App Academy

My friends recommended App Academy to me because they have met several aA alumni in their workplaces and thought them to be great engineers. I have an engineering background so am used to rigorous academics, but aA still definitely required a lot of hard... Read More work and many hours of studying. I think it is a great place to quickly learn essential SWE skills, but a lot of the CS fundamentals, algorithms, data structures, etc. are not a big part of the course so we will have to study that on our own time for job search. It would also be great if they can update the curriculum to include more in-demand technologies (React hooks, for example). The instructors/TAs and cohort mates are awesome, but the career coaches really don't provide much help and it's mostly on us to gather as much resources as possible after graduation.

There are definite ups and down. The curriculum is ever changing and evolving. I do not believe the iteration I went through was the best, but the main points and flow are there. They definitely teach you most of the foundation you will need to go forward.... Read More There is some consistency issues throughout the program. However, is patch by very passionate instructors. I do wish that we have more software engineer veterans and experience leaders. This program is not easy, if you looking to give you basics and foundation to go forward as a software engineer and full stack dev this is worth it. If you really want to be software engineer this is almost required experience especially starting from ground zero. Just be aware it is a bootcamp still so 60+ hours of work is expected, as for me who is a slower learner I easily did 80+ hours and barely scarped survived the program.

App Academy (aA) should really be considered a program under development. They pass this off as a feature rather than a bug and in theory it is but not they way that they do it. The company is overly compartmentalized which seems to be intentional to... Read More give any department the ability to pass the proverbial buck onto another department. Often you find that the materials lack in the way of pedagogy. In addition many of the instructors early in the program have not been given much in the way of training to educate students. The TA's have had less training in that regard from the start of the program to the end. An additional note on the TA's in some cases the TA's you will have will have graduated only days previous. I am not saying they are not capable software developers but there is a difference between being able to write code and being able to teach a person how to write code. aA will constantly try tweaking things to create "improvements" these improvements are often in good spirit but poorly thought out. Changes are not relayed from department to department, Instructors and TA's have not familiarized themselves with the new curriculum or the implementation of the improvement is just for lack of a way of saying it bad. This is normal when changes happen in a company, growing pains will happen of course. The problem with that is you as a student are only going to go through a portion of the program once or face deferral. If the portion of the program you are going through has had changes made to it for your iteration the mistakes made by the program are blamed on you and you face the consequences. Now those are the negative portions of aA. These are the positives, The staff in most cases care greatly for the students there are some exceptions to that through. The program will teach you how to write code. I started with absolutely no coding experience and made it through the program and feel comfortable calling myself a software developer. The program is great for a person who may not have the discipline to teach themselves. You will make deep and real friendships in the program. Words of advice to students considering aA. Don't expect aA to read your mind, you have to communicate with the staff. Get to know your PTM and Assistant PTM. They will be your rock through the program. Do not be afraid to give them real feedback on the program or things going on. They really do take it with grace and do care how you are doing. It is a Marathon and not a sprint. Take care of yourself and your mental health. Take the breaks when you have them (and there are not many.). Deferral is not the end of the world, you can and will survive it.

The education you'll receive at App Academy is good. Assuming you can keep the 100 hour/week pace up and retain any information. I was able to secure a job a little faster than my cohort mates mostly based on my previous job experience outside of Software... Read More Development. The problems start before and after you begin your study. You're going to be told about a 90+% graduation and job placement rate. However I haven't spoken to anyone who didn't have the same experience as me of losing about 30% of their classmates during the cohort. Your going to be told about starting salaries of $100+k/year. That's absolutely crazy. I know of one of my classmates who started around that figure and this person was already a very advanced coder. Your going to be told about a 30% of your 1st year salary as tuition. This is also false. You'll need to sign an Alumni Engagement form and still have to pay back possibly up to $25k in closer to 9 months. I'm not sure how anyone who takes a job at the more likely figure of >= $70K/year is supposed to make these kind of payments. You're going to be told about graduating in 4 months. This is only if you finish your projects that you're most likely not ready for. Be prepared to have to attend a "Study Hall" until your projects are finished to the school's satisfaction and/or you get a job. And you better graduate. If you don't, be prepared for an invoice of $250/day of study. Couple all of this with the high turnover of staff and you may be better off looking at another school or educating yourself. The feedback I've gotten from recruiters is they tend to shy away from bootcamp graduates.

From the beginning, App Academy is pretty transparent about how much work it'll be, but there's not a whole lot of preparation that will really prepare you for the program. Before you dive in, really do some soul searching if you have the work ethic,... Read More otherwise you'll be wasting your time. With that being said, App Academy was an incredible experience. It's evident that the all of the staff has a genuine interest in your development as a program, and they do an amazing job of fostering a culture that allows that growth. If you want to learn how to be a developer I would recommend App Academy to anyone.

I had a great time going through App Academy. It was not easy, but with the help of the phenomenal instructors and the wonderful classmates I met a long the way I was able to make it to the end. Very happy with my choice to attend and would recommend... Read More to anyone who is looking to make a change to the programming world.

pros: direction on what to learn passionate staff the curriculum is frequently updated to the most recent in-demand skills. gain a community of like-minded individuals who love to program. gain valuable connections in the industry cons: intense program... Read More inconsistent curriculum

You feel incredibly hyped because you finished an intense program. You went through numerous assessments where a handful of people get dropped each time. You completed a few full stack applications. And so upon graduation you feel great and confident.... Read More But it is low-key a scam. They tell you that same day, if you complete three reviews you get a hoodie. So all these hyped up students are leaving reviewed when they didn't even gain a job yet. The reviews are skewed. The program is still great, but the support during job search sucks. My coach just kept telling me to apply and do algos, that is all fine and all, but you don't really get coached that well. Get this, my coach was an app academy student who wasn't able to find a job, so he became a coach. How is someone who couldn't find a job suppose to coach me on finding mine? He provided almost no support. If you saw my coaches statistics, it was like 4 people found jobs under him in 2 months. They should be transparent with how effective each coach was. My negative experience stems from the job search portion. The material otherwise was decent, they whip you into shape and that's one of the reasons why we attend this bootcamp. And they do a great job at that, but again job search portion with my coach was complete garbage. I was able to find a job within a year since beginning the program. But I can't say app academy helped me that much in the job search portion. Reach out to pass alumnis for help and advice and not these reviews. Look for alumnis who still haven't found jobs as well as those who were able to find one.

My time at App Academy was truly life-changing. I came into the program not sure what I wanted to do in life, kind of depressed and unsure what my future looked like. App Academy taught me things beyond coding, such as budgeting my time, managing stress,... Read More and starting to love learning. It is quite a rigorous program but I would suggest it to anyone that wants a career change and ready to learn.

I am currently attending App Academy. I started at the beginning of May. App Academy is split into three week modules. The first module we went through was great. Full of examples and problems, discussions on where we would see the JavaScript concepts... Read More in real life, video tutorials to supplement the lectures. I felt like I was learning loads every day. It was tough, but totally fair. I would have highly recommended the program. Then came Mod 2. Without telling us they completely changed the curriculum from what we signed up for. We now get very few examples of the concepts, and very little lecture time. When we asked if we could get more example problems we were told, I kid you not, that they are too difficult to come up with and that we should write them. One of our cohort mates came up with a set of problems that night for us. The curriculum designer has been rude and dismissive of our concerns. We have asked for an updated syllabus and have been told they don't know what they are going to put after this module. We have asked to talk to a representative from App Academy and haven't gotten it. We asked for access to the old curriculum so that we could at least see what they were doing before and were told explicitly that we could not see the old curriculum. They keep telling us that they want us to struggle and figure it out. There are some possibly cool projects in Module 2, but we can't enjoy them because we aren't being given the tools to understand them in the first place. I did not pay this kind of money to struggle to find materials for myself outside of class. I paid this kind of money to streamline the material so I could struggle to become a great software developer! Avoid App Academy until further notice. I will try to update this, if possible, if anything changes. I'll give them two stars because of how good Module 1 was.