Fullstack Academy

I've been asked recently on a number of occasions to comment on my experience at Fullstack so I decided to repost my thoughts here in case anyone was interested:

1. JavaScript level required:

Before embarking on coding, I had been a corporate lawyer for almost 5 years - so the last time I touched anything remotely close to programming was when I did a course on algorithms 10 years ago in high school. The only JS knowledge I had going into the interview was what I had managed to pick up from codecademy and Code School. Do know that this level definitely wont be enough to get you through the program! Fullstack does pride itself on its pre course prep though, and justifiably so. If you, like me, come from a non technical background, hard work, persistence and putting in the hours to do as much extra reading as possible beforehand to immerse yourself in JS is key. If you decide on Fullstack, take comfort in the fact that their pre course materials will put you in good stead for the 13 gruelling weeks up ahead. Lead instructor Nimit used to tell us to trust the process and know that you will come out on top. I think there's a lot of truth in that and I'm glad I took his word for it.

2. My experience of Fullstack:

I had a very good experience overall. David, Nimit and Zeke are three of the most knowledgeable programmers that I've met. However, what was more important was their ability to distil these extremely abstract concepts into nuggets that someone like me would be able to digest and internalise. I think what was also crucial in why things just work at Fullstack is that they are so selective in who they take as students. The result is everyone is there to learn, work hard and help each other out. In my opinion, this is more important than the curriculum itself because your "eureka" moments in programming never really come in the classroom. They come when late at night as you and your classmates are grinding away at a problem.

3. How Fullstack compares to other bootcamps

I can't really say to how I fare against other schools' graduates, but what I can say is that my first employer did tell me the practical knowledge that I had coming through the door was that of a CS Grad with a year's working experience. All in all, I wouldn't worry too much about the competition and whether going to bootcamp A or bootcamp B will give you a step up over someone else. At the end of the day, which school you go to won't matter much the moment you step in front of that whiteboard in an interview because you're on your own. Bootcamps aren't silver bullets that will turn anyone into a rock star programmer after 13 weeks. It's all down to what you put in, so if you're committing yourself to a career in programming/tech then all you can do is work your butt off and persist until you succeed. Do that and you will acquire skills that any employer will want in a junior engineer. Persistence and hunger to keep learning are the qualities that of any good programmer, and that is what a bootcamp environment, be it Fullstack or any other school, is able to help you develop.

Hope that helped, and good luck!

I did a lot of research before deciding to attend Fullstack and I'm confident I made the right choice. There are other bootcamps in Chicago but none of them have the high admissions standards or strong alumni network that Fullstack does. While in the program I met a group of amazing people with diverse backgrounds and learned a lot very quickly. Within a year I went from teaching myself to code to being employed at a job doing work I absolutely love, and Fullstack helped me achieve that.

I consider Fullstack Academy to be a complete education in web development that turned me from a web development hobbyist into a professional.   Attending Fullstack showed me how important a structured curriculum and hands-on projects are when it comes to learning a skill as practical and results-oriented as web development. Before Fullstack, I was learning development through Udemy courses and other online tutorials. It was a slow and unguided approach that led me to build apps that were unmaintainable and error-prone. I was freelancing at the time and this showed in my work.   Fullstack taught me how to build web applications from the ground up using best practices that made my work faster and more reliable as a result. The instructors were extremely helpful and able to answer any technical questions we had, about the curriculum or otherwise. I revisited one of my freelance projects (a web app) after attending Fullstack and was able to remake it in half the time with far better results.    Their career team was top-notch as well, providing invaluable advice regarding the tech recruitment process and helping me polish my application materials and develop an effective job application plan. Despite not having a college degree, I was able to land two (successive) full-time roles as a developer within months of graduating.   I'm now enjoying a flexible and remote-work-friendly development job while building a fullstack web application on the side, in large thanks to the technical and career-finding skills I learned at Fullstack Academy.  

In thinking about how to effectively review my experience at Fullstack, I guess it’s most useful to let my trajectory speak for itself: I attended Fullstack Academy in the fall, graduated in December, and was hired within 2 weeks of graduation as a Junior Developer at an awesome company.  Altogether, Fullstack met and exceeded every expectation I had and I can recommend it without hesitation.

Prior to attending FSA (and more specifically, Grace Hopper), I was a high school math teacher with very iffy coding skills.  I knew that I liked to code, and I could write basic for-loops in Ruby.  I decided that I wanted a more challenging career and I wanted a skillset that was more in-demand than teaching experience.  I talked to a few friends who had attended bootcamps to hear their experiences, and I also spoke to a hiring manager at a tech company, all of whom encouraged me to go for it.

I chose Fullstack for two main reasons: because admissions were competitive, and because of the curriculum.   Valuing competitive admissions was a great call: all of the students, fellows, and instructors in my cohort were unfailingly curious, driven, and intelligent.  I evaluated the curriculum with the help of some tech friends who recognized that FSA’s curriculum taught skills like React and Redux that were highly in-demand.  Once I had my eyes set on Fullstack, I studied, applied, and fortunately was admitted to the Grace Hopper program.

Bootcamp was hard and so much fun.  I learned a ton of code (obviously) but also how to pair program effectively, how to work in an agile team, and (probably most importantly) how to read technical documentation.  The people at FSA are fantastic, and we hung out every Friday after class.

Finally, the career success support was phenomenal.  It was invaluable to have someone examine my resume, LinkedIn profile, cover letters, personal pitch, and even follow-up emails to companies to ensure that I was putting my best foot forward.  In the final week of the program, Holly organized 16 companies that came in to interview us so we could work on our behavioral interview skills.  We practiced white-boarding every morning, and we had 1:1 mock technical interviews with feedback afterwards.  I felt 100% prepared when I entered the job market because nothing was unexpected.

As you can probably tell from this review, I am so grateful for my time at Fullstack and had a fantastic experience.  I would recommend this program to anyone.

My experience at Fullstack was completely unique compared to any of my traditional education. Where in the past I felt like I didn't understand the reason why we learned things or whether or not it would prepare me for a worthwhile career, Fullstack was able to definitively change my life in the span of four months. I'm so happy to have a job with a high ceiling and so much to learn. The best thing about Fulsltack was the community you're exposed to, and how much love and care is poured into the process. I made great friends at Fullstack and now have a wonderful career to boot!

I was a musician with some web design background (no real coding experience). Attended fullstack in 2017 as a WDF student and now I'm working for AWS as an engineer.  English isn't my first language.. In 2017 I was already over 30 year old. AWS is my first tech job.

WDF is a free tuition program partnered with NYC and was a very competitive process. Had to go through several exams to go to the final “immersive program”. It was sad to see sizing of the class was getting smaller.... but I really liked how energish our instractors were. They were really supportive and good at teaching. Had such a good energy.

Also I was so happy how attentive Fulsltack’s career success counselor was. After graduation, she contacted me every week to check in my job search progress.  I took 6 months to get this offer letter from AWS. Until then, I and some of my classmates kept going to AWS loft (free workspace. coder's heaven) everyday to study and hang out.  After all, most of my classmates got really great full time engineering positions as well and I'm so happy to see them at reunion. 7 months was short but now we are such good friends after the intense period.

Learning process during bootcamp was just “INTENSE” but see the result. It's worth trying!

Fullstack Academy met and exceeded all of my expectations. I had decided to make a career change to software engineering and was researching different bootcamps. I had heard great things, but it wasn't until I was in the program that I really appreciated how great it was. All of the instructors are excited to teach and the curriculum was well designed ot get someone (like me) who had very little experience in coding up to speed and proficient in the stack they were teaching. Building projects was a great way to learn how to apply the technology and I am extremely greatful for the experience. Everything is taught in a way that is understandable and there is never a feeling that you can't ask questions. I highly recommend Fullstack Academy (and in particular the Grace Hopper Program).

To echo a lot of other sentiments, my decision to go to Fullstack Academy was one of the best of my life. Previously, I had been working in the business (sales, support, marketing) side of tech. While I had some basic coding experience, I learned an immense amount from the robust curriculum taught at Fullstack. The entire staff in Chicago - whether instructional (Collin, Ben W, Priti, and Finn) or career/operations (Ben N, Holly, Brett) have been incredibly helpful in my success.

I'm depletely indebted to them for both my education and for the opportunity to serve as a Teaching Fellow. And without the hard work of the Career Success team, I would not have the amazing job I do now as I was able to land it through Fullstack's Launch Day.

Overall, the highest praise I can give.

Going to Fullstack Academy was easily one of the best decisions in my life.

When you go to a bootcamp, if you're just going for the material, you're doing it wrong. If you just want the material, it's all available for free somewhere on the internet. You should be going to a bootcamp for several reasons:

1) Learning how to learn various techs, and how to learn them quickly. Fullstack handles this wonderfully by constantly never allowing you to become complacent in your learning or start slacking. You constantly have to be pushing yourself to absorb new material and how to digest documentation.

2) You have zero idea how to actually break into the industry. Again, Fullstack provided this with great career coaching and prepping you to have a resume that is worth looking at. Fullstack as well provides an opportunity to meet several companies, towards the end of your bootcamp, allowing you to potentially to turn these meetings into on-site interviews (which definitely happened for me).

3) If you're new to this... you don't actually realize your own knowledge gaps and weaknesses. And it takes an instructor to help you with these and point you towards things you may have never come across before. You can have all the motivation in the world, but without a good teacher to take you there, it's useless. Fullstack has wonderful instructors who are extremely passionate about not only teaching, but improving their teaching (shout out to Corey Greenwald, one of the best instructors I've ever had in any sort of educational setting).

This being said, prepare to work hard. You will only get out of it what you put in. If you think you can just go during the day and not also put in the time, constantly, during your nights and weekends... and think things will go just as well, you're mistaken. Maybe you can coast. But if that's what you're intending to do... what's even the point? I really recommend Fullstack. But if you're going to do it, do it right. Give up your life for three months. It will pay off.

I started the program without any knowledge in coding. The speed of the course is high and you as a student will fell you aren't in control more often than you imagine. To follow that, I had to dedicate more than I had ever dedicated myself to any other academic experience. And after three months, you will be ready to get into the market that changes every single minute. More than JavaScript or any other framework, Fullstack taught me how to learn new things in the speed that the market requires. The school environment is also a plus. They take seriously themes like diversity and all the staff and teachers are very supportive. I couldn't be more grateful for the teacher and fellows I had during the program. Trust the process!

I am currently in the foundations portion of the Immersive Software Engineering cohort. I completed Bootcamp Prep in a Month recently and it was an amazing experience. Before the prep course I had only been studying on my own for about 3  months, and I can honestly say I learned FAR more in the 1 month of prep than I did the 3 months prior on my own. Now that I am in the Foundations course I feel so much better equipped to learn and understand new concepts. Having a solid background from the Prep course has allowed me to focus on studying big picture and practicing my new skills. There are a lot of complex concepts taught in foundations and with my Prep knowledge I'm able to understand these new concepts a lot quicker and am not struggling just to understand the concepts. I highly recommend to anyone who's thinking about joining an immersive cohort to take the Prep course.

The instructor was extremely knowledgeable and took the time to make sure all of us in the class (there were 7 of us total) really understood the concepts he was teaching. We worked together with the instructor, he really encouraged feedback throughout each lecture. Once the lecture was over it was our time to Pair Program (a technique explained in detail at Fullstack, where 2 people code on 1 machine or sharing a screen, one as the 'driver' actually writing the code, and the other as the 'navigator' walking through what to write and how to approach the problem) and work through a set of problems in the workshop. Pair Programming was by far one of the most influential aspects of this course, as it really helped to solidify any knowledge I had just received from the lecture. To be able to explain yourself and even to teach a concept ensures that you understand the concept and also helps you to identify the weaknesses you might have in that concept.

There was a plethora of options for support during the prep course. At any time during each class we could reach out to either the instructor or one of the Fellows who were there to assist us. On off hours we could reach out to the instructors and fellows on Slack, any time of day. A solid support team is so important when receiving this level of education.

The way I look at it, our time at Fullstack will only be a few short months, so why not get as much attention and education as physically possible and take advantage of all of the available options.

 

Overall I had an amazing experience. This 1 month course was one of the defining moments in my life and one of the most exciting moments in the journey to my future career as a software engineer. I can't stress enough how beneficial this course was in my educational journey. 10/10 would attend