Claim Academy

Claim Academy’s staff takes a personal interest toward a successful outcome for all students enrolled in either their Java or C#/.Net cohorts - successful defined as making sure the students have a solid understanding of foundational  coding principles, a good grasp on soft skills when it comes time for interviews and most importantly aligns their numerous employment contacts up with graduating students. It’s the deep concern for their students that I think sets Claim Academy at the top in their field.

Computer engineering had always been interesting to me, but I did not have a solid base on which to build solid and marketable skills.  I had watched lectures online and picked up some things, but I fell into a problem.  When you are learning something brand new, there will be gaps in your knowledge base and you will not know where those gaps exist.  That’s where Claim Academy came in.  They did a great job covering nearly all relevant topics for full-stack development - from the basics of class and methods to including implementing newer technologies like Angular into the curriculum.  I do wish some topics were covered more in depth (ex: debugging), but in 12 weeks, it is amazing what they cover.

The thing that sticks out from the experience there is the people.  They are fully invested in you and it shows.  Ola’s passion and drive are contagious, Travis goes above and beyond to prepare you, and the instructors like Lamar, Sahara and Praneeth are knowledgeable, dedicated and ready to help you become great.  The belief is if you succeed, they succeed.

There is a catch:  You will have to work the hardest you ever have for 12 weeks.  You will be challenged.  There will be some easy days, and some days that are difficult.  You will get out what you put in.  That’s it.

That’s it.  If you think about it, there is not a better way to change your career (and life) in 12 weeks.

I am a mother of 3 and going to Claim Academy helped to open new opportunities for me to explore in the technology industry that I wouldn't have before coming. I enjoyed my time at Claim and grew to love everyone I was placed with very much we became our own little family and I feel we will always be life long friends. Sahara is the best!!! LITERALLY THE BEST I felt I learned the most from her shes good at explaining the curriculum and is very patience. I was a little dissappointed when we switched instructors in the middle of our cohort who didn't happen to be the ideal teacher, I didn't learn much of anything at all when he taught but he ended up being let go and Sahara came in to help us. I also would have loved to see more employers on our Demo Day because that was the day we got to Shine and really let people know who you are and what you can do. Overall, I am proud of what I accomplished here and am excited to see where me and my friends end up.

You have to be dedicated! You need to be able to put your life on hold for 12 weeks! But at the end of 12 weeks, you will be trained and ready to begin a new career. You will gain knowledge in class, but you will need to do some self-directed learning on your own as well. If you are not truly dedicated, this experience may prove to be too difficult for you. If you don't ask for help (and you'll need some), this may prove too much for you. Coding is difficult! If it were easy, everyone would do it, and it would pay $10/hr. You have to focus! You have to study! You will also receive soft skills training and placement assistance. They're here to help you. You won't be babied, so don't expect that. I cannot say enough about the passion and dedication of the instructors. They want, more than anything, to see you succeed, and they make themselves available at all times of the day or night. So . . . are you ready?

Claim Academy provided a great opportunity for me to begin my career in software development.  Twelve weeks ago I only knew some basic HTML, and now I am a full stack C#/.NET developer.  During my enrollment I was able to hone both technical and soft skills that are essential for the job market.  I recommend Claim Academy to anyone willing to dedicate twelve weeks to learning both front and back-end development.  If you are interested in beginning a career as a software developer, do yourself a favor and check them out.  I'm glad I did. 

Great program. No complaints about my java instructors or support staff. Only problems I had were taken care of before I finished my course. Only things I saw that could have been better would be a clearer communications of expectations. A few times I came up shorter than I would have lked due to not knowing for sure what was expected of me. But, overall a great and worthwhile experience. Special mention to Sahara Datta for her help when I got behind on things. Lamar Myles for late night email hints to keep my project work going. And Travis Mattis for keeping me reminded that I needed to occassionaly stop coding to put in an application or two. 

 I have learned way more then what I knew when I first came. I have learned to set up a database and learned how to use MVC with it!
The Staff there worked with me one on one everyday until I understood what they where talking about. I love how they explain the work to me in
a way that I could do it!

I have received many phone calls and emails from recruiters setting me up for interviews. I can't wait for where this experience is going to lead me.
I have had mock interviews and I had a chance to present my project in front of employers, that was created when I attended the class.  I learned how
to create a Capstone Project.

If I had the funding I would attend the Java Class, but I am already good with what I have already learned.

After working for several years in the public sector, I was wanting to make a career change and get into programming. By the time I started at Claim, I had completed a few low-level CS courses online and done a little bit of self study, and I had no idea what else I needed to know in order to be employable in the field. 

Claim has a number of different instructors, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and they rotate during the bootcamp. If your cohort is lucky enough to have Lamar and/or Vinod, I can say that they are worth every dollar that Claim pays them. Sahara (the Java mentor) is fantastic as well, although she is also one of the C# instructors, so sometimes we had to share her with the C# cohort which wasn't ideal. There was one instructor who I did not think was very good, but last I heard, Claim was planning to revamp his part of the curriculum so his teaching methods may improve in future sessions. Overall, the instructors are very accomodating and helpful if you tell them what you are having trouble with. 

Claim does a really good job of bringing in the higher-ups from some of the St. Louis-based companies to speak to students throughout the bootcamp. During my cohort, we had Express Scripts, Microsoft, and Daugherty come talk to us. Even if those companies aren't able to come to your demo day, Claim often has special application links that you can use to apply there.

Demo days can be hit or miss, depending on which companies decide to show up, so I wouldn't recommend relying solely upon the demo day for job prospects. There have been some demo days where graduates are offered jobs on the spot, but that was not my cohort's experience. Our demo day seemed to have mostly consulting firms and recruiters there. About a month before graduation, I started applying places on my own and working with recruiters, so I was lucky enough to have two offers in hand by the time I presented at demo day. 

My biggest complaint about Claim is that I feel like we could have learned even more. While the program is said to be a "full-stack" program, I think it highly favors the back end. Not necessarily a huge issue, I just don't think it's super accurate to call it a full-stack program if you spend maybe a week total on the front end. My cohort never had a Saturday session, and I think that if all of the instruction time was fully-utilized, it would have been possible to fit more Angular 2 in there. So just be aware, if learning a JavaScript framework is important to you, you'll need to do a lot of self study in order to do that.

At the end of the day, I still learned a ton of stuff during my time at Claim Academy and I don't think I'd be where I am today without having attended. This bootcamp has the potential to change your life if you work really hard. 

Claim Academy is good for networking with recruiters in the STL area who might be able to place you in a job after 12 weeks of coding practice. Of the three instructors who worked with my cohort, two are very passionate and informed. A third left a lot to be desired and ultimately was removed from our cohort. 

I came to CA hoping to learn as much as possible according to the slightly exaggerated syllabus they offer, and already had a job lined up afterwards. I quickly realized that their core ranking is job placement (they boast 95% but wouldn't provide documentation to prove it) and that their emphasis wasn't on providing solid resources. Everyone seemed really strapped for time. Our mentor was the other cohort's instructor and by midway through the summer was teaching a second class too, our time with her, though valuable, was limited. 

I have to emphasise how much those two instructors are passionate about what they do. I have reservations about the transparany and execution of the program, and ultimately for someone interested in learning more than finding a job I would not recommend the program. For someone interested more in finding a job than learning, it could be a valuable, yet expensive, recruitment source.