Fullstack Academy

I attended Fullstack's Flex Immersive (part-time) course from January to July 2015, as part of its first cohort. It's been over a year since I've graduated (and successfully transitioned to be a fulltime software engineer!) and judging from not only my own experience but other alums/students as well, I can confidently say that Fullstack continues to be a place of excellence that strives to help its students succeed, whatever their goals may be. 

First I want to mention it's really commendable that Fullstack has various options of attending, whether it's the Flex program or the remote immersive. I was really grateful Flex existed when I was looking to make a career switch (mainly for money/flexbility reasons). Running all of these cohorts in unison must be a logistical nightmare, but Fullstack pulls it off with high satisfaction. 

Curriculum: Fullstack consistently iterates and improves on its product/curriculum (as all good developers do). When I attended we learned & used the MEAN stack, now it's the NERD stack. I'd advise prospective students to not be /too/ hung up on the specific technologies though - what Fullstack really teaches is the ability to pick up any technology or language and the proper methods and tools to do so effectively. Getting better at debugging and reading documentation are some of the key things I learned at Fullstack that have far longer lasting impact than specific syntax. As for Flex vs. fulltime, the curriculum was completely equal across the board, though you will most likely need to spend more time outside of class reviewing the material and/or finishing up workshops.

People: Both instructors and staff at Fullstack are all incredibly friendly and open to help on whatever issues you may have. The hiring team is supportive and loves meeting and advising alums, even months or years after graduation/landing a job. Connections and relationships made at Fullstack are long-lasting and really strong, as proven by the latest alumni event which was bubbling with people and lots of hugging and chatter. No matter what your background, you will definitely meet your people here -- some of the most intelligent, curious, inquisitive and friendly people I know I've met at Fullstack. 

Thank you to Fullstack for providing an amazing opportunity to productively learn development and build awesome projects -- and helping make a dreamed about career switch possible. 

I really enjoyed my time at Fullstack - it's a really well run program on many angles and the best educational experience I've had (and I went to an ivy-league school).

Some of my favorite things include:

- Your cohort mates.  We got along super well and made many friends that I still meet up with quite often.

- The curriculum.  I did a lot of online tutorials before Fullstack.  Some online tutorials are great but some really were hard to follow -out of date etc. I can tell Fullstack does a lot of work here to keep up with what's going on.

- The fun activities - we did lots of fun things on campus besides just code.  I got really into this game called Avalon while I was there.  If you go to Fullstack, I'd definitely check it out ahead of time :)

- Job searching - don't get me wrong - job searching is rough and difficult - but I also enjoyed seeing lots of companies, catching up with old friends about jobs and taking some time to figure out what kind of companies I liked.  Fullstack is pretty helpful - got back to me pretty quickly and was always willing to try to connect me with someone past the initial filter gatekeepers.

tldr - being a programmer is awesome and going to Fullstack was a great way to get there!

 

Deciding to attend Fullstack Academy was undoubtedly the best decision I ever made. The curriculum is one of a kind and specifically tailored to give you exactly what you need to hit the ground running as a software engineer at some of the best companies in the world. I started at American Express as a software engineer and immediately contributed to architecting and developing software that is used by millions of people. I am now a Senior Engineer and I would not have been able to realize my potential without going through the Software Engineering Immersive program.

Beyond the curriculum the staff of Fullstack is its biggest asset. They are all excellent mentors and teachers and I still keep in touch with most of them. They foster an open, accepting, and collaborative atmosphere that really makes everyone feel welcome regardless of your skill or background. For as much as I valued the programming skills I learned at fullstack, what I value more is the high quality of people that I made friends with when I was there. It is such an awesome community that continues to grow and put alumni into companies in every corner of the industry. 

I could not recommend anything more highly choosing to attend Fullstack.

I researched and applied to several coding bootcamps before choosing Fullstack.  Looking back -- I'm confident I made the right decision.  Compared to other bootcamps, I think Fullstack has the strongest cirriculum in terms of learning relevant technologies (React, Node, SQL) and learning enough about computer science to succeed in technical job interviews.  

I was impressed by my classmates in the immersive program who were, for the most part, intelligent and hight caliber people looking to make a change career in their mid-late twenties.  It was great to make some friendships with other people at a similar point in life who were also learning to code.

The teachers at Fullstack were a little hit and miss.  However, Joe and especially Omri were excellent.  Fortunately, most of the learning comes from the practical experience of coding in workshops.  The workshops are very well designed to help you learn step by step.  If you have sufficient intelligence and desire -- you will learn a ton.

After completing the Fullstack Immersive program I was able to reach my goal of working as a fullstack software engineer at a small startup.  As with any education program, the student is responsible for finding a job.  There is no magic resume recipe here or anywhere else that's going to get you a job with little effort.  Like any job search -- you're going to have to network and reach out to people and interview.  Be ready to hustle. 

I know you're probably tired of reading reviews that say, "attending Fullstack Academy was the greatest decision of my life." But it's true. After many years of professional acting and part-time jobs in New York, I wanted to change careers and pursue a new direction in life, and I couldn't be happier with the results.

Were my instructors - Gabriel, Omri, Ayana, and Joe - brilliant? Absolutely. Did they know their subject matter like the back of their hands? Of course. What really set them apart, however, was that they worked PHENOMENALLY hard for the success of every student. If you were excelling, they made sure that you were challenged. And more importantly, if you were struggling, they would fight tooth and nail to make sure that you had the support that you needed - staying extra hours, having one-on-one sessions during their lunch break, whatever it took. Fullstack was demanding, but it was also a deeply caring and supportive place to learn. I don't know if there are bootcamps out there that boost their numbers through attrition, but Fullstack is certainly not one of them.

The job placement team is equally on point. Coming from the world of acting, the idea of being sought after by employers was completely foreign to me, but that's the reality of this job market. Fullstack graduates are extremely qualified, and need to be strategic about negotiating among multiple competitive offers. Liz and Ceren are experts at this. Without their help, I would have had a great job at a medium-sized company; with their help, I got my dream job as a frontend engineer at Amazon.

A word of advice to older prospective students like myself. You may be frustrated where you are right now, but afraid to make the leap, to quit your job, to spend your savings on a bootcamp, to take three months to learn, to work 80 hours a week. I promise it's worth it. As human beings, we have many talents, but the most valuable one of all is the ability to reinvent ourselves. Take the plunge. You'll be glad you did.

If you're thinking about bootcamps in general, or Fullstack in particular, you're probably wondering something along the lines of "does this actually work for real people"?   Well I am a real person, and Fullstack worked for me. It worked out better than I could have possibly hoped. I wrote my first line of code about six months before I was admitted to Fullstack. Within three weeks of graduating from Fullstack's fellowship program, I was hired as a software engineer at Bloomberg, through Bloomberg's senior hire program (meaning I was competing against developers with one or more years of professional experience).   Fullstack technically teaches full-stack web development using JavaScript, but I was hired into a backend role and now work exclusively in Python. This goes to show that this program is NOT about cranking out web devs with a narrow set of technical skills. Fullstack teaches its students how to think like a software engineer, how to quickly learn and use new concepts and skills, and how to collaborate with a team on fast-moving, complex projects. That skillset will never be obsolete.   My instructors (Gabe and Omri) and teaching fellows were some of the smartest people I've met in any context. They were all very generous with their time and talent. And they maintained the right balance between letting me struggle a bit to figure something out versus helping me understand what's preventing me from moving forward.    Fullstack's career department is also amazing. Ceren and Liz did a great job preparing me for the process of finding a job. It helps that, every year, Fullstack's network of alumni working in the industry all over the country keeps growing. It also helps that the curriculum gets overhauled regularly based on changes in the job market; one year ago they were teaching the MEAN stack. Today they've essentially replaced half of their curriculum, teaching SQL/Sequelize on the backend and React/Redux on the front-end.   Fullstack is also a magnet for sharp students who are willing to take a pretty stunning leap of faith in themselves. We left our jobs, moved across the country (some of us, at least, including me), and plowed a good chunk of money into a form of education that's existed for all of five years, knowing there will be no degree or guaranteed job waiting for us when we're done. Fullstack's admissions process is very selective, but if you get through it, you're going to be learning with, and from, a pretty incredible group of fellow students.

This program isn't easy. If you think all you have to do is get in and then coast along while your inbox fills up with job offers, then this isn't going to be a good fit for you. Fullstack is an opportunity, but you have take advantage of it by giving it everything you've got.   I am very thankful that I was given the opportunity to attend Fullstack. I took that leap of faith, and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. If you too have faith in yourself, and you have the opportunity to attend Fullstack, I'd encourage you to do the same. Fullstack's the right place for someone like you.

As a Communications major in college, the vision I had for my future was crystal clear. I wanted to become a software engineer. Sounds strange, I know. In my senior year, I had become enamored with programming, and I was learning quickly enough to even take on some freelance projects using Wordpress and customizing static websites with HTML and CSS. I wasn't spending much time on my schoolwork anymore, and I wasn't able to graduate with my classmates. :'(

My mind was set, however, and from reading blogs and articles, I thought I had a fairly good idea of just how much more I needed to know before I could get a job. I was spending almost all my time just studying and practicing while tutoring and freelancing on the side. 

But it wasn't enough. I started applying for jobs before I thought I was ready, just to get a sense of my progress, and I remember an interview where the latter half was just me saying "I don't know." For some reason I wasn't hired. 

After that experience, I reflected and thought about if what I was doing made sense. I could continue to learn on my own, but I wasn't sure how much longer it would take. Around that time, I had started learning about these coding bootcamps, and of course, I was very intrigued by the idea that they could teach you to be industry-ready within 3 months, and at that time, I was really only looking at AppAcademy due to their deferred payment model. If I just learned on my own, could I also be industry-ready in 3 months? In retrospect, I’m very happy that I decided to interview with Fullstack, because that interview with Omri changed my life, and now that I've graduated Fullstack, became a Fellow there, and started working as a software engineer, I have an answer to that question. Maybe I could have been able to learn enough on my own to get a job, but Fullstack made me a substantially better engineer than I would have been able to do on my own, even if I was given a year.

Most people considering bootcamps are looking to break into the industry, and Fullstack provides excellent help in finding a job in the form of their Hiring Day and very dedicated career team. I was able to turn my vision of becoming a software engineer into a reality, but I’ve seen how grueling the job search can be, even for the best engineers. Without an existing network, it can be difficult to get a conversation started, and because relationships take so much time to build, starting to network after you have graduated can feel unnatural and rushed. Still, once you are able to get interviews, I’m not sure there is a better place than Fullstack to learn the material necessary to work in the industry. 

I left Fullstack with more than just new knowledge. I’ve met lifelong friends and a supportive network of alumni who all share the unforgettable experience of being at a place like Fullstack. Even now, I reminisce often about my time there, and it would be hard to find alumni who didn’t feel the same. 

In case you have more questions about Fullstack, feel free to read some of my earlier blog posts about my time there, or just get in touch. I’d be happy to talk more about it. 

http://johnatfullstack.tumblr.com/

Good luck!

I had this huge review that I was going to post, but it was tl;dr and so here I am, boiling it down.

My outcome: I had a great experience, met tons of brilliant and interesting people, and got out of there with a job. The role is more interesting and cutting edge than I could've imagined, and the salary blew my expectations out of the water. This is not representative of all outcomes, but it's also not out of the ordinary. 

Fullstack:

• provides top notch instruction and materials
• is what you make of it; if you put forth the effort and trust the program, you'll do great. The inverse is also true
• is most importantly a community of equally motivated, risk-taking, highly intelligent individuals 

Fullstack is not:

• This scene in the Matrix (Kung Fu replaced with Programming): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vMO3XmNXe4
• Free jobs and $$$ with no effort
• Easy, relaxing

To their credit, I think Fullstack does a great job vetting applicants, and has stringent admissions standards to ensure that only the people who are likely to succeed get in. After all, it's in nobody's interest for a student to quit their job, pay tons of money, and then fail. As a result, most students have very successful outcomes, but again, the onus is on the student to do the work; there's no magic involved.

Additionally, they just changed the curriculum from teaching Angular to React/Redux. The first cohort that was taught React/Redux had some of the best and most ambitious capstone projects to date, which speaks very highly of both the organization and the quality of the students.

If you get in, I wish you the best of luck, and remember to take advantage of what Fullstack does provide. Learn as much as possible, because the chance to be in a community/setting like this is rare!

I recently attended Fullstack Academy from April to July 2016. I graduated from the University of Michigan with a Computer Engineering degree in December 2015. I now currently work as a Software Engineer at Embark.

Fullstack Academy was definitely a pivotal decision for me and is a huge reason as to why I was able to work at Embark. Fullstack now currently teaches the SEAN stack (Sequelize instead of Mongo) and other parts of web dev. It brings together the full stack for its students and helps them to see the greater picture. It’s educational system is top notch, and it helps students obtain the ability to pick up new technologies quickly.

However, not only is its educational system one of the best in the country, but also its support outside of academics. Ceren helped me with interview prep and connecting with others. She also continually checked up on me after I graduated to see how I was doing in the job search and gave me lots of tips on what I was doing wrong. David, the co-founder of Fullstack, helped me connect as well, and gave me the opportunity to give a presentation at a Node.js meetup. The support of these two was what helped me the most.

Fullstack deeply cares about its students. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re guaranteed a job just because you attend. You definitely have to give in the effort, but with Fullstack’s help, you will be rewarded handsomely. 

It was like a scene out of Revenge of the Nerds:  there I sat on my NYC apartment couch a few days before Christmas of 2015, casually flipping through the latest issue of CPU Magazine.  As a self-employed IT consultant and occasional programmer in the big city, keeping myself apprised of the latest tech trends was always important...albeit rarely exciting.  

Despite enjoying fiscal success since 2009, the ratio of time spent on IT work to software development had simply been way too high for my tastes.  For several years I had considered pursuing a computer science master's degree, but the substantial commitment of time and money required for graduate school was daunting.  To put it bluntly, I felt lost and stuck...sitting idly by with a highly-demanded skill set wondering whether it would ever find its way into the scalding-hot tech scene.  

And then it happened.  Out from a sea of processor benchmark scores and graphics card advertisements jumped the article that would change my life forever:  "The Camper's Code:  Coding Bootcamps Promise A Bright, High-Paying Future."

I spent the next several hours churning through every online reference I could find on coding bootcamps.  How did they differ from one another?  What languages did they focus on?  What sort of success rates did their graduates have?  How challenging were they?  These among countless other questions were painstakingly analyzed and funneled into one master question...

Which coding bootcamp is best?  Luckily for me, the answer was clear:  Fullstack Academy. 

Not wasting one more minute, I hopped onto Fullstack's website and applied for admission into their 24-week Flex Immersive Program.  The application process was vigorous and thorough, and it was immediately apparent that I had made the right choice.  Before even setting foot on campus, I had already had in-depth conversations with BOTH founders of the academy (David and Nimit), each of whom was patient enough to answer all of the scheduling-related questions one might expect from a professional with limited free time.

The first six months of 2016 were easily the best of my 15-year career, as my classmates and I found ourselves plunged into the center of the startup tech scene.  While computer science fundamentals and theory are at the heart of the program, there is truly nothing hypothetical about Fullstack Academy.  All lessons are immediately put to good use, with workshops and projects comprising the vast majority of time spent by each and every student.

The atmosphere on campus (and FSA online) is electric, which is clearly the result of a unique continuity of information flow among students, fellows, instructors, and alumni.  From simple tweaks and tricks of the trade to the latest in cutting-edge web development trends, nothing goes under the radar at Fullstack Academy.  

By the time I presented on Hiring Day in June of 2016, I had been fully transformed from an on-the-outskirts programmer to an in-the-know software engineer.  Fullstack's ever helpful and knowledgeable staff walked me through all of the necessary steps for preparing myself and my resume for the ultimate goal:  career transformation.  Several months of hard work and job hunting later, I can proudly say that it has all paid off as I have recently accepted a job offer from Google as a full-time software engineer.

As co-founder David Yang warned me during our first conversation last year, there is no such thing as a "magic pill" when it comes to anything in life, and Fullstack is no exception.  It requires hard work and determination, but the experience and end result -- at least in my case -- is nothing short of magical.