App Academy

App Academy has really made me appreciate my decision to commit to web development. If you are considering applying here, you really need to understand where you are and why you are making this commitment. If you don't fully commit, the program is not going to wait for you. If you understand this going in, then App Academy can help you go over the hurdles to become a full-fledged web developer.

My favorite aspect about this program is that every lesson builds on itself. There will be times that you feel like your behind, but that should motivate you to keep up. Eventually when you reach the end, you will realize how much you really know and how ready you are to move forward with your new career path.

I would highly recommend this program to anyone.

App Academy was by far the hardest challenge I have ever faced in my life. The course material is hard, and you should be prepared to be at the office for 12 hours everyday. You are expected to absorb a large amount of material very quickly and the weekly assessments put a competitive edge on the program. The TA's are super helpful, and everyone around you wants you to succeed and do well.

This is an excellent bootcamp. The instructors are capable and it takes little time to get help on a difficult or confusing problem. I would say the only con is that it is a tremendous time investment, and it is punishing if you fall behind. I had no time to go to the gym and even on weekends had little time to socialize. You should not enter this program with the expectation that you'll have multiple hours of free time a day over the run of the course. You will not have time for part time work while in this course.

But almost everyone acclimates to the pace and learns an enormous amount. It's a very strong course and the organization works hard to help you find a good job once you've graduated. I recommend it very highly.

App Academy was my first choice, because:
— it's tuition model
— great reviews and overall rating
— greatest TA's
— it's curriculum
— supportive classmates
Although it's pretty hard to keep the pace for the whole course, it pays back, once you start working on your final project, you'll realize that you know a lot, even if you thought you don't.
Greatest experience.

App Academy was my first choice, because:
— it's tuition model
— great reviews and overall rating
— greatest TA's
— it's curriculum
— supportive classmates
Although it's pretty hard to keep the pace for the whole course, it pays back, once you start working on your final project, you'll realize that you know a lot, even if you thought you don't.
Greatest experience.

By far the best learning experience I've ever had. I cannot recommend it enough!
Students are expected to learn a tremendous amount of information and crazy fast, but are not spoon-fed the knowledge (not a big enough spoon...) The result is an incredibly collaborative and intense learning environment where everyone is helping one another to succeed.

The workload is immense. No amount of lecturing and warning prepares you for what's to come. Overall the experience is amazing and incredibly rewarding, but you will have to push yourself nonstop. If you are someone who works well with others, and learn best when you are collaborating, this is 100% the program for you.

I was part of the July 2017 NYC Cohort. AA attracts people from diverse backgrounds and top-schools, but one thing they all share in common is that they're sharp and driven. Coming in with programming experience will help, but don't be discouraged if that's not something you have. The TAs do a great job in teaching languages and frameworks you need to succeed in this course. Also, AA really -is- full-time. Although class ends at 6pm, many people either stay in the office to study/work on projects more, or continue at home. The material is challenging, but there's camaraderie that naturally forms in every cohort as you're struggling along others to achieve the same goal. I think the TAs really make a huge part of the experience, I hope the AA continues what they're doing and how they sel...

This is absolutely the best program out there! No doubt! Everyone helps you out and if you want amazing results do it!

I attended App Academy in July 2017. Overall, my experience was positive and I think the course gave me the tools I need to get a job as a web developer.

Pros:
- Great curriculum: The pace is extremely fast and it constantly feels like you're barely keeping up but the structure of the course with the weekly assessments keeps you on track and at the end, you realize you know more that you think you do.
- Great staff: The Instructors / TAs are available to answer questions throughout the day and they're good at helping you arrive at the right solution to the problem instead of feeding you the answers.
- Projects: You leave the program with 3 projects on your resume which you've built on your own.

Cons:
- As the other reviews mention, expect to spend 90+ hours a week doing this....

Pros:
The technical curriculum was extremely well planned and each day was structured purposefully.
TAs and classmates were generally very supportive
Great portfolio projects

Cons:
Not enough emphasis on good pair programming practices
The diversity curriculum was minimal
The CSS curriculum was essentially secondary to other technical parts of the curriculum

There's a handful of coding bootcamps out there, but App Academy stands alone (for a good reason). What differentiates this program from all others out there is THE PEOPLE. The way they achieve an incredibly diverse and hard working group of people is through the deferred tuition model coupled with the selective process to get in. This creates an assemblage of some of the most intelligent, kind, and hardest working people I have ever met. The curriculum is perfectly planned out and constantly adapting to the coding environment out in the wild. The teachers know the material inside and out, questions are encouraged and a habit of collaboration is instilled. I can't thank this school enough. They made me realize that it's true that anyone can code and as a bonus, its REALLY FUN.

Apply ...

The past few months have been some of the most intense in my entire life. It really is surprising how much material they were able to pack into three months. In a way it's almost too much to tackle at once; it takes a lot of mental and emotional fortitude to get through and really pushed me to my limits. I've made it through, but I came close many times to crashing and burning. It's probably the best way to start a career quickly in software development quickly. the catch is that it's only accessible if you can learn fast, set aside other obligations, and you have great mental health. From what I’ve gathered App Academy takes this to an extreme even compared to other bootcamps.

The upside of being at App Academy is that you know they have your back. The students and TAs are very suppo...

Great way to learn something new while paying a deferred cost. As with what everyone said, the program gives you the tools to acquire new skills at a blistering pace. The TAs know their stuff, and while you may not realize it as you're going through the program, everything falls into place at the end of it all, when you realize you're able to make things you never thought you could make, while learning the skillset to be able to learn new things on your own.

It's very enjoyable to be able to build applications that we use in our every day lives. You understand the process in how popular websites are made, and you start to respect the amount of work and detail that went into popular websites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Yelp. Now you can create your own if you like!

App Academy was one of the hardest yet most rewarding thing I've ever been through. I can't say enough about the people who are apart of this bootcamp. All of the TAs are incredible programmers, who can articulate complex algorithms, theories and concepts in a very understandable way.
The course is fast paced, but laid out in a way that keeps building on what you've learned the days before. I can't believe it was only 3 months long and now I can build websites, games and understand complex programming and engineering concepts.
It's amazing that after going through this bootcamp, I can switch careers and grow in an industry I love.

If you are interested in pursuing software development as a career App Academy will definitely get you there. When other reviews point out that it is really hard and intense they are not lying, but they payoff is more than enough to justify it. You get out of it as much as you put into it. There methodology and curriculum is excellent. Everything is finely crafted so students can get as much as possible from every day at App Academy. Each day you'll leave knowing some new tool or skill you did not know that same morning. The immersive nature of the program really goes a long way.

Pros: App Academy teaches you more information than you'd be able to pick up on your own. They consolidate the most important things in the industry, and package them for you to learn within a span of 8 weeks. However, even taking that into consideration, App Academy's greatest asset is the people. By that I mean, the instructors are extremely helpful and knowledgeable, and your fellow cohort members will be extremely hard working which will push you to work hard as well.

Cons: This will take over your life for 2 - 3 months. There are some outliers where some students get through just fine without spending 90+hrs a week, however for the vast majority, I'd say 90+hrs is the norm. Granted, you're learning so much in within that 2-3 month span, it shouldn't be too surprising how much ti...

I have a computer background and self taught myself awhile before starting but I still learned a ton at App Academy. I feel like it filled in the gaps in my knowledge that made me able to be competitive for a job. I had tried to get a developer job by myself but didn't feel like I was prepared. App Academy gave me the needed discipline to put a portfolio together that I can be proud of.

I recommend anyone going into the course take some time to learn on their own. Even with a tech background the course was very intense and I can't imagine going in with no knowledge. Others were able to do this however but be prepared to work a lot.

Overall it was a great experience and I recommend App Academy as long as you do some work yourself before hand.

I came in with a little bit of programming experience - enough to know a few basic data structures and the difference between HTML and Ruby, but as I soon learned, not very much at all. The amount of information I learned in the first few days combined to be more knowledge than I had about programming previously. The course has a ton of great TA's, so even if you are feeling overwhelmed, there's always someone to talk to for help. Classmates come from all backgrounds and walks of life, but pretty much everyone was the same beginner when sitting down at the computer to pair. Because everyone is there for the same reason (to learn and become developers) everyone is willing to help out each other.
One warning: the course isn't lying when they say you will spend upwards of 90 hours a week...

App Academy's curriculum is solid, and they're constantly improving it; the git repo for our location alone has over 5000 commits in under two years. The learning curve is best described as exponential, but nothing they teach is ever irrelevant or impossible. The lectures are stellar, and the optional QA sessions after most of them are informative and usually extend beyond their 30-minute time slot if students are extra confused. This speaks to the dedication of the staff to producing graduates that are not only capable, but who take initiative to fill the holes in their knowledge.

Pair programming is mandatory during most of App Academy's curriculum, a standard that encourages peer teaching outside of the normal class hours. This vibe sticks around, resulting in students that aren'...

When I was applying to boot camps, I did so simultaneously, to about 4 different boot camps. One of them accepted me right off the bat and I knew they were the wrong choiced. Others asked me to accomplish things in coding challenges that were far beyond my skill level without offering any instruction or legitimate curriculum.

With App Academy, the application process was very challenging, but you are given every opportunity to succeed via their resources. Also, the actual challenges they give you are algorithm challenges, very similar to whiteboarding questions you may get when you interview for a Developer position. This is in contrast to other challenges that ask you to build a Rails Twilio application or some other project that is very practical in nature.

Yes, building an ap...

After accumulating six figures of debt and few hard skills at college, I had developed a cynical attitude about education as a whole. I discovered an interest in programming at work and when I realized that I'd reached a limit in my capacity for technical growth, I considered my options. Another 2-4 years in college was a big no-no (fool me twice, shame on me) and, for similar reasons, spending 15-20k upfront on a bootcamp with no guarantee of success seemed like a bad bet.

App Academy was groundbreaking. For the first time, I found a school whose tuition model aligned with my own personal goals. The better I did, the better AA did.

The rumors are all true. No amount of words can describe the rigor and the challenge of the program. An 80-90 hour weekly commitment is typical. You'l...

The program throws a ton of work at you so it is impossible to relax. However, this ensures you progress much quicker than you would be able to on your own, and all the teachers and classmates are very supportive throughout the curriculum.

This program has an amazing curriculum and community! I have never felt more driven to succeed. Both the students around you and the TA truly want you to be the best you can be! The curriculum as well is built after many cohorts of perfecting anything that they could. The payment plan is also built to enable you to succeed

App Academy is definitely rigorous, curriculum wise. Be ready to live and breathe programming. The program is definitely not suited for every person, but no prior experience in programming is neccesary.

Come with the mindset to job search for a long time. A lot of people find jobs within 1, 2 months of graduating, but that is not always the case and I came the closest to rock bottom as I've been my whole life.

This was the best career decision of my life. It was an incredible journey from start to finish. From learning basic Ruby to making full web applications to getting my first offer three months into the job search. You get out as much as you put in.

The program is very fast paced! Prepare to work hard every day for long hours. But that being said, the course structure and curriculum are very well designed, and definitely provide a rock solid foundation for a career in software engineering.

We learned all the layers of full stack web development, with special emphasis on core computer science concepts (algorithmic complexity, data structures, OOP, security principles etc) which I think sets App Academy apart from other coding programs.

I sincerly doubt I could have become the coder that I am today without App Academy. Landed my first job as a frontend developer at a growing company in Financial District and I owe a lot to App Academy.

Overall happy with what I learned at a/A. There's a lot to take in, and it is a stressful period of time, but for many like me who have little to no coding experience, I'm amazed with the amount I learned in such a brief period of time. If you have the opportunity to join this bootcamp and are ready to commit, I would recommend App Academy.

The resources available are amazing. The curriculum is always changing to keep up with the latest technologies. As a result, it's not always the most polished, but it's probably the best way to learn the latest tech. This is facilitated by the amazing TA's who are always available, even outside of class hours via slack or email. My classmates were all awesome people and it was nice having a space to come in and study. (I hear they're upgrading locations again, too).

As for cons, the pacing of the curriculum was pretty bad, but they try to do their best to time assessments and projects to be as manageable as possible. Even then, because of the sheer quantity of materials to learn, it behooves you to keep up and understand where you're at as best as possible. I didn't find the curricul...

I was in the NYC May 2017 cohort, and was lucky enough to make it through to the end. I came in with a bit of development experience, but App Academy helped me take it to the next level. To simplify things, I'll boil it down to a few pros/cons that I felt to be true after my three month adventure.

Pros:
- you will be surrounded by very smart people with impressive and diverse backgrounds
- lots of pair programming (something you can't do alone in the basement)
- a/A wants you to succeed since they're making an investment in you from day one
- streamlined yet intense curriculum that will set you up for a job afterwards
- tuition model means you don't have to pay upfront

Cons:
- As mentioned by many others, your social life will be nonexistent during the course
- You don't ...

I started a/A for the summer cohort 2017. Below I'll discuss some of the pros and cons of my experience. But first a little insight in to my background as a software developer before app Academy...there is none. I went into to app academy with no knowledge other than what was required from their prep course and now I can produce quality full stack apps.

Pros:
-The curriculum is good
-The curriculum is gold
-They want you to succeed
-Everyone is extremely supportive at every step
-Geared towards developing both technical and interpersonal skills

Cons:
-Fast pace is an understatement; it's a good thing and a somewhat negative trait
-You literally have no life for 3+ months
-The prep course didn't prepare you enough for the intensity of the material you will be facing. You...