Fullstack Academy

I attended the Grace Hopper (all women) division of Fullstack Academy. I couldn't imagine a better environment to not only to learn but to completely change careers.  I had a huge support network, between my three dozen classmates, half a dozen fellows, the instuctors, directors, and career success team. Additionally, the curriculum is up to date with the current frameworks and technologies most widely used in the industry--javascript, react, redux--which I feel gives me an edge both interviewing and once on the job.

I had an extremely positive experience attending FSA in Chicago, and would recommend it to anyone who is seriously considering making a career switch. The instructors (Colin, Ben, Priti) were incredibly helpful and approachable, and their presence complemented the rigorous curriculum very well. If you're looking to jumpstart your Web Development proficiency, this is your best bet. 

I gave the Job Assistance 5 stars because the support provided was great. Fullstack's Launch Day connects you with many local employers and Holly continues to do a great job of keeping in touch and keeping alumni engaged in the job hunt. However, I believe that FSA's strength is in upgrading your Web Dev skills, and not necessarily teaching you DS/Algo or other technical interview curriculum. These topics do not necessarily come up in all SWE interviews, however, depending on what kinds of jobs you're looking for, they can be absolutely critical to know. 

I wrote my first line of code in January 2018. Prior to becoming a software developer, I was an elementary school teacher and non-profit director of 10 years. I was motivated to come to the Grace Hopper Program here at Fullstack Academy becasue of my desire to do something completely different. Leaving a secure career was such a risk. Fullstack Academy made the risk well worth it because of the great instruction, real-world application of skills, and the phenomenal career success team. I am especially grateful to Natalie, Jackie, and Trent who were very supportive with me focusing in on my pitch and making myself as marketable as possible. Also, I hope everyone has the opportunity to be taught by or work with Jessica B, Matt, Geoff, and Dakota. They are all fantastic instructors and people.

Fullstack Academy has developed a challenging and exhaustive curriculum that will definitely keep you busy past 5pm. Fullstack is a great program for people who want balance (i.e. maintain a social life, have families) and for independent learners who have plenty of time to become immersed in the curriculum 24/7. If you're not sure if you can handle a 10+ hour day at another program or if you can manage studying on your own outside normal class hours, then Fullstack is for you. (Also, it's very likely that no one is going to plan out your entire day for you on the job, so get used to being self-sufficient.) 

The staff and teaching fellows are incredibly understanding and assess each situation on an case-by-case basis if something comes up. They will give you more, if you ask. But you have to ask, but I have never been hesitant since they are all so welcoming. As far as social culture goes, it is what you make of it. Fullstack is a educative environment first and foremost, so I've found that your social experience will depend more on students taking the initiative to hang out and organize events. Also, once you graduate, you get to utitlize a large and supportive network of Fullstack grads--I got my first dev job thanks to one of those connections. I highly recommend attending Fullstack especially if convenience matters to you and you plan to work in the same city. Many schools advertise the big tech companies where students have been hired but don't let that be the only factor in your decision--especially if you're not 100% sure if you even want to work at large companies. 

I've been asked recently on a number of occasions to comment on my experience at Fullstack so I decided to repost my thoughts here in case anyone was interested:

1. JavaScript level required:

Before embarking on coding, I had been a corporate lawyer for almost 5 years - so the last time I touched anything remotely close to programming was when I did a course on algorithms 10 years ago in high school. The only JS knowledge I had going into the interview was what I had managed to pick up from codecademy and Code School. Do know that this level definitely wont be enough to get you through the program! Fullstack does pride itself on its pre course prep though, and justifiably so. If you, like me, come from a non technical background, hard work, persistence and putting in the hours to do as much extra reading as possible beforehand to immerse yourself in JS is key. If you decide on Fullstack, take comfort in the fact that their pre course materials will put you in good stead for the 13 gruelling weeks up ahead. Lead instructor Nimit used to tell us to trust the process and know that you will come out on top. I think there's a lot of truth in that and I'm glad I took his word for it.

2. My experience of Fullstack:

I had a very good experience overall. David, Nimit and Zeke are three of the most knowledgeable programmers that I've met. However, what was more important was their ability to distil these extremely abstract concepts into nuggets that someone like me would be able to digest and internalise. I think what was also crucial in why things just work at Fullstack is that they are so selective in who they take as students. The result is everyone is there to learn, work hard and help each other out. In my opinion, this is more important than the curriculum itself because your "eureka" moments in programming never really come in the classroom. They come when late at night as you and your classmates are grinding away at a problem.

3. How Fullstack compares to other bootcamps

I can't really say to how I fare against other schools' graduates, but what I can say is that my first employer did tell me the practical knowledge that I had coming through the door was that of a CS Grad with a year's working experience. All in all, I wouldn't worry too much about the competition and whether going to bootcamp A or bootcamp B will give you a step up over someone else. At the end of the day, which school you go to won't matter much the moment you step in front of that whiteboard in an interview because you're on your own. Bootcamps aren't silver bullets that will turn anyone into a rock star programmer after 13 weeks. It's all down to what you put in, so if you're committing yourself to a career in programming/tech then all you can do is work your butt off and persist until you succeed. Do that and you will acquire skills that any employer will want in a junior engineer. Persistence and hunger to keep learning are the qualities that of any good programmer, and that is what a bootcamp environment, be it Fullstack or any other school, is able to help you develop.

Hope that helped, and good luck!

I did a lot of research before deciding to attend Fullstack and I'm confident I made the right choice. There are other bootcamps in Chicago but none of them have the high admissions standards or strong alumni network that Fullstack does. While in the program I met a group of amazing people with diverse backgrounds and learned a lot very quickly. Within a year I went from teaching myself to code to being employed at a job doing work I absolutely love, and Fullstack helped me achieve that.

I consider Fullstack Academy to be a complete education in web development that turned me from a web development hobbyist into a professional.   Attending Fullstack showed me how important a structured curriculum and hands-on projects are when it comes to learning a skill as practical and results-oriented as web development. Before Fullstack, I was learning development through Udemy courses and other online tutorials. It was a slow and unguided approach that led me to build apps that were unmaintainable and error-prone. I was freelancing at the time and this showed in my work.   Fullstack taught me how to build web applications from the ground up using best practices that made my work faster and more reliable as a result. The instructors were extremely helpful and able to answer any technical questions we had, about the curriculum or otherwise. I revisited one of my freelance projects (a web app) after attending Fullstack and was able to remake it in half the time with far better results.    Their career team was top-notch as well, providing invaluable advice regarding the tech recruitment process and helping me polish my application materials and develop an effective job application plan. Despite not having a college degree, I was able to land two (successive) full-time roles as a developer within months of graduating.   I'm now enjoying a flexible and remote-work-friendly development job while building a fullstack web application on the side, in large thanks to the technical and career-finding skills I learned at Fullstack Academy.  

In thinking about how to effectively review my experience at Fullstack, I guess it’s most useful to let my trajectory speak for itself: I attended Fullstack Academy in the fall, graduated in December, and was hired within 2 weeks of graduation as a Junior Developer at an awesome company.  Altogether, Fullstack met and exceeded every expectation I had and I can recommend it without hesitation.

Prior to attending FSA (and more specifically, Grace Hopper), I was a high school math teacher with very iffy coding skills.  I knew that I liked to code, and I could write basic for-loops in Ruby.  I decided that I wanted a more challenging career and I wanted a skillset that was more in-demand than teaching experience.  I talked to a few friends who had attended bootcamps to hear their experiences, and I also spoke to a hiring manager at a tech company, all of whom encouraged me to go for it.

I chose Fullstack for two main reasons: because admissions were competitive, and because of the curriculum.   Valuing competitive admissions was a great call: all of the students, fellows, and instructors in my cohort were unfailingly curious, driven, and intelligent.  I evaluated the curriculum with the help of some tech friends who recognized that FSA’s curriculum taught skills like React and Redux that were highly in-demand.  Once I had my eyes set on Fullstack, I studied, applied, and fortunately was admitted to the Grace Hopper program.

Bootcamp was hard and so much fun.  I learned a ton of code (obviously) but also how to pair program effectively, how to work in an agile team, and (probably most importantly) how to read technical documentation.  The people at FSA are fantastic, and we hung out every Friday after class.

Finally, the career success support was phenomenal.  It was invaluable to have someone examine my resume, LinkedIn profile, cover letters, personal pitch, and even follow-up emails to companies to ensure that I was putting my best foot forward.  In the final week of the program, Holly organized 16 companies that came in to interview us so we could work on our behavioral interview skills.  We practiced white-boarding every morning, and we had 1:1 mock technical interviews with feedback afterwards.  I felt 100% prepared when I entered the job market because nothing was unexpected.

As you can probably tell from this review, I am so grateful for my time at Fullstack and had a fantastic experience.  I would recommend this program to anyone.

My experience at Fullstack was completely unique compared to any of my traditional education. Where in the past I felt like I didn't understand the reason why we learned things or whether or not it would prepare me for a worthwhile career, Fullstack was able to definitively change my life in the span of four months. I'm so happy to have a job with a high ceiling and so much to learn. The best thing about Fulsltack was the community you're exposed to, and how much love and care is poured into the process. I made great friends at Fullstack and now have a wonderful career to boot!

I was a musician with some web design background (no real coding experience). Attended fullstack in 2017 as a WDF student and now I'm working for AWS as an engineer.  English isn't my first language.. In 2017 I was already over 30 year old. AWS is my first tech job.

WDF is a free tuition program partnered with NYC and was a very competitive process. Had to go through several exams to go to the final “immersive program”. It was sad to see sizing of the class was getting smaller.... but I really liked how energish our instractors were. They were really supportive and good at teaching. Had such a good energy.

Also I was so happy how attentive Fulsltack’s career success counselor was. After graduation, she contacted me every week to check in my job search progress.  I took 6 months to get this offer letter from AWS. Until then, I and some of my classmates kept going to AWS loft (free workspace. coder's heaven) everyday to study and hang out.  After all, most of my classmates got really great full time engineering positions as well and I'm so happy to see them at reunion. 7 months was short but now we are such good friends after the intense period.

Learning process during bootcamp was just “INTENSE” but see the result. It's worth trying!

Fullstack Academy met and exceeded all of my expectations. I had decided to make a career change to software engineering and was researching different bootcamps. I had heard great things, but it wasn't until I was in the program that I really appreciated how great it was. All of the instructors are excited to teach and the curriculum was well designed ot get someone (like me) who had very little experience in coding up to speed and proficient in the stack they were teaching. Building projects was a great way to learn how to apply the technology and I am extremely greatful for the experience. Everything is taught in a way that is understandable and there is never a feeling that you can't ask questions. I highly recommend Fullstack Academy (and in particular the Grace Hopper Program).

To echo a lot of other sentiments, my decision to go to Fullstack Academy was one of the best of my life. Previously, I had been working in the business (sales, support, marketing) side of tech. While I had some basic coding experience, I learned an immense amount from the robust curriculum taught at Fullstack. The entire staff in Chicago - whether instructional (Collin, Ben W, Priti, and Finn) or career/operations (Ben N, Holly, Brett) have been incredibly helpful in my success.

I'm depletely indebted to them for both my education and for the opportunity to serve as a Teaching Fellow. And without the hard work of the Career Success team, I would not have the amazing job I do now as I was able to land it through Fullstack's Launch Day.

Overall, the highest praise I can give.