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Hackbright Academy is a software engineering school for gender equality in San Francisco, Dallas, and Lehi founded in 2012. In addition to in-person classrooms in the US, Hackbright Academy also offers their courses online. The school offers a 12-week, immersive full-time software engineering program and a 43-week, part-time program, both of which cover the fundamentals of computer science and modern web development such as the command line, Python, JavaScript, HTML & CSS, Git, Flask, Django, pair programming, SQL/ORMS/NoSQL, and deployment. The part-time program covers the same content as the immersive program, but is designed for students who want to maintain their jobs. Hackbright also offers a 4-week part-time prep course, which teaches the foundations of programming; and a week-long immersive prep course.
Prospective applicants will need to fill out an online application detailing their interests and personality, then complete a coding challenge and two interviews. Hackbright's ideal candidate has a desire to learn software development and has prior exposure to programming.
Hackbright Academy provides students with mentorship, tech talks, and career services. After graduation, Hackbright Academy connects graduates with Silicon Valley companies looking to expand their engineering teams as alumnae work at companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Slack. Hackbright Academy offers deferred tuition, limited scholarships, and payment plans for qualified students.
Reviewing the full-time bootcamp, not the night classes that people also review.
What drew me to Hackbright was partly the curriculum (I love Python but I was glad to see we'd get such an all-around introduction), but also the promise of career support, and I was not disappointed. Not only did we have two weeks of all kinds of meeting people and making connections, but we also had an hour during the first ten, to ramp up to that. As someone who is good at school settings and le...
Reviewing the full-time bootcamp, not the night classes that people also review.
What drew me to Hackbright was partly the curriculum (I love Python but I was glad to see we'd get such an all-around introduction), but also the promise of career support, and I was not disappointed. Not only did we have two weeks of all kinds of meeting people and making connections, but we also had an hour during the first ten, to ramp up to that. As someone who is good at school settings and less good at navigating business, I needed that practical support and those initial connections made for me. Plus, they really are still there for you afterwards, and I think they've acted on advice from other alumnae on how best to support recent graduates.
Although only a few students get jobs from companies that send representatives to our career night (where we demonstrate our projects), it's definitely common to get interviews--I think all of my classmates who followed up with thank-you emails got interviews at at least one company, several have done well, and some companies are moving more slowly. Some of the companies were clearly there just to prove that they "wanted to hire women", but most really are hiring.
While learning and especially while preparing for job-seeking, I've also found my classmates to be great resources. We all have different enough career experiences and skillsets that there's a lot to learn, and the environment was surprisingly supportive. I mean, Hackbright clearly intended to make sure we supported each other but I was skeptical that would work, yet it did. I really like my classmates, even though we have different interests.
For the curriculum, Hackbright doesn't lie. You can see on their website what they teach, and that's what we learned. I think they structured it very well, lots of pair-programming in the first half, ramping us up to building a web application, then while we started out our individual projects, introducing us to other tools we may want to use. Then while we were "finishing" our projects, i.e. getting them ready to demo, we went over core CS topics, and immediately after career night we started whiteboarding practice. Even though I wish more of the core CS topics were at the beginning, we did have some really great lectures near the beginning, such as comparing and constrasting memory management in Python and C. I think each of the topics they taught us, with the exception of the two weeks of "extra developer tools", were a solid foundation. I feel so empowered to make things now!
I was concerned when I started based on other reviews, about the quality of instructors. Having recently finished, I now see where those reviews were coming from but I don't have the same concerns. Our two main instructors, lab assistant, and occasional guest lecturer are all very experienced and with skillsets in different areas. Both in terms of tech stack (all of them know and like Python, but two have even more background in SQL, one in Javascript, one in nitty-gritty details of Python, and our lab assistant taught us about Bootstrap/CSS) and in teaching skills (of our two main instructors, one is great at catching people up when they're struggling with concepts, as well as helping with difficult bugs; the other is great at exploring tangents in Python and technical questions; both are good overall lecturers). Although I think our cohort struck lucky in instructors, I do think Hackbright requires its instructors know what they're doing. That's much better than I hear about some other places where it depends so heavily on the instructor; and even at Hackbright the standards applied for full-time instructors are also higher than for the introductory night classes in my opinion.
What's going on with the "inexperienced instructors" is that teaching assistants, who advise students, give code reviews, run labs and contribute to curriculum planning, but never lecture (well, hardly ever), are Hackbright alumnae and junior TAs are usually hired right after bootcamp. This means they know the curriculum well, and have done their own project, but don't know as much about how to support a new student's project without looking things up.
Also, in independent project time, I found the "help queue" good for the first two-week sprint, but the instructors were busier during second sprint, so not everyone was available, which was unfortunate for a lot of us. We had put off some of the more complicated features to second sprint and then couldn't get enough dedicated time from the educational staff to help us implement them. However I did mention this concern, and Hackbright is always collecting feedback and making adjustments based on it. It gets easy to just click through a survey in ten seconds, but if we leave written comments in the surveys they actually act on them! For example after some of started writing "I wish they rotated instructors in the study halls" a couple of times, that happened. (Although I personally regretted it I know others were happy.)
I would say: this is expensive. If you can't afford it, don't do it; I think it's really worth it if you can, but everyone either had savings or a safety net. I hope Hackbright makes more full scholarships available in the future.
How much does Hackbright Academy cost?
Hackbright Academy costs around $12,900. On the lower end, some Hackbright Academy courses like Hackbright Prep Course cost $249.
What courses does Hackbright Academy teach?
Hackbright Academy offers courses like Full-Time (12-week) Software Engineering Program, Hackbright Prep Course, Part-Time (24-week) Software Engineering Program.
Where does Hackbright Academy have campuses?
Hackbright Academy has an in-person campus in San Francisco.
Is Hackbright Academy worth it?
Hackbright Academy hasn't shared alumni outcomes yet, but one way to determine if a bootcamp is worth it is by reading alumni reviews. 109 Hackbright Academy alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Hackbright Academy on Course Report - you should start there!
Is Hackbright Academy legit?
We let alumni answer that question. 109 Hackbright Academy alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Hackbright Academy and rate their overall experience a 4.51 out of 5.
Does Hackbright Academy offer scholarships or accept the GI Bill?
Right now, it doesn't look like Hackbright Academy 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 Hackbright Academy reviews?
You can read 109 reviews of Hackbright Academy on Course Report! Hackbright Academy alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Hackbright Academy and rate their overall experience a 4.51 out of 5.
Is Hackbright Academy accredited?
While bootcamps must be approved to operate, accreditation is relatively rare. Hackbright Academy doesn't yet share information about their accreditation status.
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