some time and maybe some sleep -- but you have an entire new life to gain. Financial independence, work / life balance, a fulfilling job and endless connections. If you're even remotely on the fence about applying to aA, I hope you take the chance.

App Academy is a fast-paced program for getting you practical experience with many different relevant technologies in a very short amount of time. Right off the bat once the immersive portion kicked into high gear, we got exposure to Git, data structures, and we were pair programming daily through the day’s projects. The curriculum is well structured for layering in new technologies, and before you know it you’re familiar with relational databases and doing a deep dive into the inner workings of Rails. Things move at a bewildering pace, and it’s very easy to get caught off guard by this early on if you’re not careful.

The looming thought of getting kicked out over failing two assessments can be extremely unsettling, but this risk/reward setup also puts the entirety of the cohort into a hyper focused mindset. And it creates a unique environment for learning if you can sublimate the anxiety of it. Even through the online setup, it was surprising just how much there was a sense of community. You spend hours every day with your classmates, and even through a computer screen I felt like I got to know a lot of them really well. I don’t know how they’re able to isolate so many brilliant people into these cohorts, but they clearly have very efficient and calculated screening mechanisms in place to ensure they’re taking quality people into the program.

The TA’s are fantastic. The student to teacher ratio is very favorable for student teacher interactions, and they were consistently pivotal in getting me on track with the material on pace to get through the assessments. It’s a lot of information so be 100% prepared to have no life while you’re working through the curriculum. I thought 100 hours a week would be an exaggeration but I was consistently logging 95-100 hours each week studying the material straight through the weekend.

You get to build your own full stack project using the core stack of the curriculum, as well as other projects with additional technologies that you learn past the React portion of the course. They’re in a re-vamping phase with their curriculum with less of a focus on Ruby as far as I understand, so this is something to bear in mind moving forward. I’m confident that however they re-structure the curriculum will be just as effective as the current setup they have in place and I’m sure it’s necessary given the industry’s trending away from Rails, but any large scale overhaul of a curriculum carries with it at least some amount of risk.

I felt like the React portion was great. Past that things were still mostly well structured with minor hiccups. There were portions I felt were too rushed. For example, we had about a weekend to learn the MERN stack before we were working in a team to build an application in it that following week. Pieces of this curriculum might need some revision. Maybe something as simple as having at least one additional project with the MERN stack before having students code in a team environment in it. However I really enjoyed the Docker portion of the curriculum, and it was fun building an additional project with GraphQL / Apollo. I’ve heard this part of the curriculum is at the moment isolated to the online setups. You get to build a project in Vanilla JavaScript at the end of the course as well.

App Academy’s deferred payment plan was a strong draw for me personally. I felt that this established them as an institution willing to take on a lot of risk investing in the people they take into the program, and shows that they’re confident their curriculum will get people placed in well-paying positions upon finishing. I’d honestly like to see more institutions of higher education adopt a similar financing approach. There are pros and cons to deciding on doing the online setup instead of an in-person setup, and I do believe an in-person setup would have been very fulfilling. Some people would say the in person setup is vital to the whole App Academy experience. But I do like that the online setup at least had a longer space of time for absorbing the material. You get a month prior to the official immersive portion of the cohort to get solid with software engineering fundamentals. And the TA’s were always readily available to answer any questions I might have, so at least on the learning side there was nothing lost in translation going this route. An in person bootcamp really wasn’t feasible for me personally, and I would expect it’s not for many others planning on applying.

All things considered the past 24 weeks have been a grueling yet highly rewarding experience. You get out of it what you put into it, and you have to put a lot into it if you want to get through the totality of the curriculum.

App Academy was an amazing experience for me. The main factor that drew me to the program originally was the fact that it had an online option that still included the rigor and attention of a classroom atmosphere. I knew that I wanted to have a structured experience that would push me to continue learning the material at a regular pace. App Academy is definitely a challenging experience. There are a lot of concepts that are covered, but it is all presented in a way that allows you to absorb the material through application. The emphasis on pair-programming reinforces your understanding of the material by both constantly having someone else to bounce ideas off of as well as providing an opportunity to explain your thought process and code to another person. Participating in the program takes your full dedication, but is extremely rewarding in the amount of knowledge gained and the new doors that open up for a career in web development.

Aside from having material current to the day (e.g. Apollo), the staff and assistance was the best part.  Our lecturers and assistants were extremely sharp and super patient. They were personable and kind and did whatever they could to help us understand.

If you get in, work hard, harder, your hardest.  Learn to work with others. Learn to have self discipline.  This program will help you to become your best.

The content was practical, guided, and cathartic.  I cannot recommend this program enough. Thank you to Kush and Ned for creating such an awesome program.

After working 7 years as a Mechanical Engineer/Controls Engineer, I decided to take 24-weeks to study Web Development at AA. I joined the program last January (2019) and was part of the App Academy's first Online Cohort. We were a group of 8, spread across the US and even had a classmate living abroad, eating and sleeping on US Eastern time.

The program is very intense in terms of time commitment, where I spent every hour of the day and night studying (100hrs+ /week). But the more time I committed to study, the more I understood about each topic and learned. Each hour spent was worth it. 

If you really enjoy programming, you will love this program! You will have access to great TA/instructors, well-thought and detailed ressources. And learned all the skills you will need on the job.

Our initial cohort had Live Lectures from our instructor, where I was able to ask tons of questions to really understand very deeply each lecture. A minus point for future Online Cohorts, is that it may no longer be true as more recorded lectures started to get used right after our cohort. Even though, AA breaks it down so you can still ask questions every 45mins or hour. Staying engaged and awake while watching video lectures was never my strongest point. 

I have no regret though, the education was fantastic! Please give it a try and see whether it's for you!

App Academy is a 3 months (5 if you're taking the online portion) web development boot camp with a very low acceptance rate.  The program is 8 hours of new materials everyday with 6 assessments  sprinkled in to test you.  The curriculum is pretty good for the most part and the projects you do a good job of testing what you learned for the day's material.  The peers you work with from the Teacher Aids to your peers are all great people to work with.

Some of the curriculum material could use an update/ be fleshed out better.

Be prepare to work your butt offs when you do get in.

I'd been programming for several years and decided to do App Academy more as a "formalization" of my knowledge than as a way to "learn to code".  After all, I knew how to code.  Well, I was wrong.  I learned so much.   For example, a) The "why" behind many things I already knew how to do, thereby allowing for better decisions.  b) The practical value of data structures and algorithms I had previously written off as "computer science stuff", c) Effective pair programming - started out hating it, grew to love it.  d) A major raising of the bar in terms of what's possible - how about learning a new technology and using it to create something significant in 10 days?  If you have the tenacity to go after what you want, it's for you.  If you give up quickly when things get tough (long hours ahead), stay away!

Overall, this was definitely one of the most rewarding experiences I have had. I learned an incredible amount of information and feel confident in my skills as a software developer. You can tell that a lot of time and effort is put into the curriculum and that they are always striving to improve upon it. I believe that everyone on the teaching staff really cares about their students' success and are constantly going out of their way to make sure everyone is getting the help they need to succeed. I would recommend this course to anyone who is looking to transition careers into software development. 

I enrolled the last 12 weeks intensive bootcamp program at App Academy. Apparently they are changing the cohort to 16 weeks from now on.

Overall, App Academy is not the place where you just sit there and hoping someone would hold your hand to review through programming related materials. Sure, there is help provided if you request so, but it definitely takes effort and dedication to be successful at App Academy, and more importantly, to be successful at your future job after graduation. Self-motivation is the key to success here.

Even though I came from software developer background, the topics that App Academy taught us are pretty challenging, that I constantly find myself running out of time to study ahead of next day's material. Though, I did feel fulfilled and satisfied by the overwhelming topics that we have to read and understand because it is also probably one of the few way we could improve ourselves rapidly. 

My only suggestion to future students are: do not slack off during the weekend. I learned that the hard way...`

Overall, I had a great time during the 12-week in-person curriculum. While I did come in with an undergraduate CS degree, I feel that the material supplemented what I learned in college quite well (although a bit slow the first few weeks). But given my background, I did not find the pacing of the course to be all that intensive until the projects hit. There is definitely plenty to learn. They go in-depth enough on topics necessary to be considered a web developer but there are a lot of topics only briefly touched on to explore further on your own.

Pros:
 - TAs are extremely friendly and willing to help
 - Plenty of interesting projects to work on throughout the course
 - Pretty much everybody was fun and easy to work with

Cons:
 - Trying to get help during projects can lead to a lot of waiting for TAs
 - Homework could be more meaningful rather than a bunch of small segmented assignments
 - Be prepared to keep working hard over the weekends, especially for the full-scale projects toward the end of the course

I'm not gonna sugar coated this. People get kicked out for failing 2 assessments. This was the single most difficult, stressful, mentally taxing, emotionally challenging, and wonderful experiences in my life. This is the best decision I've ever made. Expect the workloads of 100 hours a week, especially if you want to get good. I came in with a lof of imposter-syndrome, and at the end of it, I can build full-stack applications from scratch. I've become a lot more confident in my skills and how I communicate to potential employers, as I type this I have a few on sites scheduled next week.