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The Grace Hopper Program at Fullstack Academy is a live online, immersive software engineering bootcamp for women and non-binary students. Students can choose between the 28-week, part-time bootcamp or the 12-week, full-time bootcamp with Monday-Friday sessions. As part of the Grace Hopper Program, students will gain knowledge and experience through a mix of live online lectures, hands-on workshops, projects, pair-programming, and more.
Founded in 2016, the Grace Hopper Program includes the same, award-winning curriculum as Fullstack Academy with additional emphasis on combating systemic barriers. The Grace Hopper Program’s mission is to equip students with the skills and support to land a life-changing job in tech, plus the confidence to turn it into a thriving career. The bootcamp starts at a foundational level to accommodate both beginner and intermediate coders, but moves into more advanced concepts every week. Grace Hopper Program graduates possess computer science fundamentals like algorithms, command line interface, data structures, React, HTML & CSS, JavaScript frameworks (Express.js, Node.js), SQL, and test-driven development.
Applicants to the bootcamp should be nonbinary and women coders who are proficient in basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript coding languages. Prospective students should embody the characteristics of the Grace Hopper Program community: drive, transparency, and allyship.
The Grace Hopper Program students will receive career counseling during the bootcamp, including optimizing a student’s resume and LinkedIn, networking, mock interviews, salary negotiation, and navigating company culture fit. Grace Hopper Program graduates have gone on to become software developers at top companies like Amazon, Bloomberg Engineering, Google, and others.
TL;DR
The education I received from Grace Hopper Academy was invaluable and provided me with the tools I needed to obtain a job in the field and progress my career. Moreover, I established very strong friendships that benefit me both personally and professionally. If I could do it again I absolutely would, but would strongly recommend managing expectations - not all aspects of this program are great.
Grace Hopper Academy:
Grac...
TL;DR
The education I received from Grace Hopper Academy was invaluable and provided me with the tools I needed to obtain a job in the field and progress my career. Moreover, I established very strong friendships that benefit me both personally and professionally. If I could do it again I absolutely would, but would strongly recommend managing expectations - not all aspects of this program are great.
Grace Hopper Academy:
Grace Hopper Academy is a specific cohort of the Fullstack Academy school, specifically the all women’s program. The curriculum is the same, there is often intermingling, and teachers rotate through all cohorts.
Comparison to Other Bootcamps:
I take as many opportunities as I can to speak with graduates from other programs - App Academy, General Assembly, Recurse Center, Hack Reactor, Hackbright Academy, etc. The impression I get is that Recurse Center is only a good option if you are very self-motivated, independent, and have a solid foundational knowledge. Otherwise, Hackbright Academy and Fullstack Academy / Grace Hopper seem the best options. Most feedback on others have been a bit negative.
The Curriculum:
Most bootcamps seem to focus on Python, Ruby, Javascript - usually in a mixture. Grace Hopper teaches full stack javascript, currently focusing on their "NERD" stack (Node.js, Express.js, React, and Databases using SQL). Only focusing on Javascript allows the program to do a deep dive into the language that already owns the front-end and is being increasingly adopted for back-end. I would recommend this approach to most others, but would be hard pressed to decide between Javascript and Python.
The school takes feedback seriously when it comes to the curriculum, and are constantly aiming to keep it up to date with where the industry is going.
The depth in which computer science concepts (data structures, data types, algorithms) were covered was adequate for understanding questions in entry level interviews, and certainly provides a solid foundation from which to easily continue learning.
Teachers vary in competency, but by and large are good. Just because they are an instructor there does not mean they are knowledgeable on everything or even good at instruction. There seems to be an issue here with a culture of, “We are here to help! But also, no one helped me so figure it out for yourself.” It can be a bit jarring. If you have made it through the process to get into this program, odds are you are not the type of personality that just wants knowledge handed to or problems solved for you. Expect this type of dismissal sometimes when raising questions, and push further when you are told to just look it up online (as if you haven’t already).
Bootcamp Prep (BCP):
Unsure of if this still exists or if the details are current: BCP's tuition rolled $350 towards the overall tuition of the program. This is a great incentive to take it. If you are coming from no background in programming or computer science, this is likely necessary at a minimum.
The Program Schedule:
At the discretion of the fellow that interviews you, you may need to take Builders, the precursor to Foundations. I would recommend asking to take it either way, because it’s very useful and provides more time to get your computer set up to their specifications. This does not cost extra, but does mean that your work starts two weeks prior to Foundations.
A part time, remote program which covers javascript fundamentals. If possible, I recommend treating this as full time. The better you do here and the more you understand, the easier the main program will be. If you continue to work during this, it will be manageable but hectic. This lasts 4-5 weeks. You will have time slots to ask fellows questions. I recommend utilizing these times and asking as much as possible. Some concepts may be tricky.
Junior phase is the first half of the program - 6 weeks. Class sizes are really big compared to when they began this program. Originally being more like 16 people, now class sizes are mid to high 30s. Most days consist of a review Q&A a half hour prior to class beginning at 10:00 AM, lecture, a solo assignment, and pair programming guided projects. The pair programming is an integral part of the curriculum, and it will be something you do every day. Focus less on finishing the project and more on understanding everything with your partner before moving on to a next step. The pairs are randomized, and you can (and should) provide feedback after each pairing. This will become relevant in Senior Phase.
Your cohort will have a handful of fellows, which are students who just graduated and circle back through the program as the next cohorts mentors. Keep this in mind for perspective on their knowledge level. Classes have two or three teachers that cycle through on different topics, so there is less rapport built with specific teachers than before when there was a pair assigned to a cohort.
Depending on when your cohort begins in the year, this may be a week or a month (for example, December holidays makes this a month). This is a week you work remotely again. There is enough to do that I would recommend treating it as if school is not on break. While this entire program is very demanding of 3-4 months of your life, my perspective is to lean into it because it is so short and you should take advantage of everything.
This week will have you working on making a boilerplate and understanding OAuth. Boilerplate will be good to understand in your future career, because projects can often jump off a stock boilerplate codebase. OAuth is pretty important to understand, so keep at it this week.
Instructors use this period to determine who will replay Junior Phase (with additional tuition charged). Two from my cohort were replays from the previous cohort and two replayed into the next cohort. Seems like 0-3 is average.
Junior Phase pair programming reviews and ratings come into play heavily in Senior Phase. There will be four major projects:
------> Presentation
A video or blog post on a specific topic you researched.
------> Grace Shopper
A week and a half e-commerce website project with a group of four. This group is based on your ratings from Junior Phase. This project incorporates MVP (Minimal Viable Product) stages and code review with instructors.
------> Stackathon
A solo project lasting a half week and weekend. Hit the ground running and ensure you have a good direction with your instructor before the weekend comes and you won’t have access to assistance. Some instructors may not have experience or knowledge of mobile development, so be careful what project you choose.
------> Capstone
A two and a half week project with a group of four. This is group is based on your ratings of all students in a survey taken after Grace Shopper. By now you may understand more the importance of doing this. You pick the technologies to use, but the more technologies you try to cram into this project, the worse off you will be - both on a technical struggle standpoint, as well as when you need to speak about your projects in interviews in the future. Hiring managers will care much more about how you attempted to solve interesting problems on an unfinished app than a super simple, shiny game built on Unity.
<------------------>
The group members for Grace Shopper and Capstone can make or break your time there, so take rating pairings seriously.
I’d recommend keeping a list of ideas and researching interesting concepts for the Presentation, Stackathon, and Capstone starting in Junior Phase (Async Week at the latest). This will allow you to have plenty of input in how these go. Moreover, Senior Phase moves very fast so the sooner you finish the Presentation - which there is no class time allotted for - the better you’ll be. I would recommend doing this in Async Week.
Almost every day is begun with a REACTO (Read back for understanding, Examples/Edgecases, Assess/Approach, Code, Test, Optimize) problem or the occasional lecture. REACTO is this school’s approach to algorithm and coding interview preparation. You will be paired randomly with someone for a week and switch off each day on being the interviewer and the interviewee. The problems can be quite difficult, and I personally used this time to, again, focus less on finishing the problem and more on working with my partner to understand as much of it as possible. REACTOs done here are, on average, on par in difficulty that interviews provide.
The work involved with presentation of the Capstone seems somewhat relevant to product management and pitching ideas. However, the format is off to me. You spend too much time making a video and script for a presentation as if the app you make is full, finished, and worth presenting. You will certainly never show this video to any potential employers. I would recommend focusing more on thinking and practicing (with your group) talking points on interesting code or design you used, problems you came across, how you did or would solve them, and so on.
Launch Day:
This is a hiring day in which companies come to campus for a mini career-fair which includes both Grace Hopper and Fullstack Academy cohorts. Somewhere around 4-10 from my cohort accepted offers within two months from companies they initially met on Launch Day. It’s merely an intro, an initial point of contact. Some companies may not be hiring but come anyway. Some may be hiring in 3-6 months. Some may be hiring for other cities like Boston. Some may be only hiring customer-facing, non-technical roles. These are things to keep in mind.
The roster for this day varies, but there are strong partnerships with some that come often (American Express, JP Morgan Chase, Simon Data as examples). You are assigned to four companies and have little say in who they are. Still, there is a networking session after in which you can approach anyone. I recommend taking advantage of that, and even trying to catch someone before it starts.
Value:
Fullstack Academy: $17,910
Grace Hopper: $19,610
These are not low numbers, to be sure. Contrary to their marketing, the Grace Hopper absolutely does have upfront cost in the form of a $3,000 deposit due before beginning. The final total after graduation is somewhere around $16,600. Note that BCP tuition may be deducted here. Monthly payments after accepting an offer will be along the lines of $1,800 for nine months.
With the three (or four) months of full time commitment, $3,000 deposit, two to four months (on average) of job searching after, this is a huge investment and is out of reach for a lot of people. Sure, the tuition repayment for Grace Hopper makes it slightly easier for women to take this route, but not by much. If you cannot afford a full 10 months off without income, this probably won’t be an option for you.
The CIRR report they show is usually dated by a year or two. Cohort graduates near mine, ending in the second half of 2018, saw in the $70k - $100k range - typically ~$85k. With that result, it seems quite clear as being worth it. I do not see or hear any stories of people going through this and exiting the industry after (even after 2-5 years). I know myself, and self study would not have been nearly as adequate to set me up for success.
You’ll make an excellent network of peers and friends and have so many resources to take advantage of once you begin.
Career Counselors:
This is a good example of how parts of this program can be helpful for those with little to no experience in a certain area. If you have gone through career changes, job interviews, networking, etc. there is quite a bit here that can feel very dumbed down or a downright hinderance. Keeping the perspective in mind that they are providing a really solid framework and tools available if needed will help you not be disappointed in the lack of depth. Sometimes, there doesn’t actually need to be depth, and sometimes there is only so much they can do to help you. Which leads to the problem of expectations. Do not allow this or other bootcamp’s marketing to shape your expectations into thinking that after this program you’ll be handed a job or it will be super easy.
That said, I will reiterate that they do provide a lot of resources and framework.
There is a career counselor dedicated to you when you graduate, but they have dozens of other graduates to help as well. Still, they were relatively available. I felt they were inconveniently unavailable the day I received an offer. Interpersonally, I felt quite disappointed with the career success staff. The habits and guidelines they propose for the job search are a great start, but should only be used if you are not actively in the interview process with one or more companies that need more attention.
Job Search:
This will be brutal. Expect to not get an offer for at least three months. You can get lucky, you can know or meet the right person. But do not expect that you’ll stand out to any company in any way. Too many people underestimate how rough this will be, how much rejection you will face, and how long it will take to get even one offer.
Hit the ground running and have a strategy for this time period. You need quality, but you also need quantity. Those from my cohort that applied to only a couple places a month are really struggling. The career counselors have a guideline they propose for this, and I’d recommend that as a starting point.
Another point is know what you want. You can certainly get an offer for a tech support role or a client-facing role that doesn’t actually touch any code except when they let you for half a day on Fridays. But know what you’re willing to do and what you want to do. Keep in mind that the first job is the hardest to find by far, and once you have one the next will be easier. Stepping stones.
Alumni Network:
You will certainly make strong connections in your immediate cohort. I would recommend interacting with your Seniors and Juniors to triple that exposure. There is a dedicated alumni slack workspace.
I feel confident that the network I have established from this program will help me moving forward. Moreover, it appears that most graduates from bootcamp programs are very receptive to one another. Traditional computer science graduates are hit or miss.
This will end up being on you to be a part of the change in the industry which has its fair share of gatekeeping.
Grace Hopper Moving Forward:
Like many trade schools, this has some potential problems with lowering admission requirements and diluting the reputation in pursuit of profit. As of right now, I did not find this to be the definite case. Moreover, the impression I receive from other bootcamps is that Fullstack Academy is the best when it comes to this.
The bootcamp-prep curriculum is free. Please go check it out and see if it matches your learning style. I just graduated from the Grace Hopper program at Fullstack Academy in New York.
I can't tell you how much I appriecated every aspect of the program. The instructors went above and beyond to make sure that everyone understood. The fellows were a little less helpful but at least we had immediate help when we needed it during workshops. Any time a fellow could not help they were...
The bootcamp-prep curriculum is free. Please go check it out and see if it matches your learning style. I just graduated from the Grace Hopper program at Fullstack Academy in New York.
I can't tell you how much I appriecated every aspect of the program. The instructors went above and beyond to make sure that everyone understood. The fellows were a little less helpful but at least we had immediate help when we needed it during workshops. Any time a fellow could not help they were always guided by the instructor, and we always had access to the instructors when we requested office hours. The curriculum is strong, understandable, comprehensive, and extremely relevant to what I see I need to know, now that i'm on my job search. The instructors have pre-made slides that help in case you need to review a concept. Every single task that you are asked to do has a counterpart sample that has been done inside of some part of a past workshop or past lecture. You are guided to the answers and instead of expecting you to just google the answer, you are able to sift through their curriculum and find it there.
Even though I did not get to meet the founders, I really appreciate them for their obvious care and planning they put into this school. I feel that the Fullstack & GraceHopper schools are masters at lesson design and pedagogy.
I can't say enough positive things about my time at the Grace Hopper program. My cohort's team of teachers did a great job of teaching us a lot of new technologies very quickly while making us feel supported and confident in our skills the entire time. We were encouraged to ask questions, and the team was very availible to hold office hours and provide extra help on the curriculum when needed. In addition, the cohort was under the supervision of a program lead, who checked in frequently to...
I can't say enough positive things about my time at the Grace Hopper program. My cohort's team of teachers did a great job of teaching us a lot of new technologies very quickly while making us feel supported and confident in our skills the entire time. We were encouraged to ask questions, and the team was very availible to hold office hours and provide extra help on the curriculum when needed. In addition, the cohort was under the supervision of a program lead, who checked in frequently to address our concerns or frustrations, and fellows, recent graduates who stay on to help the next cohort. The team at Fullstack/Grace Hopper is absolutely dedicated to providing a holistic education. They understand that bootcamp is rigourous, and the support they provide goes much deeper than technical.
The second half of the program focuses on using the skills and technologies learned in the first half to actually build applications. Along with improving our technical skills, this process is essential for teaching teamwork and working collaboratively, which are essential skills for a software engineer. I loved working alongside the amazing women in my cohort, and learned so much about communication, delegation, and writing understandable and consistent code during these projects. We also followed the kind of agile workflow we could expect in the 'real world', and were encouraged to adopt new technologies during project work.
Finally, the career success team was so helpful during the second half of the program and beyond. In addition to providing resume reviews and interview prep, they hosted a series of panels and extra events to help ensure we left the program prepared for interviews and networking. After the program, the team provided help and support throughout the job search and negotiation process. I was lucky enough to be hired by one of the companies they paired me with during our cohort's interview day!
I am so proud to be a Grace Hopper graduate and I highly recommend this program to anyone looking to start a career in Software Engineering.
How much does Grace Hopper Program cost?
Grace Hopper Program costs around $19,910.
What courses does Grace Hopper Program teach?
Grace Hopper Program offers courses like Full-Time Software Engineering Immersive, Part-Time Software Engineering Immersive.
Where does Grace Hopper Program have campuses?
Grace Hopper Program has in-person campuses in Chicago and New York City. Grace Hopper Program also has a remote classroom so students can learn online.
Is Grace Hopper Program worth it?
Grace Hopper Program hasn't shared alumni outcomes yet, but one way to determine if a bootcamp is worth it is by reading alumni reviews. 58 Grace Hopper Program alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Grace Hopper Program on Course Report - you should start there!
Is Grace Hopper Program legit?
We let alumni answer that question. 58 Grace Hopper Program alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Grace Hopper Program and rate their overall experience a 4.78 out of 5.
Does Grace Hopper Program offer scholarships or accept the GI Bill?
Right now, it doesn't look like Grace Hopper Program offers scholarships or accepts the GI Bill. We're always adding to the list of schools that do offer Exclusive Course Report Scholarships and a list of the bootcamps that accept the GI Bill.
Can I read Grace Hopper Program reviews?
You can read 58 reviews of Grace Hopper Program on Course Report! Grace Hopper Program alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Grace Hopper Program and rate their overall experience a 4.78 out of 5.
Is Grace Hopper Program accredited?
While bootcamps must be approved to operate, accreditation is relatively rare. Grace Hopper Program doesn't yet share information about their accreditation status.
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