I was here 7 months ago, in a very similar situation and you probably are. I looked up the best Online Bootcamps and the name App Academy kept coming up. I decided to look for into it, into reviews people had left, and did general research on it for weeks. After speaking with a few alumni, I decided to take the plunge! I absolutely loved it! It was a very fun and intense course! I know so much more than I did 6 months ago, I cant even describe it. If you are on the edge, I 100% recommend App Academy! If you have any burning questions feel free to look me up on LinkedIn and I will do my best to answer any questions, pay it forward and what not!

I recently graduated from App Academy’s 24 week online program, and it was fantastic! The curriculum was informative, the instructors and TAs were knowledgeable and friendly, and the culture of my cohort was great!! I now understand so much more about web applications and how the internet works, and I have gained experience working on full-stack projects. I’m currently in the process of working with the career services / post-graduation side of App Academy, and I appreciate that their instruction and provided materials continue on past the technical learning portion of the program - they don’t just throw you out after graduation! My experience with App Academy has been amazing, and I highly recommend them!

The experience was great, I'm already getting bites for multiple interviews a week after graduation.

It would be unfit for me to say that this wasn't in part due to my previous engineering experience in the Mechanical Engineer field.
The average span from graduation to a job offer is 6 months and many of my fellow graduates with no prior work experience are still struggling to get interviews.

Nevertheless, App Academy does a great job of guiding their graduates with the best job search practices, and even finds internal referrals with partnering companies a couple of times per week.

With the ISA Plan, they dony get their money until you do, that is what ultimately convinced me to choose them as my coding camp and it haws not failed me to this day.

I know there are a lot of reviews here that speak to the curriculum, work, hours needed, and tools used by App Academy to teach their curriculum. In a nutshell... The program is amazing. The work is hard. There is never enough time. You’ll meet amazing people and build an awesome network.  The TAs are what you are really paying for and are great. The intent behind their propriety tools (that are a WIP) can be clearly seen and it’s got a bright future. The online course is best for individuals that have other responsibilities and being in person has the added value of others being in the room to help motivate you to get the work done.

The only thing I will harp on is that their current communication tools used for peer and TA chats are in rough shape. The folks who started the program didn’t know how big it would get and initially invested in Slack… which if you ask any current employee at a/A is the bane of their App Academy existence. Because a/A leaves their Slack channel open to Alumni (great intent!), the amount of users has grown to a point where it wouldn’t make financial sense to pay monthly per user (didn’t think about scale from the get go). From a business perspective, I agree that it would be a poor decision to pay monthly and it’s a band aid solution for now… but from a student perspective this was one of the biggest resource failures in the course as I have no history of chats from TAs or colleagues from as little as just 3 days ago. I understand the current situation and I also implore App Academy to find a more permanent solution ASAP. Having gone through the course and used many different comm tools in my career… I can’t tell you  how many question threads were posted in Slack… and if it’s one thing slack is terrible at it’s threading conversations. 

All that being said… I’ll focus on the Parent perspective below. 

Firstly… parents take the one online course. It the only option that gives you the flexibility to be with your family if an emergency arises.  I’ll also say that if you are a single parent with 100% physical custody and don’t have support to help watch your children… this program is probably not for you. Emphasis on ‘single parent’ and the requirements needed to be the superhuman you already are. There is a high probability that you will fail out of the program or stretch yourself too thin to be able to take care of, let alone spend time with your kid(s).  

IMO you will NEED support from your partner/support network for childcare. In fact, I’d start budgeting for the best “Thank You” gift you can think of before you even start the program. The balance is critical and allows for you to complete the program and spend quality time with your kids.

If you have a partner in house to help… I’d be very clear about setting the expectation that they will become the primary caregiver, with you seeing your kids for meals and weekends. Did I mention you’re going to have to REALLY say thank you to your partner for helping out as much as he/she will? 

If you have a joint custody agreement… I advise trying to switch to a schedule where you get your kids on Friday and Saturday only. Saturday is the only day of the week where NOTHING is App Academy related. On Sundays you’ll be studying for your assessments. 

To end on a brighter note… I’m proof that it could be done. I had my kiddo on Thursday Night, Friday Morning and Night, and Saturday Morning… and it was doable. Barely… but doable. In fact, I had to project defer over Spring Break (which happens to coincidentally have been my project week) so that I would be able to show up for my family. Parenting and doing this program definitely tops the list of one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to do.

There’s also a great a/A Parent group that’s really helpful for support. They meet every two weeks or so. I highly suggest joining and even more so, suggest practicing to reach out to these peers because they are the only ones who can truly understand what it means to be a parent. 

Hope all that helps! In the end, I DO recommend App Academy. My gut says that it will only get better as they learn and time goes on. Good luck!

The education you'll receive at App Academy is good. Assuming you can keep the 100 hour/week pace up and retain any information. I was able to secure a job a little faster than my cohort mates mostly based on my previous job experience outside of Software Development.

The problems start before and after you begin your study. You're going to be told about a 90+% graduation and job placement rate. However I haven't spoken to anyone who didn't have the same experience as me of losing about 30% of their classmates during the cohort. Your going to be told about starting salaries of $100+k/year. That's absolutely crazy. I know of one of my classmates who started around that figure and this person was already a very advanced coder. Your going to be told about a 30% of your 1st year salary as tuition. This is also false. You'll need to sign an Alumni Engagement form and still have to pay back possibly up to $25k in closer to 9 months. I'm not sure how anyone who takes a job at the more likely figure of >= $70K/year is supposed to make these kind of payments. You're going to be told about graduating in 4 months. This is only if you finish your projects that you're most likely not ready for. Be prepared to have to attend a "Study Hall" until your projects are finished to the school's satisfaction and/or you get a job. 

And you better graduate. If you don't, be prepared for an invoice of $250/day of study. Couple all of this with the high turnover of staff and you may be better off looking at another school or educating yourself. The feedback I've gotten from recruiters is they tend to shy away from bootcamp graduates. 

App Academy is a great bootcamp. I started App Academy at the beginning of 2021 as a student. Before this, I also passed the Hack Reactor interview. I chose a/A because the friendliness and responsiveness of the staff. After the start of the program, I have never regretted about my decision. The course design motivates the students to learn as much as they can during the 16 week period. The TAs and career coaches are very responsible and truly wish you to succeed in software engineering. 

 I started App Academy in January 2021, after I had decided to quit my sales job in the medical manufacturing industry to get into tech.  It was a challenging course, and you definitely have to be ready to put your life on hold and dedicate 16 weeks to immerse yourself in the material and keep up with the workload they expect of you (at least 70-80 hours a week).  I think it was a great time to get into this bootcamp since with COVID I wasn't tempted to leave the house much anyway.

You will make many great friends in the cohort along the way that will help you have a good initial base network that you will carry with you into your career, and the career coaches and an abundance of additional resources will be there for you in the job search(which I am in right now).

Keep in mind the onus will mostly be on you throughout the program to pass the assessments, get your projects done, and get the new career you are dreaming of.  The instructors and coaches will help you, but you will also need to help yourself to be in the top applicants in a competitive market.

I would say the main con is there is a lot of information thrown at you and a lot of times it can be disorganized, so you need to ask lots of questions and figure out what is important either for your short term understanding of the technologies or what companies are expecting you to know in the real world.

Overall highly recommend App Academy, if you are looking to make a life change and get into the tech industry! 

 

My experience at App Academy went above and beyond my expectations for a coding bootcamp. When COVID hit, I was torn between going back to college or joining an online bootcamp. After researching many bootcamps, App Academy stood out to me because it was one of the few places that offered a shared income agreement. The quality of the curriculum was excellent, and the instructors are very qualified. I felt that all the staff and my classmates were invested in my success, and this kept me motivated through the 24 weeks online program. Each week, we covered a new topic through lectures as well as built projects to reinforce our skills through pair programming. If it any point, I had questions or needed a concept further explained, the TAs immediately offered assistance. Overall, I really recommend App Academy to anybody who wants to enter the tech industry. 

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

These guys will tell so many lies that you may accidentally convince yourself that they are an upstanding institution with a moral compass. If you've uncovered this review, consider its points, as it will be drowned out by shill marketing.

you are forced to compliment a staff member every day in a daily form you MUST fill out, this is a requirement to graduate. 
 
The entire course is based around misinformation, and withholding relevant information from their hostages(students, woops). You will get lied to so much but you'll have no choice but to ignore it, as you've already dedicated so much time to a class. 

Their salesmen claim 95% graduation rate in an effort to get you to sign on the dotted line, but in a couple weeks the class size will drop by from 90 students to 50. Maybe 30% of your starting class will graduate within the 24 week period. This was verified in classes prior to mine.

They'll force a more intrusive ISA down your throat after you've fully committed to the course, and should you have the audacity to refuse to sign away your first born son; they'll accuse you of wrongdoing.

 Their instruction staff has such heavy turnover they don't even know right from wrong, expect to get reliable information from them, think again. These guys are drunk on greed, and they can no longer see straight

Hello all future software engineer and developers,
If you're looking for a Bootcamp that offers problem solving, structure, and excitement; You're reading the right review!
The last 6 months at App Academy have been amazing. I went from knowing nothing about coding (complete beginner) to an accomplished full stack graduate. I have made a dozen friends and of those dozen, 3- 4 will be permanent friends that I will continue to support throughout my career. The staff at App Academy is top tier, they're personable, smart, and accurate. The camp really helped me overcome my struggles with problem solving. I feel much more comfortable and can easily pair with anyone to complete a task. I recommend eating well, studying daily, and taking time to rest. I wouldn't give up my experiences at App Academy for the world. 

Once I decided to take the leap into a bootcamp, after many recommendations by current software engineers, and also, not having the funds to go back to school for another Bachelor's and having twin toddlers to take care of, I found App Academy my very first day of searching. With every step of the enrollment process, every person that I interacted with was genuinely excited for me and offering words of encouragement. Fast-forward to the last few weeks of my program, in the midst of designing and building a solo capstone project, that encouragement and support never faltered. I was fortunate enough to have an amazing cohort of peers that helped each other learn through pair programming and extra study sessions, incredibly talented staff of TA's, Module Instructors, and outstanding APTM and PTM. This was by far the most challenging thing I've every completed, but it was the most rewarding.

If you are looking for a career change or to get into coding in general, I would highly recommend App Academy. App Academy lives up to its name. It is a highly selective bootcamp, that is also very intensive. But once you complete it, the reward is amazing. My journey at App Academy was 16 weeks long. I took the In-Person Full Stack Web Development course, you can also take the online 24 weeks long course I believe. My in-person course was remote, due to COVID. To be honest, I was not expecting to learn a lot online, as I learn better in person, or so I thought. But during the course, I really appreciated it being online as it saved me from having to move to NY and the commute time it would have taken to get back and forth every day. Since the course is very intense, the saved time was a blessing. The TA's and my cohort-mates were really amazing, helpful, and fun to work with. Since it's a rigorous program, all of your cohort-mates are going through the same thing, and are truly willing to help you out even if you are not in class. After the 16 or 24 weeks end, depending on what you choose, they help you land a high-paying job. That way you have a good job, and App Academy also gets paid if you took the deferred payment plan, which I did. 

Overall, it was an amazing experience. If you have no prior coding experience like myself, I would recommend App Academy. It is a great way to get into coding and land a good job. Hope this helps.