Flatiron School

For perspective, began in November 2015 and am now nearly finished with the curriculum.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my experience with the Flatiron School's Learn Verified Program. The platform of learn.co itself is great. From day one, everything you are... Read More doing with your time is real, actual work. You always work in a real dev environment, and push all your code to Github. I view this as a mandatory feature for any program that claims to prepare you for a job though.

I could rave about how the course material was a good mix of clear, concise, and fun, or how the specific technologies covered are relevant for today's market. However, what I believe to be one of the strongest features to Flatiron is the overarching sequence and manner in which they guide you through learning programming skills. This is hard to explain if you don't have much coding experience. The Flatiron curriculum is very thoughtfully crafted in a way which has you cementing together fundamental blocks of your knowledge that you only realize after you have already built them. More succinctly, it's wax on, wax off. More concretely I mean that they have you manually build out various technologies in detail by hand, before introducing you to an existing technology or framework (dynamic ORM before ActiveRecord, Sinatra before Rails, etc). Going about it in this manner really ensures that their students will have a firm understanding of what these technologies do and why they do it. I am much more interested in gaining a thorough understanding of how to use a framework well than simply being able to crank out apps and material without that underlying basis. More complete understanding is better for you in the long run.

I have found that help has been quickly within reach anytime it was truly needed. The staff has been extremely responsive, and genuinely make every possible effort to give their students anything that will help them succeed. The live assessments are very valuable as well. Every time I have learned an extreme amount of information very quickly. You are given perspective not only on the work that you have done, but for overall project design decisions, code patterns, and often pushed to expand your work in ways that you'd never have thought to.

Now nearing the end of the coursework, I am feeling very confident in my ability to build increasingly powerful and complex applications. It's important to remember that a bootcamp is just a beginning. If you are genuinely changing careers into software development as I am, the learning does not stop after any bootcamp. There is a limit to the amount of material that you will learn in any bootcamp, but I don't think there's anything I feel was lacking from Flatiron. I am highly confident in my ability to find work upon graduation, and will hopefully update with results in the near future.

Over the last several years, I have worked with multiple online programs. In each case, I have found myself frustrated for one reason or another. My experience with Learn Verified has been a welcomed change. The curriculum is clear and concise, while... Read More still presenting a challenge. The lab work provides a valuable platform to practice what you have learned. The entire program is well scaffolded, delivering lessons step-by-step, culminating in projects that demonstrate the bigger picture of how all the pieces fit together. The curriculum is open-source, so it is constantly being improved by students with the approval of instructors. The program has a valuable feature where you can ask questions and get answers from other students and instructors in a real-time chat session. The process of talking through a problem with another student or instructor as it comes up is a tremendous improvement from the message board approach I have seen in other programs. The feedback at Learn comes live, and prevents the types of roadblocks that lead to frustration and disinterest. One of the co-founders of the school is incredibly involved in the program. He typically gives three live lectures per week based on topics the students have requested. He’s active in the Slack channel and is constantly offering to help students with whatever they need to succeed. Even though this is a remote program, you really get the feeling that you are part of a community of students eager to help each other get through any roadblocks they encounter. I had considered attending an in-person bootcamp, but the flexibility afforded by Learn lets me move at my own pace. This lets me re-visit topics that I need to spend more time on. This would not be possible if I was attending an in-person bootcamp. I can efficiently breeze through topics that are more intuitive to me, while spending more time on ones that are more challenging. You still get the same material that students in the in-person Flatiron bootcamp get, but you can navigate at your own pace. Most importantly, I have learned more in the past few months with Learn than I learned in two years of self study. This program has focused me on the right topics to study, and the right order to study them. Finding individual free resources is easy, but figuring out how to combine them into a worthwhile lesson plan is nearly impossible. This program sets you up with exactly what you need to learn, providing a great foundation of knowledge that is setting me up to code in the real world.

You are free to choose whichever bootcamp you want, and I'm sure they are all good.

I chose learn because it was online and affordable. The content is great, easy to understand if you are mentally invested, and most importantly up to date. You will find... Read More what you are looking for in this program and more. Whether you choose to go to their Flatiron School and have a hands on experience or desire a more private learn at home experience both will exceed your expectations.

Most importantly, the people running the school are extremely committed to improving it daily. Even myself, as a student, I'm committed to help them make it even better and that's perhaps the best part of it. Feels like a coding home base.

I enrolled in the Flatiron School's online version of their full-stack web development course three months ago because I wanted to build my programming skills and transition into a career in software. So far I have been extremely pleased with my decision.... Read More The curriculum is expansive and covers HTML, CSS, object-oriented and procedural approaches to Ruby, Sinatra, SQL, Rails, and Javascript. In the past few months I have gone from having no programming experience to being able to reason effectively about problems in computer science and build and implement my own projects. Instructors and other students are always around to help and the program fosters a cooperative and nurturing ethos. Overall I have found my experience with the Flatiron School to be overwhelmingly positive and I can't recommend the program highly enough.

When I decided to restart my career in technology after a break of 10years, I knew I needed help. I had been keeping myself abreast with the latest technology trends and working as a pro bono web consultant for a few entrepreneur friends. It was giving... Read More me some experience but I still needed something that would give me the edge I was looking for.

After scouting the web for places to learn, I stumbled upon the Flatiron School and the prospect of a job guarantee upon course completion, caught my attention. I signed up and did the pre-work in order to make it into the course.

The lessons are very well written in a clear and concise manner. Examples are to the point. My most valuable experience in my online study at Flatiron School are the Live Lectures! Avi is the best and makes learning fun and interactive. To top it off, the community of learners at the online Flatiron School are amazing, friendly and extremely helpful.

I would recommend anyone to try the online learning curriculum with the Flatiron School in a heartbeat. They are driven to make a beneficial impact in the lives of their students!

For me, choosing a program to get into web dev came down to these factors: credibility, quality, cost. Here is what I found.

Credibility:

The first factor was easy to tackle. If you go to learn.co you can read the jobs report. It’s an independently audited... Read More report that contains job placement (99%) and average salary for graduates. I called-up a friend of mine who is an alumni of one of their in-person programs to get more info. She vouched, and gave a great review.

Now take it from me. This is a great program.

One of my former colleagues joined another popular program (without me knowing, or I would have persuaded her otherwise) and is now hoping that she can find a job. I, however know that the school’s reputation is on the line over me. They very publicly advertise their audited placement rates.

Quality:

The curriculum is based on the in-person program. So, not only are the instructors good at coding, the actual material has has proven itself several times (results seen in jobs report). Not just that, but there is material that is not included in the in-person program. You are simply exposed to more content, and one could argue that this will make you a stronger job candidate.

What’s more, I encourage you to actually do the free coursework. It will only cost a little of your time, but you can see what the program is all about and why students are so addicted. Yes, I said addicted.

A note here on quality. The Flatiron School selects students in what I consider a unique fashion. There are people in the program who have tech backgrounds, have worked with big data, or majored in math, and there are artists, writers, comedians, etc. I say this because the curriculum is extremely accessible. Everyone can get through it, and everyone becomes stronger from it. This is largely due to the content and the format, but also due to the community. At the end of the day, despite their different backgrounds, everyone I have come into contact with loves the program.

Cost/Pace:

You go at your own pace. If you finish in 4 months, good for you. If you finish in 8, fantastic. For the most part people don’t pull out their rulers and start comparing. And why should you? However everyone’s budget is always at the back of their mind.

The team recently launched a second version for $500 instead of $1000 per month. The $500 version is just the Premium version with some support services stripped away. I am glad to be in the Premium version because it suites my needs, and I budgeted for it. However, the basic version students are by no means treated any differently in the community. Honestly most of us don’t know (or care) who is in which plan.

Added bonus: Community

This is a big one. Communities are not perfect. Anywhere. But having been on several on-line learning platforms before, and having worked in education, I can say that the community that is cultured here is very supportive and open. Whether you are outgoing or reserved, you can find a place here. There are virtually no rules to follow though. It just seems to be a product of the people who are admitted, and of course the tone set by the community leaders.

The education is likely better than ever. The curriculum is well-engineered, there are many TAs available, and there is tremendous community support.

That said, I invested in Flatiron School, rather than Full Stack or DBC or Metis, because of the jobs... Read More report. Only Flatiron School published an independently verified report that showed grads earned, on average, 75k. For my cohort, this was certainly not the case. Most of us who have jobs (1.5 months post grad) are earning 10k to 20k below that figure.

I'm satisfied with my 15k investment, generally. But perhaps I would have chosen a less expensive bootcamp had I known that the average earnings were just that-- average. I suspect this is due to an increasing saturation of bootcamp grads and/or the Placements team's increasing role in making connections rather than Avi.

Hello! I am a graduate and I am also currently employed as an Instructor at the Flatiron School as well, so I am one of several that has experienced Flatiron School from both a student perspective and an instructor perspective.

Why Flatiron School?
I applied... Read More to several programming boot-camps in the summer of 2013, and was accepted into several. However, the decision to go to Flatiron School was largely because of the philosophy of Flatiron School ("if you're driven and imaginative enough, then learning how to code is not ultimately the objective, but rather opening yourself up to a world of new possibilities through code"). Other bootcamps focus on using assessments to qualify whether or not you're good enough to succeed in their programs, whereas Flatiron seeks to surround forward-thinking and driven individuals with like-minded peers in a diverse environment. This was what set Flatiron School apart from its competitors for me.

Programming
Yes, the objective of Flatiron School is to teach its students how to code, and how to code well. But that's not what makes Flatiron School succeed. It's the ability of the admissions team and its teachers to provide a rich, diverse community in which students push each other to succeed through collaboration and support. As a result of this, students learn programming by communicating with each other while working on projects, and ultimately creating a rich ecosystem of knowledge that iteratively builds upon itself, week after week throughout the semester.

New York Tech Community
Flatiron School has benefitted a lot by simply being part of the New York tech community, and has given back to the community as well. That's the primary ethos of Flatiron School. Its defining quality is community, and it hosts meetups and events every week, such as NYC on Rails, iOS Devs Meetup, Manhattan.js, and Flatiron Presents (student presentations). The diversity of its graduates that go forth into the New York tech community is something that sets Flatiron School apart from its peers; at least 40% of accepted students are female.

In Closing...
Flatiron School has been one of the best investments I have ever made. I say this not from a financial perspective, but rather from a career and motivational perspective. In my previous jobs prior to attending Flatiron School, my imagination and motivational drive was starting to wane, and I started to see things in a greyish hue. As the weeks progressed during my time at Flatiron School, my burgeoning skill-set started to show me what was possible. Coding is not a means to an end in itself, but rather it's the gateway that makes everything else attainable. Being able to build a software tool or product or whatever you may call it allows you come extremely close to having a profound effect on the things you care about. Making life more colorful and vibrant again. After all, isn't that the point of education? It is meant to bridge the gap between your dreams and reality. I didn't find that in high school or college. I found that at Flatiron. And as a teacher, that's what I strive to impart to our students every day.

I could probably write a dissertation on how much I loved my time at Flatiron School, but I will try to keep this short-ish.

The practical stuff: They take you from 0 (and I really mean no coding experience whatsoever) to equipped to land your first Junior... Read More Developer position in three months. They have excellent post-grad job placement support in that they both prepare you a great deal for the interview process and have a large network of hiring partners within the New York area.

To back that up - I am a music school grad with no experience writing code outside of basic HTML. The program was incredibly challenging and I struggled through most of it, but came out the other side confident in my ability to get a job and continue the learning process. I took a 6 month (paid) apprenticeship that has since turned into a full-time job. I've almost doubled my salary in less than a year. To put that in different terms, my return on investment was a little more than three times the tuition for Flatiron School in seven months.

The other stuff: I've always been a good student and I've always hated school. Sitting in Avi's class was the first time that I found myself enjoying lectures. He has an ability to read his students -- he seemed to know when to push forward and when to back up a bit so that we weren't lost despite the complexity of the topics. We spent more than half the program learning pure Ruby and overarching programming concepts that help me a great deal in my day-to-day. The TAs are passionate about teaching and form real relationships with the students. Everyone there is invested in the growth and future of each student.

Flatiron is not just a programming bootcamp, it's a community, and an immensely supportive one at that. My time there was life-changing.