Fullstack Academy

The instruction is brilliant and the workshop content is carefully curated to allow you to blaze through a very efficient learning path. You'll be pretty much learning a new technology every day or so, but the intuitions you build are cumulative. Ultimately,... Read More you'll get a solid enough practical and theoretical foundation for you to explore any technologies you want. Anytime you get stuck, the instructors and fellows jump right in to save the day, so you always keep moving forward. It's a fairly challenging program, but seeing your tech skills skyrocket is absolutely worth the effort.

A short disclaimer: I did have some previous coding experience before I joined Fullstack, so I had a comparatively easier time with the curriculum.

But don't let that scare you. It's a great experience. The curriculum is amazing, the instructors are concise,... Read More easy to understand, and make learning an enjoyable experience. I became a much better coder during my time at Fullstack. Not just through the frameworks I learned, but the little stuff. I'm so much better at tracking down bugs now.

Many people with no previous coding experience went in and came out polished software engineers. More importantly, they learned to be fast learners and break down problems. I highly recommend it to everybody.

A note about me. I do not hold any type of college degree. I went to college for music, but started working professionally in that industry before I finished. I was successful, but I've always had an interest in the CS field and wanted to work and live... Read More in one place, rather than being gone on tour all the time. I'm glad I made the decision to switch. 3 months after graduating Fullstack Academy I got a job as the Lead Mobile Developer at a startup. I graduated mid-December 2017 and started working at my current company mid-March 2018. I think I sent out 5 applications altogether.

This review is about Fullstack Academy, however, a lot of people are trying to choose between App Academy/Fullstack Academy/Hack Reactor etc. So a note about App Academy -
I went to App Academy for 5 weeks of their immersive program and failed out. It was not because of the difficulty of the material, nor that they push you harder as a coder. It had more to do with the method of their instruction. That could be my fault. I would say more, however, they gave me back my $5k deposit in exchange for signing a document that said, essentially, that I could not communicate anything negative about App Academy to anyone ever. I don't think this violates that agreement.
That being said, if you want to learn the most and best you can at the bootcamp that you choose, I recommend Fullstack Academy.

Fullstack Academy's instructors and curriculum are far and above any other bootcamp that I have had experience with. The instructors are not chosen based on being graduates of the program and thereby being cheap labor.
The instructors are great programmers, but they are also incredible communicators. They are great instructors who happen to teach software engineering, something they are really great at too. It is abundantly clear that they want you to do well and that includes caring about things outside of simply software engineering.
I've never had better teaching on any subject than what I received at Fullstack Academy.

Another thing, I visited the facilities of FSA, App Academy, Hack Reactor and Flatiron School, all in NYC. FSA has the most professional environment of all of them, hands down. Flatiron feels like college, Hack Reactor and App Academy feel hack-y, FSA feels professional. I was a professional before this. I was switching professions, going into professional training to be prepared for a professional job afterwards. I wanted a professional environment so I really appreciated that about FSA.

In regards to Job Assistance, personally I think FSA's strategy and implementation could use some work.
My experience was that their strategy is impossible. They encourage a "spray and pray" approach, but also encourage a personal (continuing the analogy) "sniper precision" approach. For me, that's impossible. I can't send out 20 applications a week and spend the necessary time to make each application convey that I am excited about the specific opportunity without coming off as rote. I think those are two different approaches that don't coincide.
They encouraged us to have a profile on every coding website under the sun that had a 'jobs profile' option. For me it felt like being told to do 10,000 things, each of which would take 2-3 days to do well, in an hour. It seemed like they didn't know what they were asking us to do, because what they were asking us to do was impossible. For me anyway.
I believe that the "spray and pray" approach is statistically more successful for finding a job post-bootcamp. I also believe that my personality and the "spray and pray" approach don't work together.
I'm a very hard working, secure, introvert. I value few deep connections over many shallow connections. I get along with people just fine, I'm not shy. I am overly serious and overly critical of myself and others at times.
I tried their approach, I chose to trust the process because that's what I did for the code instruction portion of the program. I tried to do everything the career success team told us to do while still in the immersive and it just seemed like no matter what I did or how perfect I tried to do it, it didn't have the results it was supposed to.
It was the equivalent of being told that once I pushed this boulder up the mountain it would stay there and I would be rewarded. Only, after pushing it all the way up this mountain, it turns out the only thing at the top is a cliff...and I just pushed it off that cliff...No reward. I was pushing it up the wrong mountain.

Disclaimer: I do think I am an outlier with the way I chose to job search. I think my experience is more likely the exception, not the rule.
So, after graduating from FSA, I avoided the career success team. I know that others in my cohort had good experiences with them, but this review is about my experience. Maybe things would have got better had I kept trying their way, but I doubt it.
My approach was to spend most of my time learning and blogging about it. For professional profiles I focused on linkedin, github and twitter. I would go to 1-2 meetups a week(usually 1). I would only send an application somewhere if I knew that someone was going to look at it. (That’s a no-no, but that’s what I chose to do.)
When I went to meetups, I would hang out with one or two people and get to know them. Regardless of whether their companies were hiring or not. I would just try to make a connection with one or two professional developers. If I did encounter someone that was hiring, I'd ask them what their stack was and then I would spend time learning that stack. Even if they said they weren't ready to hire me.
I also spent a lot of time going deeper on the technologies that we had learned at Fullstack.

In the end, I was contacted by the CEO of my current company on linkedin, I did a coding challenge for him in React Native, which I spent 3 full days on, then I met with him and 20 minutes into that lunch/interview he said he wanted to hire me for a very good salary including a little equity. Not to be too specific, but I think the average salary for a just-graduated FSA grad in September 2017 was around 80k and I was offered more than that.

In conclusion, You will NOT regret choosing FSA. I'm certain their career success team will get better with time. But even without using them, in fact outright avoiding them, I got a really great job 3 months after graduating. (And keep in mind that one of those months went right through christmas and new years when there really isn't a lot of action going on with hiring).

I was initially turned on to Fullstack Academy because of their Grace Hopper program and its deferred tuition model, but the decision to ultimately attend Fullstack was informed by other reviews like this. I do not regret the choice. From start to finish,... Read More it has been a thoughtfully-constructed process with all of the Fullstack network's resources there for help. I came into the field with absolutely no CS background (my B.A. is in Psychology) - within months, I've found my first home as a developer with one of the FSA Hiring Day companies. Between the curriculum and the community, Fullstack has been a life-changing experience and a wonderful opportunity.

I attended Fullstack Academy Sep 2017 - Feb 2018. My professors throughout my time there were Omri, Cassio, and Corey. All were amazing and contributed in different ways to my learning experience.

You can tell FSA cares about their students and truly wants... Read More them to succeed. David Yang, one of the founders, made sure to answer any questions students had honestly and thoroughly. The school is very transparent about their values, goals, and outcomes.

Companies were reaching out to me with interest before I graduated, and I landed a job as a Software Engineer within a week after finishing Fullstack. Natalie was my career success counselor during Senior Phase, and she was incredibly helpful and knowledge when it came to updating my resume, preparing for interviews, etc. I know a few others from my class who have also found jobs they like, but many more are still looking. Fullstack prepares you very well, and you are qualified for development roles upon completion of the program. Of course, you'll still have a lot to learn, and you'll need to continue to work hard and not be discouraged!

I would highly recommend Fullstack. I learned more in this short time span than I ever could have on my own, and I made valuable connections as well as friends for life.

I participated in the summer of code program at Fullstack going into my sophmore year of college. I had a great time, and learned the practical knowledge and skills that I'll need when I'm looking for employment after I graduate. If anyone is looking... Read More for a way to turn their theory-based CS education into something practical, this is the program for you. While it is a bit pricey, if you can make it work, I would 100% recommend it.

I attended Fullstack as a Summer of Code student. I was weary of attending at first since I am already a computer science student, and thought it may be "overkill." But it was worth it in the end because I learned so many valuable skillsets that I would... Read More have not encountered otherwise. The interview prep support was also tremendous, and I really enjoyed learning and working with others who are equally motivated. Shoutout to Kate who was a wonderful mentor and teacher throughout my Senior phase! If you are weary about price/experience, just now that this is such a worthwhile experience and I feel way more confident in my programming abilities now. If I had any criticism, it would be that specific internship support wasn't available, but I got enough out of the job support that it didn't make a huge difference for me.

My story: I'm 35 and have 2 year old son (worth mentioning for any parents who may be reading this wondering if the bootcamp route makes sense for them). To help you baseline your intelligence level against mine: I got a 24 on my ACT and had a 2.86 college... Read More GPA (although the low GPA was more because I didn't apply myself vs mental capacity...my freshman year I had a 3.4 when I was fully applied, in a computer information systems program at Indiana University which is a moderately difficult program; for what it's worth). After 13 year career in IT and project management, I was making a decent salary, but I was very unhappy and burnt out in my job and career path (or lack thereof). I decided to go to a bootcamp to become a developer. I did the Fullstack bootcamp prep course and got accepted into the immersive program in May '17. I got held back after the" junior phase" of the immersive program and had to redo the first 6 weeks (cost was only about 2k additional). Ended up graduating in December and felt very strong about the content. I started my job search immediately. (didn't have a beer at the final day team event because I had just received my first coding challenge from a recruiter and had to go home to work on it). I was well connected to 4 companies in Chicago that were hiring, but at the CTO level of which I was connected, we found it only made sense for them to go as far as getting me past the resume screening step. I also found that no-one in the interview processes really cared much about my other non-development experience. I ended up not getting offers at any of those 4 companies. I got impatient, started saying "I would do 3 months unpaid or 6 months at 40k annualized salary so long as there was an option to get evaluated for a raise to 60k or more after 6 months" in my cover letter to companies. Ending up landing a job at a cool tech company at the 6 month rate that I mentioned in my letter. I really like it so far. (the hiring manger said there were over 100 resume submissions and he wouldn't have contacted me if it weren't for my offer, so it got me in the door). A bit disappointing on the salary front, but everything else about the role and company is great. And it's a long journey and the toughest part of bootcamp is getting the first gig, so the salary stuff will work itself out. My goal is to code for the next 5 years and then either keep coding or get back into tech leadership.

My review of Fullstack academy: In addition to being an alumni of fullstack, I also am a teaching assistant at another bootcamp with a similar curriculum but part time format, so I have some good perspective.
Pros:
-Instructors. Ben and Colin are the senior instructors and have 7 and 10 years of experience respectively. Both are incredibly knowledgeable, great teachers, and fun to work with. There is a new 3rd instructor, Finn, who was a part of my first cohort and then did the fellowship who is fantastic as well. You are also supported by 3-5 teaching fellows who are alumni who stay on for 13 weeks after they graduate. Lots of people apply to the fellowship and the best students end up with the job, so they end up being very strong and help you a ton. No shortage of strong coaching and support.
-Curriculum: very strong workshops that go into a lot of depth; they teach the full-dev stack in a way that every workshop and concept builds on the next. The curriculum is cutting edge and constantly being updated. In my 2nd time going through the 'junior phase', 3 of the 25 workshops were brand new (the javaScript world moves fast and is constantly changing, so its important to find a bootcamp that is constantly updating the curriculum). The 10% lecture, 90% workshop format is great. Also, the pre-readings and supplemental materials are very helpful.
-Workshops: All the workshops that can be test-spec based (about 80%) are test spec based. Now teaching at a bootcamp that has 0 test specs in their workshops, I can't overstate how much it helps to have test spec based workshops to help guide you a long.
-Project phase: Great experience working in teams and getting the closest you can to real-world experience.
-Starting point: Fullstack has very tough admissions criteria. You have to know basic programming and be decent at it before getting accepted. This is HUGE and I would be careful about joining a bootcamp where there is little to no admission criteria if your goal is to get a dev job right afterwards. The unofficial tagline for Fullstack is that they start you at 20 and get you to 100 whereas others start at 0 and take you to 80. This The starting at 0 vs 20 is very true (as far as I know, Fullstack is the only Chicago based bootcamp with stringent admissions criteria, and you can only get so far if you are starting from scratch). The reason I changed it 'from 20 to 95' in my tag line has little to do with Fullstack, so much as the bootcamp process itself. There is really not much else they can do in 17 weeks to make you ready to be a professional dev. But its more just a word of caution in general that the job search after bootcamp is very hard, so it wouldn't be fair to say anyone is 100% ready. One of my favorite moments of bootcamp was when Nimit, one of the co-founders, during a community AMA session said: "Most people wouldn't do what you are doing (quit you job and jump into a new career up against people who went to school for 4 years to get into the profession) ". Something about it really clicked with me and made me feel at ease and I thought to myself "Okay...I know it's going to be hard...but I'll deal with it."
-Community: they create a great, fun, safe, energetic environment that really makes you feel like part of something larger and special.
-Job support: very strong; lots of great insights. Make sure you listen to their recommendations (job search can be a lot of work!).

Cons (These are relatively minor things; and many students would disagree with me on these fronts; but wanted to share my thoughts anyways):
-The first 6 weeks are workshops for 5-6 hours a day (this is a huge pro), but 95% of them are pair programming, which for me was a con. I was one of the weaker students the first time through it. I found it very hard to keep up with my pairing mates during my first time through and many of the workshops I was lost on. Would I have been better off on my own? Not sure...I wouldn't have gotten as far and would have asked a lot more questions, and I guess it hard to say if it would have made a difference. I think pair programming is great. But I think you should at least have the option to go solo when you are falling behind, or at least have one out of every 3 or 4 workshops be solo just to mix it up.
-You only end up with 2 or 3 portfolio pieces, and your personal website is recommended and not required (and I was part of 80% of the students who didn't finish their personal portfolio site by the time you finish bootcamp, and you really need one to apply to jobs). Other bootcamps have homework assignments and/or workshops that end up being able to be used as portfolio pieces, so you end up with your personal website complete and a ton of portfolio pieces, but Fullstack doesn't do this. However, the complexity of the projects in your portfolio at Fullstack are much deeper that bootcamps that go for volume over depth. But, maybe a simple little hangman game (and 15 similar exercises) that took you 10 hours to write and looks nice, goes a long way with hiring managers as they are doing resume screenings. Not sure.
-You end up spending about 5 full days prepping for career day and presenting your final project. I would cut the time spent on these activities by 2 days and use the other time for more content, coding depth, etc.

In conclusion, if you have decided that a development bootcamp is the best path for you for, I would highly recommend Fullstack.

Fullstack is the single best coding bootcamp in Chicago. They have their sh*t together. They constantly work on updating and refining their curriculum. The skills you learn are highly relevant to actual jobs in the industry. The instructors are knowledgeable.... Read More

After graduating in December, I didn't start job searching until the first week of January. By February 15, I had my first offer at a company that hit all my requirements, paid a solid salary, and was still interviewing with 5 other companies. Keep in mind, I'm more socially-skilled than most as I used to work in marketing consulting for 4 years, so your results may vary based on your temperament and skillset.

On attending the academy:
1) It's very liberal. As a conservative/libertarian, it was painful sitting through all the 'everyone matters, women empowerment, be careful with your language,' talk. Look, I'm here to learn relevant skills so I can get a job in software engineering. I didn't come here to learn your ideology or engage in thought policing. Depending on who you are, this can be a drawback or a bonus. Knowing what I know now, I still would have attended Fullstack Academy because it is the best option in the city.
2) If you don't live in the city, get a place within 15 minutes commute of the academy. At most, 30 minutes. DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT try and commute from the suburbs. I lived in Gurnee, IL and took the train to the city everyday. It was about 3.5-4 hours of total commuting time each day. You need all the time you can to work on the coursework and relax. It will be stressful. You need your sleep. And everything will be worth all the pain and effort.
3) Invest time in the relationships you'll build with people there. Everyone is pretty high quality, generally has their life together, and will be beneficial to keep in your life. I'm working on a side project with a classmate and regularly talk to a few classmates I've had. Adding more smart, motivated, and hard working people to your life is never a bad idea.
4) Plan for 3-6 months of expenses after Fullstack for finding a job. Fullstack won't give you a job on a silver platter - you'll still have to work for it. Talk to the career counselor at the Chicago campus. Most college career counselors are utterly useless. Thankfully, this is nothing like college. The Chicago counselor linked me to a number of opportunities within the first 2 months post-graduation. Listen to them.