Fullstack Academy

I graduated from Fullstack Academy in December of 2017 from 1709-WDF. WDF stands for the Web Development Fellowship. I was part of a full-scholarship program, sponsored by the NYC Tech Talent Pipeline where I had to compete against all of NYC for a spot to get into the program. It was extremeley competitive and one of the hardest things I ever had to do in my life.

Fullstack was my dream coding school and you get what you put into it. I studied every single day since Day 1 in bootcamp-prep and never stopped until I landed my job as a Software Engineer at Unified. Fullstack teaches you EVERYTHING you need to know about software engineering and they prep you EXTREMELY WELL! All you need to do is put in the work and 'trust the process'.

It's going to be intense but it's intense for a reason. Besides teaching you all the latest frameworks, technologies and the most updated JavaScript, Fullstack is the best at teaching you how to learn. And forces you to become comfortable with being uncomfortable, just like real life and just like being a real Software Engineer. If you don't know something, don't panic, just look it up. Google it. Read articles on how other people have done it. Go to Stack Overflow and interact with the community. Be self-sufficient.

Fullstack is the best thing I have ever done. It was much more fulfilling and I felt more accomplished than earning my 4-year degree.

I recently graduated from Fullstack Academy in Chicago. After graduating from college with a degree in Economics, I decided to attend a coding bootcamp. After doing some research for a full week, I came across three great programs: Fullstack Academy, App Academy, and Hack Reactor. I found both three bootcamps to have similar challenging and immersive learning experience to their students. Why I decided to attend Fullstack in the end is that the Chicago office had a group of 20 students while the other two bootcamps had 40+ students. It was a major deal-breaker, given high-quality instructors and motivated students in all three academies. Having just taken Intro to CS and Data Structures in college, I was one of the least experienced programmers in the group. Some people have gotten advanced degrees in Computer Science, or other disciplines, or even have worked as engineers for a few years. Although I was at first scared, I realized that it was actually better for me because every student in my cohort became my teacher and mentor when I struggled. It was definitely challenging but I found the experience to be very helpful, especially that I was able to land a software engineering position after graduation because of my coding skills and technologies I learned from Fullstack Academy. If you are deciding if Fullstack would be the right choice, just remember, if you promise yourself that you will work hard, you will make it and walk out from the program with valuable and skills that are in high-demand!

It had been a while since a had an experience as intense as these 3 months at Fullstack.
I learned so much about about coding (what I was here to learn) and about live and myself.
This is a very hard and intense program, it is definetly not for everyone, but this is exactly what I wanted and what I needed.

The instructors are the best, as awesome coding masters and as human beings.
The people I studied with were incredible: strong, smart, supportive, amazing. Every single one of them.

It is obvious culture is very important at Fullstack and I will always be thankfull for that. If you are going to spend 3 month practically living in this space with this people. you want the best environment posible, and I definitely found it here.

I would recommend this experience and this school without any doubt.
I just graduated 2 days ago, and future is just so exciting right now, 

I graduated from Fullstack Academy's Software Engineering Immersive program in Chicago in the fall of 2017. Recently, I was able to land on an job offer from a software company in Chicago with extensive amount of help from Fullstack. No matter what background you are coming from, I can tell you for sure that you will be really challenged and will grow as a self-sufficient developer in this program.

Before coming to Fullstack, I worked as a software developer for 4 years. As I was leaving my old company, I wanted to get more education and learn about new technologies in programming to make myself more marketable. So, I was deciding between a bootcamp or a graduate degree in computer science. After finding out about Fullstack and reading numerous amount of positive reviews of the immersive program, I decided to give it a shot.

Immersive program's curriculum is divided into 2 phases: junior phase and senior phase. Junior phase is where you learn all about computer science (data structure, sorting, algorithm, etc) and web tech (Javascript, Node, SQL, jQuery, React, Redux, etc). Senior phase is where you get to use what you learned from junior phase with 3 main projects. From senior phase, you are also prepared for the real-world coding/job interviews. Both of phases are very intensive and fast-paced.

To be honest, I didn't think this program will be much challenging given that I already had years of experience in software development. However, I was very wrong. From day 1in junior phase, I was challenged and learned a lot. From many of lessons (or as they call it "workshop") in class, you are challenged to dive deep into it and to understand the fundamental. Often, you are also challenged to build things from the scratch. I have found these types of challenges to be very useful as you prepare for the technical interviews.

Last but not least, people you work with are the best part about this program. All staffs, including instructors and fellow students, are very helpful and friendly. Especially, all of instructors had tons of knowlege in programming, and there were so much to learn from the. Also, I found my classmates to be all smart, passionate, and driven. These were type of people I would love to work with in my work. I believe Fullstack's admission staffts have been doing great job of carefully selecting right people to join the program.

I hope my review was helpful. If you are like me thinking of chaning your careers in software development or just want to start fresh, I highly recommend you take this program.

I applied to FullStack right out of high school through NYC's Tech Talent Pipeline. I can't recommend them enough. David is passionate about the curriculum and feedback from students. The instructors are very knowledgeable and always willing to lend a helping hand. The teaching fellows are invested in teaching everything they learned from their cohort. My peers were nothing short of engaged, determined, and supporting of each other. Career success won't hold back the punches on critique of your resume and online presence. With the help of FSA I am now a software engineer at a financial firm in NY before the age of 20. Can't recommend enough no matter your age or experience.

I am reviewing Fullstack again because I sent in my review far too early in my job hunting process. Originally I felt that the career support was not very helpful for people who were mid career (and this is a common perception, that the career services are catered towards people more or less straight out of college). But I was so, so wrong. I met a bunch of firms at Fullstack's Hiring Day and literally just signed my offer from the first employer I met at hiring day. I got 3 offers and the career success team were extremely helpful in helping me navigate everything from turning DOWN my first six figure offer to flying out to Mountain View for my Google interview to reaching out to the Fullstack Alumni network to get more information for my eventual job offer that netted me 160k BASE. This is unreal and impossible for me to have conceived of without the help of Fullstack and without the opportunities created by Fullstack's Career Services people. I regret that I don't seem to be able to go back and edit my original review because I gave them a 4/5 because I'm a "nothing is perfect" kind of guy. But I was wrong. I stand by Fullstack through and through and if you still have doubts after reading this contact me so I can figure out what's wrong with you. @swyx on twitter.

Simply put, I had the drive to transition to a career as a software engineer, and Fullstack was the crucial piece in the puzzle that made it happen.

The course is incredibly intense, overwhelming and effective. Beyond the actual curriculum, Fullstack really teaches you how to be a software engineer. After the course, I was able to pick up new frameworks and tackle technical challenges more effectively as the entire bootcamp experience conditions you to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. It's a very powerful feeling to have knowing that you can pick almost any application and either be able to build it, or have full confidence in knowing you could teach yourself to. In my current job, I attribute both my aptitude at completing tasks, and work ethic to my experience in Fullstack.

Lastly, the members of my cohort were very good. Surrounded by people who (mostly don't have a technical background) but were successful with their own career paths. If you give motivated, competent people technical knowledge, they can build great things, and more over make each other even more great.

If you know becoming a developer is the path for you, the choice is a no-brainer. It'll be the hardest 13 weeks of your life, and it'll be totally worth it.

My time at Fullstack Academy was one of the most fun and fulfulling experiences I have ever had!  I was already an experienced backend coder, but Fullstack helped me learn to get a project completely off the ground by myself with an experience of the entire stack and how to integrate all of the pieces.  Every instructor was incredibly knowledgeable in their field and left me with valuable skills that have helped me every day of my new career.  As a Fullstack Alumni, I am also part of a large community that continues to interact.  I am constantly running into other alumni, even within my own company.  I would recommend this course to anyone who truely loves coding and is either just starting out, or wants to learn all of the most relevant JavaScript libraries/frameworks in the industry.

The best way I can summarize my time at Grace Hopper is that, apart from being a parent, it was the most intense, most rewarding experience I have ever had.  I have a B.S. and an M.S. and found the curriculum very challenging, at times overwhelming, but never beyond my ability to rise to the challenge.  The curriculum is very well designed and clearly very carefullly and intentionally constructed, and individuals at every level of the organization frequently request and act on feedback.  The staff and instructors are warm and supportive while demanding excellence, and the overall culture is one of championing your fellow classmates.  

I loved my experience at GH and would have highly recommended it to anyone before I knew my outcome.  I am even more thrilled to recommend it after landing a 6 figure salary within one week of graduating!  

Hello, I just graduated from Fullstack's July 2017 cohort. I did FreeCodeCamp before it but felt I needed to do a full bootcamp to "get good" and have people looking at my code and forcing me to use best practices which can be hard to find externally. I got all that at Fullstack. I got into Hack Reactor and Fullstack and went with Fullstack because 1) the admission interview was harder and 2) the anecdotes I could gleam indicated that there was a caring culture at Fullstack. Now 4 months later I can say that it is true. I also live-podcasted my entire bootcamp journey for total transparency and it is available at impostor-syndrome.org. Its meant for -all- people considering bootcamps, not just Fullstack, and if you want a narrative, longitudinal study of what its like to go thru a bootcamp it's my contribution to the community. All the best. contact me @swyx on twitter for more.

I attended Fullstack Academy’s Software Engineering Immersive program in Chicago in the summer of 2016. This was their first session held in Chicago, with a class size of 14 students, 2 instructors, and a ‘Fellow’ (a former student, like a TA). Frankly, I have nothing but good things to say about the program.

I applied right out of high school, planning on taking a gap year and developing a strong skillset before attending school the following fall. However, I was able to find an incredible opportunity shortly after graduating Fullstack (which I certainly could not have gotten without going through the program) and I have put off college indefinitely. I was the youngest member of the class, but I think that goes to show that your background, skills, and experiences (or lack thereof) aren’t as important to Fullstack as your attitude and desire to learn.

**Classroom Environment**
The most impressive part of Fullstack was the sense of community among the other students and instructors. Fullstack does an incredible job of finding passionate team-players that you actually want to work with - which is good because the vast majority of the curriculum involves pair programming or group projects. Because of the small student-teacher ratio, you get a lot of individual attention and never have to vie for instructors’ time. Fullstack clearly places an emphasis on the student community, devoting a few hours each Friday to round table discussions about how everyone is progressing and having a single student or two talk about themselves to allow classmates to get to know each other on a more personal level.

**Curriculum**
Fullstack’s curriculum is constantly adapting and evolving to keep up with the latest trends in the industry (which is quite impressive given the quick rise and fall of frameworks in the JavaScript ecosystem). Though I certainly have a biased perspective, I think JavaScript is the most practical language to learn in any bootcamp-like program. It is already one of the most widely used languages, and its popularity is only growing as the Node.js ecosystem matures. The reality of the tech industry is that it evolves rapidly, but the ubiquitous presence of JavaScript across the stack, there is no doubt it will be around for the foreseeable future. 

At the end of the day, just about everything you could want to know is available somewhere online for free. But working for hours on your own without the support of knowledgable instructors or a community of peers will not yield the same results as an immersive program Fullstack. It’s certainly a big commitment of time, money, and energy, but I don’t think there’s a better way to prepare yourself for a career in web development. 

The instructors, staff and students at Grace Hopper create a wonderfully supportive, encouraging, positive environment, which is crucial because there's no doubt it's an intense experience. Learning so much information in such a short amount of time can be mentally exhausting, but Fullstack/Grace Hopper has an established system that works, and the terrific atmosphere makes it much easier to get through those days when you're tired and feeling a bit overwhelmed. If you're struggling with a concept, there are many opportunities for one-on-one office hours with fellows (recent GH grads who serve as teaching assistants) and instructors, and everyone is patient and accessible - and committed to ensuring you're comfortable asking questions and seeking out help.

The job search services are strong as well, though it's good to know going in what they are and what they aren't. The program will supply you with the tools and support to be effective, but you will mostly be conducting the job search yourself as far as finding openings for which to apply. Fullstack/Grace Hopper hosts a "Hiring Day" where students interview with potential employers, but typically only a small percentage of each cohort gets a job through that. The Career Success staff will also occasionally send out listings they've received; most likely, though, the job you get will come through your own networking or perusing of online listings. But you'll be well-positioned to do that because of the general instruction and individualized advice they provide on everything from how to structure a tech resume to how to negotiate for a higher salary.

I attended the Grace Hopper (GH) Program as a student, then became a teaching fellow for Remote Cohort #1, and still teach an occasional preparatory class when demand is high. Needless to say, GH has got me hooked! 

If you want to learn to code, GH knows how to get the job done and are constantly iterating on it to up the success of future cohorts. In a field where the "next big thing" changes pretty much every week, keeping up with the technology is hard to do as an individual, let alone an entire school! GH is committed to making sure its students learn the most widespread and promising technologies: as a student, I watched instructors learning React just in time to teach it to incoming students when we switched from Angular, and then I did the same as a teaching fellow 6 weeks later.

The instructors are all top-notch, and they each have their own quirky teaching styles, which makes coming to class all day, every day fun and exciting. There's always coffee and cereal to fight off the afternoon coding lull or feed the I-just-rolled-out-of-bedders. 

The career success team is out of this world and go above and beyond their job descriptions to help grads get exceptional jobs all over the country. They have placed GH grads at companies as bootcamp grad #1 (myself included!) and built up some pretty sweet networks along the way. Seriously, they're committed to getting you a job after graduation and have often given me advice and action plans way outside of work hours. I just finished my first month at my new job and I think GH did an EXTREMELY good job of preparing me for the professional software engineering world. I feel more comfortable with the daily engineering practices, startup life, and quick turnover of technologies than many of my peers -- who have traditional CS backgrounds.

The *immersive* part of the curriculum is no joke, but I never could have learned so much, built such strong lifelong friendships, or appreciated the sunshine so wholeheartedly in any other program! GH is certainly one of a kind, and I chose to attend because of stellar reviews like these!

#trusttheprocess

I attended the Grace Hopper (GH) Program at Fullstack (FS) Academy as a student, then became a Fullstack fellow for Remote Cohort #1, and still teach an occasional preparatory class when demand is high. Needless to say, Fullstack's got me hooked! 

If you want to learn to code, FS/GH know how to get the job done and are constantly iterating on it to up the success of future cohorts. In a field where the "next big thing" changes pretty much every week, keeping up with the technology is hard to do as an individual, let alone an entire school! FS is committed to making sure its students learn the most widespread and promising technologies: as a student, I watched instructors learning React just in time to teach it to incoming students when we switched from Angular, and then I did the same as a teaching fellow 6 weeks later!

The instructors are all top-notch, and they each have their own quirky teaching styles, which makes coming to class all day, every day fun and exciting. There's always coffee and cereal to fight off the afternoon coding lull or feed the I-just-rolled-out-of-bedders. 

The career success team is out of this world and go above and beyond their job descriptions to help grads get exceptional jobs all over the country. They have placed FS/GH grads at companies as bootcamp grad #1 (myself included!) and built up some pretty sweet networks along the way. Seriously, they're committed to getting you a job after graduation and have often given me advice and action plans way outside of work hours.

The *immersive* part of the curriculum is no joke, but I never could have learned so much, built such strong lifelong friendships, or appreciated the sunshine so wholeheartedly in any other program! FS is certainly one of a kind, and I chose to attend because of stellar reviews like these!

#trusttheprocess

TL/DR: Fullstack was the best educational investment of my life. You will learn a ton. If you are considering it but on the fence, just do it.

From a dollar-to-learning standpoint, I got much more value from Fullstack than I did from my 4 year degree at NYU.

Before Fullstack, I spent the better part of a year coding on my own and evaluating bootcamps. I wanted to learn full stack Javascript. I hemmed and hawed and couldn't decide because I was too afraid of writing a big check to some fly-by-night operation and getting ripped off.

I contacted several alums from Fullstack. They all gave it a resounding endorsement (and they were all employed as software developers). So I settled in on Fullstack because it seemed like the best option to get the skills I wanted. I was not disappointed.

Here's why:

It is intensely practical.

This is not to suggest that you get no theory, you do. But the bulk of the program is about writing code. So you spend a lot of time and energy and focus writing code. Everything in the environment is a conspiracy to get you writing code.

If you love to build things, Fullstack gives you lots of opportunities to do it while in the program and equips you to make great stuff as soon as you graduate. Practicality wins.

They have thought a lot about how to teach.

The founders and team have put a lot of thought into how to teach tech. It isn't some disorganized mess of pre-recorded tutorial modules that you can find online.

There is a structure and, even though it isn't always clear why you're doing a particular part while you're in it, you quickly discover that the process builds a tree of understanding. You'll learn the problem about some approach to development, struggle with it in vanilla JS, and only then get the library or framework that was built to resolve that problem.

The early part of the program uses test-driven development to help you get used to reading tests and inferring implementation from a desired functionality. I loved this approach.

After you struggle with the tests, the discovery of an answer feels like a grand, life-altering insight. I'm convinced this trial-and-error helps you learn and remember things more deeply than lecture, reading, or a repeat-after-me video tutorial.  

The instructors are wizards.

You are not taught by recent grads, but by legit software engineers who really know their stuff. The environment in Fullstack is ultra-smart. It helps you up your game. I didn't want to leave at the end because I knew I would miss spending so much time around such smart people. My instructors, Omri and John, were both great programmers and great people. I will miss learning from them.

The founders actually care about the business.

The two founders are still intimately involved in the business. You can feel in the environment that the business has their attention and that they're improving it. I have huge respect for them both, especially when I saw that David (one of the founders) was actually sitting in the room on our final day when we all gave feedback about the program. When it comes to 'caring for your students', talk is cheap. David's presence shows a true investment of time and attention that are the hallmarks of a dedicated entrepreneur.

The tech stack is in demand.

Full stack Javascript is huge on the market right now. There were tons of jobs available after graduation. It was not hard to get interviews based on companies' desire for Node.js/React.js devs.

You make friends with smart people.

Fullstack selects really smart people. Your peers will be people from finance, entrepreneurship, academia, or even software developers looking to update their skills. Hanging out with smart friends = you getting smarter. You'll end the program with a great group of friends.

It works.

If you do the work, the process works wondefully.

The graduation and placement stats speak for themselves and Fullstack has led the way in transparency in results.

My own experience: it isn't even a month since I graduated and I already landed an awesome full stack engineering job at an early-stage startup, which is exactly what I wanted when I signed up for Fullstack.

I attended Fullstack Academy in the February 2017 cohort. I had an excellent experience as a student. There are a few things that make Fullstack stand out:

1.) There is a rigorous and well run remote Foundations program that you complete prior to the immersive part of the bootcamp. You are given video lectures, have access to online office hours, are assigned a mentor that is a Fullstack grad, and take checkpoints to make sure that you are on track. This prepares students well for the bootcamp, helps students transition from coding as a hobby to coding all-day everyday, and ensures that everyone is ready to hit the ground running with brand new material in week 1 of the immersive program. This allows Fullstack to keep its standards high for its students, without creating the overtly competitive environment that I've heard about at other top bootcamps.

2.) The career success team is really excellent. They are former technical recruiters who:

    a - know exactly how other techincal recruiters / hiring managers think  

    b - have excellent connections, with the Fullstack alumni network, other technical recruiters,      and other professional connections from their years of experience.

The career success team is prepared not just to help you find any job, or any high paying job, but a job that matches your interests that you will find professionally fulfilling and that will lead to long term career growth. I think that this is unique among bootcamps. Lots of bootcamps have some form of demo day or hiring day, or TAs that give job application advice, but none that I've seen have the professional level of career support that I've seen at Fullstack.

On Attending a Software Development Bootcamp

Last fall, I made the decision to attend Fullstack Academy's 13-week Software Engineering Immersive course. Now almost six months after graduating, I feel confident in saying that it was a worthwhile investment. FSA is a constructive experience for people who are confident that they want to inhabit a technical position and benefit from structured, immersive education.

I wrote this to help people that are on the fence about enrolling in an in-person programming course. I start off by documenting the plan you should take to first validate your decision to enroll in one of these programs. Then if you've confirmed this is the path for you, I discuss the pros and cons of Fullstack Academy and why I feel it is a leader among coding bootcamps.

Preparation FSA

The high cost and time commitment of coding bootcamps should indicate that they are not something to do on a whim. In fact, when compared to traditional universities, their cost-to-time ratio is equivalent to several prestigious institutions. As with most things in life, you should first educate yourself on what these programs entail.

If you are considering making this move, there are three general steps you should take:

Get Advice from Past Graduates

Seek out people who have completed the course and gone on to work at companies similar to your interest. Simply peruse LinkedIn or AngerlList and you will probably find a number of these people. In my prep, I reached out to five former FSA students. Out of those five, four of them got back to me. I spoke with one on the phone for awhile and the three others wrote me lengthy, detailed opinions on their experience.

When making important life decisions like this I always feel it is best to speak with people who have been through the ringer. Learn from people who have been in your shoes, preparing to make that same decision. This is your chance to ask real people (not paid employees) things like:

- What did you get out of the course?
- Was it a manageable workload?
- Were the instructors helpful in learning the material?

These interactions were by far the best thing I could have done to help assure me that I was making the right decision.

Determine Your Path

By now you (hopefully) know that you want to take your career in a more technical direction, but maybe you are not sure how that desire will manifest itself. Sure, you can be a software developer, but maybe you are a creative with a greater appreciation of design? What about product management? A mathematics nut who would actually be better off exploring data science?

It turns out that a lot of people are interested in tech, but aren't actually passionate about development. And that is fine! Do yourself a favor and educate yourself on the different paths available to someone in this field. All of these alternative fields are growing and worthy pursuits of your time and there are bootcamps out there for almost all of these disciplines. It is reassuring to know that you explored all these possibilities before jumping into one in particular. Most of these fields are related in some capacity, but there is rarely significant overlap. It is much harder to move into a design role when you just spent 13 weeks investing your time in a development course. It's certainly not impossible, but that time/money might have been better spent on a UX bootcamp.

Start Learning

If you've made it this far, then you're pretty certain that the development path is for you. Excellent! Now get to work.

Preparation for the bootcamp needs to begin months in advance of the actual course. The quality schools necessitate that you come in with a solid grasp on the fundamentals of programming and the language that they teach. More importantly, the longer and more in-depth you prepare in advance, the more you will get out of the course material once you are on-site.

Here are some great resources to help you prepare for and supplement your journey:

- Computer Science Course Videos: Recently, several top institutions (MIT and Stanford among them) have been distributing their beginner CS course online for free. These are great starting points for the fundamentals.
- Free Code Camp: Learn to code with one of the most collaborative and resourceful online coding communities.
- The New Boston: A huge collection of free video tutorials on CS, web design, and more.
- You Don't Know JS: I am not one to recommend programming books, but this series is key if you intend to truly understand JavaScript from the compiler up.
- HackerRank/Codewars: Coding challenges of progressing difficulty to help you practice and level-up your programming chops.
- Functional Programming Exercises: Learn how to effectively use functional programming in JavaScript, an increasingly popular pattern.
- Team Treehouse/Code School/Codecademy: Although there are plenty of free options above, these paid services contain a great breadth and depth of courses covering most popular languages and concepts.

Here is what I love most about this step: once you have spent enough time learning, you are faced with a crucial question. Why do I need to attend a bootcamp when I have all of these free or lower cost options available to me?

The truth is, you don't...

I know several professional developers who have no formal background in development and learned everything they know from the abundance of online resources. It is definitely possible if you are disciplined and take a concerted approach to learning the right things in the correct manner.

Where I will say bootcamps differentiate themselves is in their ability to provide regimented learning and hands-on support. Most online options fall short in that area and it is exactly there where I see most people fall off the wagon in their attempt to take on learn independently. This is exactly why I chose to attend FSA. Being able to completely focus on learning and not worry about establishing my own curriculum was instrumental to streamlining my mental process throughout the course.

With these steps complete, we come to a final fork in the road. If you still think that the software development program will suit you best, keep on reading for my take on FSA.

The Pros

• Structured Learning: I alluded to this in the previous section, but I really cannot overstate this fact. Where FSA excels is in their ability to provide a regimented curriculum that logically progresses from CS fundamentals all the way to building a web application from the ground up. To aid in learning all of the concepts along the way, instructors present well-composed lectures that aid in students' understanding of how and why each step is important. If you are genuinely interested in the material, there will be nary a dull moment throughout the course.
• Applied Learning: Not only is the learning sequence logical, but applicable "modules" are provided at each step to cement your understanding of the concepts. Instead of simply just discussing theory, these modules have you actually implement what you are learning. There are two things I loved about this format:
  1. Each assignment had varying degrees of difficulty embedded in the module. Each one would cover the basics, but for those progressing at a faster rate, therewould be an advanced section to take you to the next level. This was never required, but super helpful in truly understanding the nature of what we were learning.
  2. These challenges were better than anything I generally come across on the web. Not only did they help you grasp the material you were learning, they aid your understanding of how the technology itself works. This afforded a deeper level of comprehension and truly was transformative for my thought process. No longer am I content with using a tool. It made me a better engineer by imparting a curiosity in how my tools worked so that I am better able to compare and leverage the ones out there.
• Guidance: As someone who rarely took advantage of office hours in college, this was instrumental for my learning. The teachers were all former software developers and had a strong grasp of the concepts being taught. Each cohort at FSA also has a group of previous graduates, known as fellows, who assist in the learning process. I liken them to graduate students at a college, mentoring undergraduates in the studies still fresh in their minds. Most importantly, there is rarely a time when you cannot seek the help of one of these people. The "always on" mindset of the staff was instrumental in my learning experience.
• Full Stack JavaScript: Most bootcamps offer a Ruby-focused curriculum. FSA and a few others focus on JavaScript. Having had the benefit of formerly working in the tech space, I was aware that the JavaScript language was blowing up. Between Node.js and the resurgence of ECMAScript standardization, it was clear that JavaScript was the language in which to invest. The TIOBE Index for programming languages is one of many reputable sources that shows compelling data behind this trend. Full stack JS also means less context switching, which in turn means more time to focus on learning the fundamentals. I really think this is the way to go moving forward.
• The Cost: To be clear, I am not saying that FSA, or any other coding bootcamp for that matter, is cheap. What I am suggesting is that when compared to most universities, it is cost competitive. Take a look at this chart to get a sense of what I mean. The cost of the FSA Software Engineering Immersive program is right on par with the University of Michigan's (my alma mater) annual tuition for out of state students. Of course this doesn't take grants, federal aid, and other educational loan programs into account, but it does suggest a comparative cost model. Not to mention that as a graduate of both programs, I strongly believe that most FSA graduates are better prepared for a real-world development job than many Computer Science Engineering graduates from UM.

The Cons

Fullstack Academy does not come without its flaws. A few things to note:

• FSA is a Lean Startup: Never forget that FSA is itself a "startup" of sorts. This means that it operates more like a business than it does an institution of higher learning. This is not inherently a bad thing, but it does mean that they try to minimize costs in non-essential areas. Like using free Slack accounts and buying second-rate monitors and cables. I don't think these are imperative to the learning experience, but do not expect to roll into a classroom with shiny new equipment and stand-up desks.
• Not everyone is a "Teacher": Let me start this one off by saying all the teachers were professionals and adequately educated on software development. Unfortunately — and this should not be surprising — being a good developer does not make you good at teaching. While FSA had their standout instructors, there were those that rambled and did not present well-structured lectures. Most made up for this inadequacy during informative one-on-one conversations, but some lectures added little value to the material.

Conclusion

Based on the above breakdown, I would say the positives of the FSA course far outweigh the negatives. I believe you would be a good candidate for the course if you:

- want to quickly ramp up your technical skills
- are confident that programming is your thing
- have done serious research and preparation

In short, FSA provides a concise, focused, and relevant curriculum to help you transition into the software development world. If you see yourself in this world, why not explore this possibility?