Eleven Fifty Academy

I completed the web development course through EFA and would advise you to look elsewhere if you want to learn how to code. 

The staff at EFA embraces the drinking from a fire hydrant learning method. This is ineffective. Humans don't learn well by trying to absorb a bunch of information in a short amount of time. It's why your middle school teachers told you not to procrastinate and wait until the last minute to do an assignment/study. Unless EFA students have prior coding experience or an unusual ability to learn a large amount of new information quickly you are not going to get it. This method is not wise for learning period let along something as complex as coding. 

One of the appeals of attending a live, interactive school is access to instructors who can help you where you need it. EFA spends a lot of time telling students how they need to be able to figure stuff out on their own as a developer. While this is true students are paying a lot of money to attend. As a student I was not looking for someone to simply tell me the answer but I was expecting someone to help me figure out what i'm not understanding. That largely did not happen. Instead what you will often get as "help" is a link to some article to read online. After spending an hour on a problem and not getting it I thought $15K would get you a little more help than a "here is a link, go figure it out yourself" response. Oftentimes that is what you get. If EFA wants to maintain this level of help than I would expect a significantly less tuition amount because their program is more inline with a self paced / figure things out yourself program that is a fraction of what EFA charges.

The instructors themselves vary in quality. They are sometimes recent EFA graduates themselves with no coding experience beyond being an EFA student. The same goes for assistants. It's disappointing when you realize there is superior educational content on YouTube compared to what students pay EFA thousands for.

All this isn't to say that there are never EFA graduates who land developer roles. There are simply not that many of them especially compared to the number of students that complete the EFA program. EFA will tell you that a certain percentage of their graduates get jobs in the tech space but many of them become EFA employees or get non developer roles for a tech company. You certainly don't need EFA to land a job in software support or sales so don't believe the spin they put on the jobs their graduates get.

EFA has their fair share of cheerleaders pumping up the school. The truth is that it is way overpriced. Even if it was free you don't need to try and learn everything required to land a junior developer role in 3 or 6 months. You are naive if you think the masses can do it. Realize that it's ok to take your time with it. There are countless other resources online that are both superior in educational quality and significantly less expensive than EFA.

I decided to do the part time web development bootcamp after months of self-teaching and research. I needed an environment where there were teachers were knowledgeable and readily available to help, as well as a structured learning schedule to get the best out of the experience. I found that and more with Eleven Fifty. Not only was the learning environment a great one, but the curriculum was perfect. Also I was able to get real experience building my own projects both individually and in a team setting. Also the network I built was helpful in navigating the job search as well as just having support throughout the course and after. The career services does their best to help land a job after which was big for me. Overall, Eleven Fifty is a great experience I would definitely recommend to anyone looking to make that change or learn that new skill.

After I had applied to Eleven Fifty Academy and spoken with a representative, a staff member arranged for me to have an admission meeting with Alex on July 23rd on Zoom at 6:30 PM EST … he never showed up (I waited for 30 minutes). Consequently, I rescheduled an appointment for August 5th at 3:30 PM EST … once again, he never showed up. So, I called and left a message on his personal office phone; he never called me back. 

Mind you, I was told by Eleven Fifty staff members that Alex was well informed on July 23rd, and on August 5th that he had an appointment with me. 

Alex Volyk, if you did not want to speak to me or did not have adequate time on your schedule then you should have been honest about it from the beginning. Instead, you opted to waste my time.

Disclaimer - I had left 5 stars for Instructors and Curriculum in the rating section because Course Report wouldn't allow me to choose Not Applicable for those categories. 

I really enjoyed my time there and think it paid off. I landed a developer job just a couple months after graduation. There's still so much I have to learn but I feel Eleven Fifty did a good job of giving us a solid base to grow from. I learned a lot of useful tools that prepared me for the role I was eventually hired for.

There was really only one criticism I could think of. I think the instructors need to complete the cohort they started with. We had Lawrence leave relatively early and I do think it made a bit of a difference. Becky was great but it was definitely a transition in a program where time is already short. I know most of the instructors want to move onto outside developer jobs but it can make it tough to keep learning well when an instructor leaves. I don't know if you could have a contract stating an instructor has to finish teaching a program they start. When I signed up, I didn't know instructors could leave partway through the program and I do think that matters. You have excellent instructors and it'd be nice to learn from one main instructor across your program.

I took an iOS Bootcamp in 2014 with Eleven Fifty Academy. We were using Swift, and created three apps during the course. The instructors were great, and really made sure everyone was understanding the curriculum. I felt extremely comfortable and confident after. When I returned to school, I definitely had a leg up to my peers with my coding experience. I graduated with a computer science major, but don't think I had a course at my college that compared to what I learned in this bootcamp. 

Not having a computer science or tech background, Eleven Fifty Academy most definitely gave me the basics and foundations I needed to continue learning independently after graduation.  I will always be grateful for that.

That being said, it could also be that the course I had decided to take was only the second or third class and felt there lacked structure.  Beginning, we learned all the basics, which were useful.  Then we jumped around different frameworks.  It didn't help that I found out the next class's curriculum would be completely different from what I went through as well.  I'm guessing it wasn't just myself that felt the curriculum needed tweaking.  

I also felt there wasn't much professionalism from the instructors.  One of them actually said to another classmate that the money we were paying for this boot-camp was for the food.  

In regards to job assistance, EFA goes out of their way to keep in touch, make sure you're prepping and applying for jobs.

To wrap it up, I am always thankful to Eleven Fifty Academy, as they are the ones who helped jump start my career in tech.  I believe everyone's experience will be different and it comes down to whether you're willing to take a chance or not.  

I thought this was a great course and I learned a lot!!  I had some struggles off and on with learning the skills necessary to move on to the next project and building confidence in order to enter the working world in this discipline.  While I thought that was somewhat due to my own issues with time and stress-management, I also did think that the curriculum's change in pace from mostly instructor taught to mostly self-taught was slightly too abrupt.  I thought that it needed to be more gradual, and I actually agreed with Kayleah's thoughts on that topic.  With that being said, I thought Paul, Kenn, and Jay's knowledge was astounding, and I aspire to be as good as them some day.  I really do enjoy solving a good puzzle.  I also thought that Chris' assistance with interview and resume prep and pushing people to go with Employ Up was extremely helpful, as it seems like it might be a great resource to use.  I have not found a job in this area yet, but I hope to do so in a reasonable amount of time.

The Academy is nothing but a moneymaking venture for the organizers. It is a travesty to give this non-profit status. If someone wants to drop out during the first session (after actually seeing the course work) they won't get ther money back. 

The instructors are great but their style is greatly hampered -- they are not alowed to give any handouts nor presentations. Class time is wasted setting up software which should be done ahead of time. People cannot work at their own pace.

Eleven Fifty Academy was one of the best decisions I ever made. The curriculum was challenging, engaging and the instructors made it a really fun environment to learn. Everyone was prepared, and for me specifically, broke things down into digestible pieces so that I could understand and apply my learning. Although I am still looking for a job, I have had a couple of interviews and employers were impressed with what I was able to learn in 12 weeks. I highly recommend this program!