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Founded in 2012, App Academy is a global online coding bootcamp with a focus on software engineering. App Academy offers both full-time (24 weeks) and part-time (48 weeks) online options. Alumni have found Software Engineering roles at a range of start-ups and top tech companies.
App Academy's curriculum covers AI, SQL, JavaScript, Python, HTML, and CSS, in addition to state-of-the-art tools and web frameworks like ReactJS, Express, Flask, and SQL Alchemy. Working in a dynamic team environment, students will build complex web applications that will form the foundation of their portfolio.
App Academy’s goal is to ensure students not only land a full-time Software Engineering role, but also advance in their careers for years to come. Dedicated career coaches offer job search support ranging from mock technical/non-technical interviews and resume reviews, to connecting grads with App Academy's vast employer network. From there, App Academy's partnerships team connects graduates with some of the most prestigious tech companies in the industry.
When I was conducting my search for bootcamps - One thing I did not see alot of were reviews by students that might have not completed the course (like myself). Esentially anybody who made it through any boot camp gave the course 5 stars just about every time. I'm writing this review for the persons who want to make the investment but are also beginners.
App Academy says that anybody can be a software engineer and I do believe that is true. What is important to keep in mind if...
When I was conducting my search for bootcamps - One thing I did not see alot of were reviews by students that might have not completed the course (like myself). Esentially anybody who made it through any boot camp gave the course 5 stars just about every time. I'm writing this review for the persons who want to make the investment but are also beginners.
App Academy says that anybody can be a software engineer and I do believe that is true. What is important to keep in mind if you are a beginner though, is if your wanting to learn can keep up with the pace you will be required to learn. I got into the program because I am dedicated, I studied my butt off and I am absolutely passionate about web dev and that showed in my interview process and during my code tests (the entry tests are not very hard at all - If you could handle medium level coderbyte problems you will be more than prepared).
I feel the biggest issue for a person that is completely new to the field of web dev and starts to learn on their own is which way to go and what to study. I prepped for app academy strictly by solving problems that would help me pass the entry tests - however doing that is only the very tip of the tip of the smallest tip of the iceberg once you actually get in. The tests to get in are like easy crawls but the work immediately becomes a marathon sprint from there.
I will repeat this again, if you are just about a complete newbie, the prep work can be a bit overwhelming and once the classes start, if you are still struggling with the basics you will be in trouble very early. You will need to build games every day with a partner and not being comfortable with the foundations can lead to some uncomfortable pair programming where you might defer nearly all the code ideas to your partner. I struggled in this manner and while my partners were helpful - not having a solid foundation will kill you in the course because the challenges are a bit harder every single day. I will also say that at least in my short time there, a good amount of students had some type of comp sci background or at least programmed in some capacity in their jobs or schools. Being a complete beginner isnt a dealbreaker but I cannot stress enough that feeling secure in the foundations is very important.
a/A is very performance based so flunking two assessments will get you kicked out. I didn't make it through the course because I couldnt keep up with that pace. Did I decide to quit web dev? Absolutely not - everybody falls and you have to get back up and try again - a/A was also very helpful at the end of the day when my time terminated.
If I had to begin the process over, i'd say it's incredibly important to understand the preparatory materials as well as possible at the onset. You cannot go in and expect people to hold your hand because the pace of work is very very fast. I'd also say that you should not be afraid to ask questions if you need help. Lastly you need to assess your ability to process information. If you need longer time to grasp things, you might need to consider whether boot camp is the right move for you. It was unfortunate to not finish a/A but I am happy for the experience because it has tested my resolve to march on and I expect to work in web dev soon enough - if not in 3 months :)
If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. App academy is no exception.
Getting into app academy is not as hard as they make it seem. A few basic ruby programming problems and you are in.
Their curriculum is nothing special. It's all open source which you can find online for free or low cost.
After quitting my job and investing a ton of time and energy, I was "asked" to leave after 9 days into the program...
If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. App academy is no exception.
Getting into app academy is not as hard as they make it seem. A few basic ruby programming problems and you are in.
Their curriculum is nothing special. It's all open source which you can find online for free or low cost.
After quitting my job and investing a ton of time and energy, I was "asked" to leave after 9 days into the program.
App academy's PC culture of diversity, inclusiveness, ass kissing, and bureaucracy did not click with me. They are big on pair programming which is a complete waste of time and a hindrance to learning. Facilities are filthy and men can't even get their own restroom. Every day there was some diversity, women in tech, gay pride, sensitive training type thing going on. That crap doesn't belong in the workplace.
App academy's claim to fame is "no tuition until hired". This is complete bullshit. I paid a $5000 deposit which was inconvenient but I didn't think too hard about. I thought it would be similar to a security deposit on rent. When I was asked to leave they only gave me back $2300 when I expected my full refund.
Based on their model, they are incentivized to take as many students as they can, cull the ones that don't work and make a ton of money. I like most people would think "no tuition until hired" means they do everything they can to get you hirable. Turns out they don't give a shit because they keep your money.
I don't mind being "asked" to leave. What I have an issue with is claiming "no tuition until hired" and then turning around and keeping my money.
If they had refunded my amount completely they would have kept their promise and I would have been fine with that.
This is false and deceptive adverting. This is fraud. This is coercion.
The reason why they have perfect reviews on yelp is because they stick a non-disbarment clause to students who are asked to leave.
This is illegal in California. Shows the length of what these scam artists do for money. Suppression of free speech. This review will probably get down voted until no one sees it.
I talked to a lawyer and he said since I signed the termination contract I have accepted their "refund" and there's nothing I can do. I was coerced into signing it because I would get nothing if I didn't.
Truly life changing. Went from working at Starbucks to working in NYC as a full stack developer in 3 months.
Bear in mind this is hailing from the personal perspective of a student who felt somewhat out of place at App Academy. Pretty much everything that you read up on App Academy is true, and so your general expectations of the course will be met. For me, the below things weren't what I expected going into the course. Also, some of these are more encompassing and not specific to App Academy.
-Pair programming (and this is true of probably of all the bootcamps that use pa...
Bear in mind this is hailing from the personal perspective of a student who felt somewhat out of place at App Academy. Pretty much everything that you read up on App Academy is true, and so your general expectations of the course will be met. For me, the below things weren't what I expected going into the course. Also, some of these are more encompassing and not specific to App Academy.
-Pair programming (and this is true of probably of all the bootcamps that use pair programming): there's a natural human dynamic that comes into play when pair programming, and that dynamic is going to vary tremendously based on personality. In general, if you are outgoing, patient, and a fast coder, then you will probably breeze right through pair programming; however, most people don't have the full combination of those qualities, so for example, if a fast but impatient coder--who just wants to finish the project--is paired up with a slower programmer, the slower programmer can have a rough time. As a slower programmer myself, I experienced this often (but had great experiences as well with a few partners who were willing to lessen the pace and actually collaborate). And for these days, I often felt like I learned next to nothing, and that was exceedingly frustrating. The frustration dragged me down mentally, and my attitude totally shifted, even though the vast majority of App Academites improved at their "teamwork" and collaborative abilities through the duration of the course. Needless to say, I didn't particularly enjoy my time there socially (I take responsibility for this though). But if you're the kind of person who can weather these sorts of things and keep your head up, then don't worry.
-Fast learning and raw logical-thinking speed: tying in with my previous point, I'm not that fast of a learner (more of a deep learner), and I get super nervous when I'm trying to think with a pair programming partner right next to me waiting and often interjecting with comments or ideas. These things dampened my performance and experience a lot.
-The general "techy" culture: now, I've only recently been in tech, but there's a certain techy culture (or maybe it's just NYC) that I realized doesn't really suit my particular personality. Tech is dominated heavily by the "TJ" type by myers-briggs classification. I am not a "TJ", and in a working environment, I'm still learning how to work with them.
-The TA teaching: I wish there were more one-on-one instruction. The vast majority of your time will be spent coding, and I'd venture to guess that each day, each student interacts with the TA maybe a maximum of 5 times? This may be wildly off, but understand that coding is a primarily self-driven activity, and questions shouldn't be asked until you've thoroughly researched something yourself, so in reality TA's are there to help you through your most pressing issues. This is extremely valuable and necessary, but it felt weird to be spending just 5-10% (again a rough estimate) actually interacting with TA's.
In general, from what I've observed, App Academy students have an awesome time there. Though overworked and mentally drained, they bond closely and learn from each other. App Academy is definitely a fantastic choice for a bootcamp, and you can't go wrong with it. Hopefully, the issues that I had will help you in preparing for App Academy.
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.
The time at App Academy was a HORRIBLE experience, BUT WAIT! before I continue I just want to say, I graduated App Academy and got a job as a developer immediately. So to continure with this review, I will continue to that getting through App Academy was literally the hardest thing I have ever done in life. I went through engineering school as an undergrad and never have I been through more stress and worked harder for anything. Although this is coming from someone with abso...
The time at App Academy was a HORRIBLE experience, BUT WAIT! before I continue I just want to say, I graduated App Academy and got a job as a developer immediately. So to continure with this review, I will continue to that getting through App Academy was literally the hardest thing I have ever done in life. I went through engineering school as an undergrad and never have I been through more stress and worked harder for anything. Although this is coming from someone with absolutely no coding experience before app academy so some of my cohort mates had it much easier than I did. But anyways, after it was all over, I must declare it to be the BEST DECISION I HAVE EVER MADE. I was so amazed at how much I was able to learn in just a little bit of time. App Academy gave me everything I needed to start my first job as a web developer. It actually gave me confidence in myself after I saw how much knowledge I was able to gain so quickly, which is something college never did for me. So, to anyone looking to apply, study hard! because they are hard to get an acceptance from, and prepare to work hard. How ever hard you worked to prepare for the interview process, be prepared to work 50 times as hard once you're in.
p.s. Jonathan, the instructor at NYC is an awesome teacher. I don't know about SF but I would recommend the NYC office just because Jonathan was such a good instructor and he really knew how to help with all the issues you might have, and make the learning more interesting and fun for everyone.
Become a web developer in three months, if you can handle the rigorous curriculum.
Great kickstart to JavaScript. Fast paced, but easy to follow. Helped tremendously while applying to bootcamps. Highly recommend!
Cons:
Cons:
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 f...
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.
For 26 years prior to App Academy I held a latent disdain for my generic fellow man because he was just dumb and me discussing the truth with him would probably offend or shock him.
App Academy is the only time in my life where I've felt legitimately overmatched and fighting for my life. Where I felt dumber and seriously fighting to just stay there. Every day I had to decide to get up and fucking fight and even then I lost a lot.
The best thing...
For 26 years prior to App Academy I held a latent disdain for my generic fellow man because he was just dumb and me discussing the truth with him would probably offend or shock him.
App Academy is the only time in my life where I've felt legitimately overmatched and fighting for my life. Where I felt dumber and seriously fighting to just stay there. Every day I had to decide to get up and fucking fight and even then I lost a lot.
The best thing about App Academy is not the curriculum. It is the opportunity to spend time with the humble folks with whom you will be walking on coals. I have poor character so I had to cheat to not get expelled, but now 9 months removed I am making $130k/year and my superior colleagues are surely making more. Don't cheat though.
If you are driven, you should quit your job, then get the curriculum from an alum and devote 80 hours per week to the correct delivery of their daily exercises. This can save you a lot of money.
Try get a job by applying with scripts. Their job search is way too manual of a process for people who just learned to try to automate everything.
App Academy gets the best people because they charge nothing up front. Don't settle for a lesser school that just wants your money and kicks you on your way. App Academy does not get paid until you get employed, AND they only get max money if you get $100k.
Description | Percentage |
Full Time, In-Field Employee | 85.9% |
Full-time apprenticeship, internship or contract position | 2.6% |
Short-term contract, part-time position, freelance | N/A |
Employed out-of-field | N/A |
How much does App Academy cost?
App Academy costs around $22,000. On the lower end, some App Academy courses like Free Bootcamp Prep (Online) cost $0.
What courses does App Academy teach?
App Academy offers courses like Free Bootcamp Prep (Online), Full-Time Coding Bootcamp (Online), Part-Time Coding Bootcamp (Online), Self-paced Open Course.
Where does App Academy have campuses?
App Academy teaches students Online in a remote classroom.
Is App Academy worth it?
The data says yes! App Academy reports a 80% graduation rate, a median salary of $101,000 and 90% of App Academy alumni are employed. The data says yes! In 2023, App Academy reported a 80% graduation rate, a median salary of $100,000, and 91% of App Academy alumni are employed.
Is App Academy legit?
We let alumni answer that question. 1,151 App Academy alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed App Academy and rate their overall experience a 4.66 out of 5.
Does App Academy offer scholarships or accept the GI Bill?
Right now, it doesn't look like App Academy offers scholarships or accepts the GI Bill. We're always adding to the list of schools that do offer Exclusive Course Report Scholarships and a list of the bootcamps that accept the GI Bill.
Can I read App Academy reviews?
You can read 1,151 reviews of App Academy on Course Report! App Academy alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed App Academy and rate their overall experience a 4.66 out of 5.
Is App Academy accredited?
App Academy is approved to operate by the California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education and the New York State Education Department.
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