Fullstack Academy

I am a career changer who has always loved technology and wanted to be a part of the Chicago tech community in a new capacity.  I looked at just about every bootcamp in Chicago before deciding on Fullstack Academy.  I liked Fullstack because the admissions process was more challenging and I knew expectations of students would be higher.

Nick and Connie are both extremely knowledgeable and effective teachers.  For me though, they really stood out because of their empathy and patience with students.  If you need someone to talk to, they are always there and willing to help you to the best of their abilities.

The Chicago Fullstack campus currently has smaller class sizes, which I found ideal.  My cohort was full of wonderful, encouraging people who want to see you grow alongside them.  I feel fortunate to have meet them.

I am glad that I went to Fullstack and would make the same choice again.

For a year and a half, before I joined Fullstack, I was self-studying mainly HTML, CSS, and PHP. I went through the interview process and had luck getting in the door with a few interviews, but I had a lot of gaps, in both my technical skills and mindset to become a successful developer. When I discovered this, I wanted to make sure that my next 3-6 months were going to properly push me in the right direction. I also wanted to have confidence that I WAS going in the right direction. That's really hard to do until someone finally hires you. I decided to give a coding bootcamp a try, and for a few reasons (as well as a lot of research), I applied to Fullstack Academy.

I have never met more passionate teachers in my life. That became immediately apparent to me on day one when Nick introduced himself. Some of the other students made it apparent that they knew him from bootcamp prep, and I could immediately see how much they respected him. I had times that I needed additional help or even just to talk about personal issues. Every single time, no matter how busy he was, he made me feel like that conversation was the most important thing to him at that moment. That passion for your students is so incredibly important in differentiating a good teacher from a great teacher. I believe they just hired another instructor, but both Nick and Connie are instructors who will do everything they can to make sure that you succeed in the program. You'll meet some of the fellows (teaching assistants) that will give you a similar feel. The interview process is very selective. A good mental note to have when you get accepted is that you got accepted because you're going to be a successful developer and your teachers have full confidence in that.

The curriculum is the exact same as New York's. In fact, I feel like the smaller class size and teacher to student ratios makes Chicago a more personable experience than New York. Sorry New York! Your capstone projects won't just be normal CRUD apps. You'll eventually be building complex projects that will put you much ahead of other applicants in entry level positions.

I really believe that great coding bootcamps aren't for everyone. I don't believe everyone can code. You need to love building things and solving problems in order to be a successful developer. You need to understand that you will never stop growing as a developer. It has much less to do with how smart you think you are, and more to do with what you choose to spend your free time on. You'd be surprised at what your actions during your free time can tell you about yourself. If you're unsure about your reasons of wanting to become a developer, its ok to take a little while to teach yourself and build a few projects. Test the waters first. Also, be careful about the bootcamp you do choose. There are coding bootcamps that do accept everyone that is willing to pay. A good rule of thumb is that a safer choice is usually the programs that are more selective. Once you realize that you really do enjoy coding and want to grow more as a developer - that's when you should apply to Fullstack.

P.S.

Nick and Connie will make you cookies. So don't let them get away with not making cookies at least once.

Fullstack Academy is a great experience. Founders David and Nimit are clearly incredibly thoughtful individuals who truly care about the students coming through the program. They are value-driven, and are interested not just in making money and churning out code-monkeys, but in having a positive impact on the field and society. (This comes across through their interest in projects that work for social good, for instance, as well as establishing from day one that the exclusionary environment often endemic to coding culture is *not* part of Fullstack.) Instructors are passionate, extremely intelligent, and come from a variety of backgrounds (some were CS majors, others were self-taught and then worked in industry, others were themselves graduates of the program). The curriculum is engaging, accommodates a variety of aptitudes and learning speeds, and is clearly constantly iterated to improve and keep up with changing trends in the field. The students are, by and large, super motivated, and a friendly and interesting bunch also from diverse backgrounds.

I was initially worried that Fullstack would be a grueling process: 6 long days a week, for 13 weeks, mainly in front of a computer... but I was pleasantly surprised that it was not grueling at all! It is no doubt demanding, mentally taxing, and it was more or less my sole pursuit for those 13 weeks (though I did, crucially, make time for eating, sleeping and exercise). But the collaborative and varied nature of the curriculum (which also has fun and humorous flourishes built into it) and the warm, friendly vibe of the Fullstack community makes the experience actually really enjoyable! So much so that I jumped on the opportunity to stay with Fullstack for another 13 weeks as a Teaching Fellow, a support role for the next cohort of students coming through the program (I highly recommend taking advantage of this if you have the opportunity--it's a great chance to learn the material more thoroughly and get hands-on engineering experience outside the contrived environment of a classroom before approaching the job search).

The most important thing to keep in mind when considering Fullstack (or *any* bootcamp, for that matter), is that you are NOT purchasing a gold-lined road to a new job. Because of the program's rigor and "prestige," it's tempting to believe that if you get in, go through the program, and make it out alive, you will handily walk right into your first job. Not so! Getting a job is a process of showing a future employer that you have what it takes to be an asset; for the most part, they could care less how exactly you got to that place. If you have the smarts and the drive to get into Fullstack and you apply and challenge yourself throughout the program, you will develop the skills and the confidence necessary to land a sweet first job. It may not be the day after you graduate (the process can sometimes take months), and it may not be at Google or Facebook (perhaps for a select few at first, and some others down the road), but there are many other interesting prospects for employment, and once you have a foot in the door *somewhere* the opportunities will really start opening up to you. 

Fullstack doesn't give you the Golden Ticket (it doesn't exist), but it provides the resources to get you where you want to go, in a surprisingly fun and positive environment.

My experience with Fullstack Academy was not only highly informative and fun, but also led to me making three times as much as my previous job. With an incomplete Computer Science degree, it was unlikely for me to get a software engineering job even with my prior education in programming. However, after coming to Fullstack, not only has my programming improved significantly, but my job prospects have expanded greatly and my confidence in my skills has grown.

When I attended, Fullstack was teaching the MEAN (Mongo, Express, Angular, and Node) stack. Lessons are taught through labs and group projects that challenge your reasoning and give you practical knowledge about the technologies you're working with. The material encourages students to experiment and think critically. As a former programmer, I felt the work was challenging and rewarding.

But the connections and job assistance offered by Fullstack are second to none. The course integrates lessons on whiteboarding interviews and deductive reasoning to help students nail their first impressions. Career advisors support you every step of the way once you graduate. A hiring day at the end of the course allows you to connect with employers and get your foot in the door at Fortune 500 companies such as American Express and 2sigma. Even after you've been placed at a job, Fullstack will support you with future job searches and career support.

The alumni network has been great. I feel like our class has taken on some familial aspects. Upon returning to campus for reunions and alumni talks, I learned from our previous instructors that our cohort has even developed a reputation among newer students. Alumni from Fullstack also help each other find jobs and provide help with JavaScript problems.

All in all, Fullstack has been one of the best educational experiences of my life, and has completely turned my career prospects around. I'm now making over $80,000 per year in a dream job thanks to the skills I learned and connections I gained through FSA.

Today, I'm a mentor for startups in the Gaza Strip and have my own startup focused on making local governments more effective. For my startup, I'm launching clusters of networked docker containers, utilizing machine learning, and develop on the tools of industry leaders. This past year I was in San Francisco with a Y-Combinator startup. None of this would be even remotely possible without Fullstack.

It was not easy though. For me, my first check to Fullstack bounced after my previous employers did not pay me, I had a 1+ hour one-way communte from central New Jersey, and I was working a full-time job to make up the money to friends and family I borrowed from. The problematic start placed me in a position of catch up for the entire 6 month part-time program. But Fullstack and the friends I made in the cohort did not give up on me, and more importantly, they did not lower the bar for me.

It's going to be tough and you're going to be pushed no matter your circumstance, but know that the experience will start a new chapter for you. I highly recommend you check out the part-time program.

This program for me has without a doubt been one of the highlights of my life.  I came here to learn how to code, but in the process I learned so much about myself and what I am capable of.  

I believe immersion is one of the greatest teaching tools and techniques.  The best way I can compare it is the difference in trying to learn Spanish using only Rosetta Stone and going to Spain for 6 weeks; a major difference in how the information becomes encoded and applied.  

As far as tech goes, the program is built to help teach you how to learn new technology fast.  Learning new programming languages were intimidating to me in the past, but now after this thorough Javascript based education,  I am picking up C# and working in systems I would have never imagined I could do because now I understand how to build a strong base and work through the details. 

The teachers were fantastic, supportive, and always had an answer or made sure they researched and got back to you in a timely matter for the more complicated obscure ones.

The school is extremely agile, organized, and dedicated to staying current on the latest technology, while enforcing the principles that don't shift with the trends. 

The support staff was always there for me anytime I needed help and were always positive and helped me through some of my rougher patches.

The bottom line is this program is challenging, difficult, and it's up to you to get what you want and need for it.  There is no room for entitlement and indolence.  Do not do this program if you are not ready to do the work.  I can't stress that enough.   This isn't something you do because you can't figure out what else to do with your life unless you just have a large amount of money to waste.  This program isn't the ends to a means, it's the beginning of a beautiful journey with life long implications.  It is something you actively decide to do because you want a change in the direction of the story of you.  

The greatest gift I took away?  Truly understanding there is no finding yourself.  

There is only making yourself.

I could not speak more highly of this program, and I know that many of my classmates felt the same way after we graduated. 

I have never felt more involved in or more rewarded by an education program in my life. You are taught extremely useful technologies in a very pragmatic way. Students that fall behind are given ample help. There are multiple teachers, you can ask the staff (all developers) for help, and each class has a group of 10 or so TAs made up of students that just finished learning the same skills and concepts you are inevitably going to struggle with.

Finding a job was very easy after completing the program. They have several staff members that will actively help you. I moved to Pittsburgh and was given a ton of assitance, despite the distance.

Could not reccomend this experience more to anyone interested in learning how to program.

Executive Summary:

Fullstack’s remote immersive exceeded my expectations in every way. The curriculum is top notch, current and industry relevant. The Instructors and staff are passionate about coding and teaching and clearly enjoy their work. The lead instructor from our cohort, Omni, has an impressive depth of knowledge, is a master at explaining concepts and is a super fun and genuine person. My fellow students were from very diverse backgrounds but all were bright, enthusiastic and overall, a joy to work with. The technical and intellectual rigor and fast pace of the program truly exceeded my expectations rivaling my graduate school experience at a top 20 university (although the content and focus of the programs were very different).

Bottom line: Totally worth the investment in time, energy, and money.

My Journey:

I have a BA and MS in Computer Science. I worked in the computer industry in software product development for 14 years before leaving my career behind to be a full-time mom for 13 years. As my entree back into the workforce, I recently worked remotely for a software company in professional services for 3 years.

My software background is primarily in operating systems, UNIX and C. But a lot has changed since the eighties and nineties. I wanted to get up to speed on modern web development technologies and move back into product development. 

How to Move Forward?

My employer did not have a path forward in the direction I sought. But, I didn’t feel confident applying for jobs for which I had no experience in the desired technologies. So how to move forward? There are literally hundreds of online tutorials on the web many of which are free. I could have taken that route but it seemed inefficient, potentially frustrating and yep, a little bit lonely. So I started looking at boot camps. 

I knew I wouldn’t be the typical boot camper. According to “Am I the Right Candidate for a Bootcamp?” by Imogen Crispe on Course Report, “the typical boot camper is 30 years old, has 6.8 years of work experience, has at least a Bachelor’s degree and has never worked as a programmer”. I would say the typical boot campers is also male and has no kids. As a 52-year-old wife and mother of two high schoolers with a couple of CS degrees and experience working in the software industry, the fact that I would be an outlier was a given. But as the only woman in my college graduating class with a CS major, and a distinct minority in the systems software field, being an outlier is old hat for me.

Another obstacle was location. The closest in-person boot camps are a good 1.5-hour drive one-way from my home (in light traffic). And the idea of picking up and leaving my family for an out of town immersion was both logistically impractical and cost prohibitive. Further, I was also concerned that, given my background, a boot camp might be lacking in technical depth and intellectual rigor. Would it be worth the time and money?

Serendipitously, at that point in my journey, Fullstack Academy came out with their remote immersive program. Perfect!

Academic Excellence/Curriculum:

Fullstack has a selective application process, accepting only about 8% of applicants. The immersive program is not for beginning programmers; you will need to have some programming experience. (Fullstack does offer prep courses). From a time standpoint, you will need to be willing and able to devote (most of) your time to the program for a solid 13 weeks and part time for 4 weeks prior.
The current curriculum features Javascript using what is affectionately being called the NERD stack (Node, Express and Databases using SQL on the back end and React/Redux on the front end). This is a recent switch from the MEAN stack (https://www.fullstackacademy.com/blog/angular-to-react-fullstack-academy-updates-its-curriculum). The curriculum is continuously evolving to stay on top of technology trends and industry demand so your particulars might vary.

Program Structure: 

I was part of the first remote immersive cohort. (Oct. 2016 - Feb. 2017). 
Foundations (4 weeks): The first phase of the program, called Foundations, is online, self-paced and part-time. The focus is Javascript programming skills. You must pass a timed, online test in order to move on to Junior phase.

 
Junior Phase (6 weeks): full-time+ meeting 10 am - 7 pm eastern wit1.5-hourhour mid-day break. Class is held through the Zoom video meeting app. The equipment I used was a MacBook Pro laptop and a 24” LG HD 1080p monitor. I would have been better off with two monitors for juggling code, lecture presentation, and video images of teachers and classmates. I think two 27” monitors would be ideal. Instructors and most students have Macs but PCs can be used (but require more setup).
Junior phase content consists primarily of workshops. We did 27 in all which is nearly one per day.  The typical workshop format is lecture, followed by pair a programming exercise and finally lecture and Q&A on a provided possible solution. Junior phase also includes optional CS Saturdays covering an array of computer science topics. Our CS topics were: parsing (compilers), databases and ORMs, git and immutability, machine learning and cryptography. Projects are done in class but evenings can be spent prepping for the next day’s workshop or completing/diving deeper into that day’s workshop. While evening/weekend work is not absolutely required, doing as much as you can manage certainly enhances absorption rate. There was no shortage of good and useful material to work through. In fact, it was drinking from a fire hose. Pair programming was set up randomly and assigned. Workshop experiences varied to some degree depending upon comprehension of the materials and programming partner. However, I found the vast majority of the experiences worthwhile, productive and enjoyable. In fact, some of them were a blast! There were also those that were frustrating and somewhat demoralizing but instructors and fellows were always there to help during workshops, during lectures and private office hours as desired. No matter the topic or situation, we got through it. In fact, I found that I really enjoyed pair programming which was a concern of mine going into the program, never having done it before.

Lastly in Junior phase, you must pass a technically challenging online test to move on to the Senior phase. Everyone in our cohort moved on to the Senior phase.

We were lucky and got a 4 week break over the holidays but this is not the year round schedule.

Senior Phase (6 weeks): Senior phase is a time to put the skills learned in Junior phase to work. Content consists of project work and job preparation. Each day starts with technical interview practice with students taking turns being interviewer and candidate. Projects include preparation and presentation of a tech talk (individual), a 3-day “hack-a-thon” project (individual or pairs, student choice), a 1 week e-commerce site (team, assigned) and a multi-week team capstone project (assigned team with preference input, team decides topic).  On our capstone project we operated as a self-driven team, defining our minimum viable product (MVP), utilizing daily scrums and project management, and conducting a beta test with our cohort mates. While I ran into some team issues (we probably all did), we got through it and produced some amazing work. Our capstone projects culminated in a demo day live on Facebook. (check us out here: https://www.fullstackacademy.com/blog/demo-day-feb-2017).
Additional job preparation skills covered include resume prep, soft skill interview prep and job search skills. ​

Senior phase also includes an optional CTO lecture series held in the evenings. Our topics included: Visual Design, Intro to the Agile Software Development Methodology, Lean Start-Up, and Scalability.

Outcome:

I have just recently graduated (2/17/17) and am just starting to look for a job so career impact is TBD. However, I feel Fullstack has prepared me well for the job search through rigorous and extensive technical interview practice, polishing my resume, advising me on job search tactics and providing me with a network of alums.

I just graduated Fullstack Academy's immersive cohort in NYC. It was an amazing experience and I learned a ton. They have amazing instructors who really want to make sure you understand the material and the material they teach is what is currently hot in the tech industry. I learned React + Redux with them and only two cohorts before me they were teaching Angular. They did an amazing job with React, and in general all of their workshops are so much fun to do and they really get you to learn and absorb the material.

I don't have a job yet as I just graduated, but Fullstack is extremely legit about helping you get one. They have people working there who's sole purpose is to assist students with their job search.

I highly recommend Fullstack to anybody who is serious about coding and is ready to work really hard for about four months straight. Time willl fly and you will come out with your brain stuffed with coding knowledge and ready to apply it all to a real job.

I could not be more satisfied with the quality of instruction and education I received from Fullstack Academy. The curriculum is constantly updated, and delivered by first-rate, passionate educators. The positivity and encouragement offered by the entire faculty was awesome, and in every step of the process, it was clear that my learning experience was the foremost of their concerns. The experience as a whole is one that has changed the course of my life, and I would wholeheartedly encourage anyone considering, to apply to Fullstack Academy.  

As a graduate of the first-ever remote immersive cohort, I can attest that the program did not suffer for its remote nature. Being on camera for ten hours a day certainly took some getting used to, but working with teammates over video chat worked much more smoothly than I had anticipated. Truthfully, the only technical issue worth mentioning was the occasional difficulty in hearing questions posed by the live audience during lectures. Sometimes the speaker would repeat questions into the microphone, but often they would forget, leaving the remote audience guessing what the question may have been. The social element also inevitably suffered due to the remote platform, but the faculty worked hard to facilitate social opportunities where we could casually interact, which went a long way to offset this shortcoming. Overall the technical aspects of the program far exceeded my expectations, and the faculty did everything possible to ensure that we did not feel like second-class citizens within the Fullstack community.

Attending Fullstack Academy was easily one of the best decisions I have ever made. I am well prepared for an exciting career in web development or software engineering; they have helped me to reinvent my career in six months. To self-teach to this point would not have been reasonably possible—certainly not in the same timeframe. I’m truly in awe at how much knowledge I have developed in such a short time, and I would encourage anyone considering applying, to do so. 

Attending Fullstack Academy was one of the most important career decisions of my life.

Prior to the program, I was in a career funk. After five years working in IT infrastructure architecture and technical sales, I felt that my career had stalled out. When I left the Army, I went into technology expecting that my days would be filled with intellectual stimulation and challenging engineering problems to solve. Instead, I found that 90% of my days were spent sitting in Office Space style conference calls or ghost-writing planning documents, PowerPoint animations, and Visio architectures that would get handed up to management to get used in political fights over manpower or budgets and then discarded. How did I end up here? How can so many traditional Fortune 500 IT jobs be so soul-sucking?

These days, there is no excuse for someone with technical interests to stay in a job they dislike. However, when caught in the murky morass of a difficult job, it can be difficult to chart a path forward and pull yourself out. I was broadly unhappy for well over a year before I decided to stop being a small cog in a grinding corporate machine. At first, I started renewing side projects and used some free and low-cost resources for web development to try to revitalize my love for intellectual stimulation and challenging engineering problems. Over several months, I found that I would sit in my corporate cube and daydream about my side projects, the chance to build things, and the rapid visual feedback of building within the browser.

Confident that I knew the pivot I wanted to make in my career, I applied to Fullstack Academy. As a military veteran, I love the 'bootcamp' model. I know that several months of single-minded focus, a lot of intestinal fortitude, and a willingness to put all other aspects of one's life on hold can be transformative. Just like how soldiers can learn to operate and fire a main battle tank in a few months, a coding bootcamp can equips students with the skills they need to hit the ground running in their first job.

Traditionally, one would drop everything and relocate to NYC to attend the country's top-rated coding bootcamp. However, as a 30-something with a wife and a mortgage in anytown USA, this really wasn't a super feasible option for me. Thankfully, when I was considering Fullstack, they were piloting their first-ever fully-online fully-remote cohort. This new offering promised to bring the top-rated coding bootcamp to me in my home office. I wasn't sure how this model would work at first, but I went forward with it and applied. I went through a very-challenging coding interview, and when I was offered a spot, I accepted and began Fullstack.

Starting the Fullstack curriculum, it was clear to me that the remote program was no less intense than the on-campus version. I purchased a VESA monitor mount to use two side-by-side 27" monitors with a 1080p logitech webcam. This was super important for remote pair programming. On one monitor, I would have a live video stream of my class. On the other, I would have a screen share of the instructor's screen. We would break into pair programming, and I would have my editor on one monitor (which I share with my pair programming partner), and the other monitor would have my partner's face. This meant that I was essentially transmitting a video stream of my face for 12+ hours a day.

Following this model for months, I quickly learned modern isomorphic JavaScript, the lingua franca of the web. I picked up Node.js, Express, Passport, Sequelize, and Postgres on the backend. On the frontend, I learned the React-Redux ecosystem. By the end of junior phase, I felt comfortable with all of these pieces, and in senior phase, I applied these tools to some very challenging projects, including a full e-commerce site, an Electron desktop application, and a Virtual Reality app with real-time voice that allowed use of the Google Daydream headset. I'm currently in the interview process with a bunch of companies, and they are by-and-large blown away by the portfolio that Fullstack has helped me build.

Fullstack Academy offered me a path to pivot and course correct the trajectory of my career. Within a few months, I've been able to achieve sufficient velocity to break orbit. When I think of a cool project, I now have the skills to build out a prototype and release it on GitHub. I feel limited less my by technical abilities and more by my imagination. If I hadn't had this top-shelf instruction and amazing cohort, I suspect that I would have had a hard time maturing my technical skills as quickly as needed to keep my mortgage paid. The opportunity cost of not-working is super tough for folks 30+ with financial obligations, and the Fullstack Remote Immersive program is the absolute best way to compress the time between deciding to move into web development and being job ready.

My cap is off to the instructors and amazing staff at Fullstack. Thank you for democratizing access to your program. You've opened access to a wider pool of folks that are unable to move to NYC or Chicago, and I'm confident that you'll continue to empower and effect positive change in all sorts of lives.

I was in the first remote immersive course at Fullstack Academy. Between the students, the staff, and the curriculum, I'm a raving fan. And there were even perks beyond that! Like we got to use a Pixel phone and Daydream headset so we could figure out how to code in VR. And they had a Fullstack campus for us in MineCraft so we could feel like we were part of things on campus.

It started with Foundations. That was four weeks with video classes and 2-3 hour tests. We learned intermediate JavaScript fundamentals, and it felt so hard, but I loved being pushed to do even more than I thought I could do. 

Then it was time for Junior Phase, which was six days a week, and 7am-4pm since I'm on the West Coast, with a 1.5 hour lunch. It was intense, with new concepts and technologies being learned every day (data structures, SQL, Express, Sequelize, jQuery, CSS, React, Redux, etc.). It went at a breakneck pace, and I felt like I was always behind. But I hung in there and by the time we hit Christmas break, I had learned a ton. I loved pair programming with my classmates, and my teachers were extraordinary human beings: deeply kind, endlessly patient, and skilled at teaching. They effortlessly combined humor and staying on topic. 

Senior Phase was projects, whiteboard interview prep, career prep, and CTO lectures. We met five days a week, and did four coding projects: an e-commerce site, an individual hackathon, a tech talk, and a capstone project. Fullstack was super supportive about making sure we had strong portfolios when we graduated. 

One thing that surprised me about the remote program was how intimate it was. We were always communicating through web cams, and they get close up on your face. And we had a lot of one-on-one time with our instructors. I was amazed at all the personal attention. I feel close with my entire cohort, and like I made a bunch of new friends, and we can go forward and work on projects together (I'm actually already doing this with two classmates). 

TL;DR: I can't say enough good things about this program. It changed my life. I've leveled up.