Flatiron School

If you have no prior tech experience and are looking to make a jump in your professional life, Flatiron is the place to start. It was stressful and a lot of work, but if you have the time and resources to commit for 15 weeks I am confident that you will come out an incredibly desirable job candidate for a variety of positions across the tech industry. I was able to land a job on a government contract with a starting salary of $90K in less than two months of graduating, more money than I had ever envisioned making coming from my previous industry and employer. The people at Flatiron are incredibly positive, helpful, and most importantly, knowledgable. I cannot say enough good things about Flatiron and would highly recommend to anyone looking to work in the tech field. 

This bootcamp can change your life, but be ready devote your entire life to it for 15 weeks (and more). Having done my research, I believe this to be one of the more well-rounded, comprehensive DS curriculums out there. As great as this sounds, more learning material = more hours. Period. Be ready to spend well beyond 40 hours per week learning concepts, practicing code, completing projects, and blogging. Be aware that the bootcamp's standards for passing each module and graduating are low - you really need to set your own standards and stick to them to be successful. Completion of the program on paper doesn't matter. Performance in an interview (and of course the job) is what ultimately matters, and this bootcamp can prepare you well for both if you set the bar high for yourself. 

Also, be ready to keep learning long after the 15 weeks are up. Toward the end of the curriculum, some of the major concepts are glossed over. To be clear, I don't think this is a fault of the program, as the final module before the capstone project is regarded as a "bonus module" consisting of several concepts that aren't necessarily covered in many other DS programs (NLP, Spark, AWS, Deep Learning, etc.). Many students choose 1 or 2 of these concepts to study in depth and utilize in the final project at the expense of learning the others in the final weeks. The good news is that you still have access to all of the learning material after graduating, so you have the freedom to go back and review material at any time. Aside from continued learning, be ready for weeks, if not months, of "prettifying" code for your Github portfolio, studying for technical interviews, and networking! The Career Services post-graduation curriculum is no joke either. 

All-in-all, my review of this program is very positive. Looking back, I had a wonderful experience, albeit mentally and emotionally trying at times. I was surrounded by incredibly supportive instructors, coaches, and classmates. I have secured a great job, and in hindsight, any doubts I might have had about the curriculum or my own abilities during the program have largely been invalidated.

Stick to the program, set the bar high, give it your all, and trust the process (to use all the cliches). It will pay off!

If you are looking to start a career in Software Development do not start here! Look into other programs that teach the basics. I was informaed that Flatiron would be able to go from where I was (beginner) to being "job ready" by the end of the course... for me this was not accurate. Majority of my time was spent on Google/ Youtube trying to find tutorials or additional information to grasp a basic understanding on what they were teaching me. I asked for additional support such as a tutor/ mentor with only my confused peers to help. They do have a 'Ask a Question' ability but I question what training they have gone through becuase they were not willing/ able to explain things in a way that I understood; so why pay them? This bootcamp is for intermediate to advanced coders probably looking for the Job Assistance / wanting a cert to further the carrer that they are already in. 

I recently got into Flatiron's Engineering Immersive course. I had researched other courses and found Flatiron to be the best fit. Beware the prep work before the interview is about 100 hours. Once you pass your technical interview, which is where you show the code that you used to solve one of their labs in the interview prep work. You explain how you got that answer, and then pair code with your interviewer. They got back to me promptly that I got in. Once you get in there is another 100 hours of prep work. They said that there would be 75 hours and another 75, it took me about 50 hours more. So give yourself ample time to work through it, plus they have you figure a lot of it out to prepare you for what it is like to be a developer. They do have tutors available 10 hours a day to help you through problems so make sure that you use them! My course starts on December 9 and I am very excited. I will update this review once I complete the course.

The Data Science In-Person was really helpful. Basic to intermediate skills/knowledge are broken down chronologically and people with no background are really set up to be entry level data scientists. The career coaching, AKA job placement, looks promising with detailed support and steps to secure a job. However, for people looking to hone their skills and already at beginner to intermediate level, this is not the place to go to. You are generally looked down upon, verbatim 'None of you are marketable as data scientists' despite knowing that the cohort has 2 people with MS in Data Science, 1 graduating with MS in Data Science, and several people who have self-studied Data Science as well.

The organization's interest is not the students' best professional interest with, the exception of the instructors and coaches. The admin people are centered at making money out of you instead of ensuring quality education/learning and professional growth. Seeking Jobs while unemployed for 15 weeks is discouraged. And if you do secure a job without their assistance, they will try and get credits for it and try to make money out of it.

To Summarize, if you really are a beginner with low confidence on finding a job or networking, this school will be a good start and boost for your career. Otherwise, look somewhere else and maybe stick to self study and free online courses.

P.S. I got the boot camp for "free".

 

I took the online full stack web development program and had a great experience.  I was brand new to coding when I enrolled and the program and now I can say that I am a full stack web developer! In addition to a great curriculum, the people at Flatiron are absolutely amazing.  I never felt alone and was always able to find the support I needed to get through the program.  From the education coaches to the technical coaches to the career coaches, everyone was friendly, encouraging and knowledgable.  I will forever be grateful to Flatiron!

Like many others, I was very captivated by the heavy marketing campaign Flatiron school brought to the British shores. I was also tempted by their offer of 50% off for women taking the course and the fact that I could do the course online while I kept working. I was chuffed to be accepted and felt very positive after completing the bootcamp prep.

However, after two months of the course I dropped out. These are my reasons.

The "Learn" IDE platform is simply not up to scratch. The teaching is essentially, read this, then do this exercise. Looking for pre-recorded lectures on the platform was not straightforward. In addition, the lectures that do exist often have poor audio, are waffling and in desperate need of editing. The main lecturer often talks in metaphors and figurative language which is just not at all helpful for beginners who need concrete examples. 

Yes there are live lectures and workshops and other things you can join but if you don't live in America this is often impossible as they happen at 1, 2 or 3 am British time. These are often not recorded or are difficult to find. 

When I questioned the quality of some of the teaching materials on the slack channels some of the responses I had included 'we are a startup' and other excuses like 'oh I just read the docs'. I'm sorry but even with 50% off tuition, the online course came to just under £600 quid a month. These excuses just simply aren't good enough. For this much money, students should expect real teaching and not be guided towards youtube and things that they can find themselves for free or cheap online. 

The thing that I was grateful for from my experience was the fact that every exercise I did ended up on my person github and made me look extremely studious and productive. Also, I met some nice TAs online who were helpful and encouraging. However, getting to speak to one during acceptable British hours often took a long time.

I imagine that the Flatiron in-person course is what it says on the tin, but the equally expensive online course has a long way to go. If I could do it again, I wish someone had written this review for me to read and that I could have saved my hard earned money on other much better, much cheaper teaching materials. 

Participated in the first Data Science cohort. It started off strong, but quickly fell apart after the first module, when the material shifted from standard coding techniques that were adapted from the webdev course to more data/math focused topics. Our teacher was underqualified to be teaching us Data Science, and we received essentially zero feedback on our coursework throughout the 15 week program. I honestly do not believe the cirriculum was ready for launch, it felt way too rushed. Numerous topics advertised as part of the course were skipped or rushed through. Some of the labs and lectures were riddled with errors, and often we were not provided lecture notes or videos as promised. The 3rd module consisted of watching youtube videos 50% of the time - didn't really need to pay $15k for that. 

The career guidance was misleading, we were told our guidance counselor would be randomly selected, yet 10 of 12 students received the same coach. The career team always seemed like they placed their personal interests ahead of mine.

I enjoyed the culture of Flatiron School, and have nothing but the best to say about my classmates. I feel like the program was rushed, misadvertised, and did not really prepare me for a job in Data Science. 

As an aside, I recommend actually sifting through these reviews before signing up - many of them are from people who have only completed the free bootcamp prep. I was asked to write a review before starting the class but refused because I thought that was misleading.

I am a CS grad who enrolled in Flatiron School’s Online Web Development Program. If your goal is to get an overview of Computer Science topics through this program, you’ll get that. But you will need to supplement your learning with material from elsewhere to really get grounded.

That said, the team at Flatiron School has done a really good job of building a web development program that can take a student from no programming at all to building real web applications. You will Always Be Coding. And, they continue to build and adapt the program as technologies change and students share their feedback. The community is great. Supportive TAs. Useful online Study Groups. You are never alone on this journey.

I will echo my peers in saying the “job or money back guarantee” requirements are quite rigorous. It’ll help if you live in or close to a populous area. Take the advice. It works. The career coaches really know their stuff and want grads to succeed. I am closer now to my goal of a thriving dev career than I’ve ever been and I owe Flatiron School huge thanks for that.