| | Helen ZHANG | I first joined Fullstack Academy's bootcamp prep course which is only $99 and I also received a complete refund for completing the course. My bootcamp prep instructor Sarah was super passionate and she explained all Javascript in clear logic which was super helpful. After completing the prep course, I became close friend with Sarah and a couple of other students at Fullstack Academy. I got a sense of their supportive culture and decided to enroll in their full-time immersive course.
After being admitted, I took 2 month to study as much as I can on my own before I started the full-time course. I started the course in July 2019 and the three months period was really intense but not unbearable. For the six weeks junior phase, you get to learn new concepts on a daily basis. You will have lectures in the morning and workshops(pair programming) in the afternoon. I normally had some time to relax and exercise after dinner every day but I did continue to study over the weekend. Each week, you would also have to take a checkpoint test to check your understanding of that week's study.
After the junior phase, you will take a week off to relax and refresh yourself, which I found really helpful. Then you enter another six weeks of senior phase. You will build two group projects and one solo projects, which I found was really fun. You also got to build closer relationship with your group members. Each cohort would also have social chairs that organizes activities for us to get to know each other better such as happy hours on Friday. Each week, you would also have ample opportunities and channels to express your concerns about the course, instructors, or your peer.
Upon graduation, I was also offered a 3-month paid teaching fellow position. While helping mentor the next cohort, I also got to sit in all the lectures again which definitely helped solidify my grasp of all the concepts. I also took the time to learn more about algorithm and data structure on my own. After that, I attended the launch day organized by Fullstack academy.
After leaving the school, I continued to apply for jobs, practicing algorithms and building projects. All my interviewed were obtained through Fullstack's network and I finally got a pretty good offer from a big company this May.
I want to thank Ben for being a passionate instructor and supportive friend. I want to thank my career coach Natalie for always being there for me and practicing all the behavioral questions with me. I want to thank many others at Fullstack Academy that made my transition from a person with zero tech background to a full-stack software engineer POSSIBLE! |
