Flatiron School

I has zero experience coding when I started Flatiron's bootcamp prep course -  their course is designed for beginners but is still challenging and pushes students to learn, not memorize patterns. Their lessons are clear and thorough, and give you all the tools and resources you need to be succesful as a student. If you get stuck on a problem they have a live chat support with more advanced students/instructors who can help or teach you how to debug your code - This system is by far the most helpful & responsive online community I have ever been a part of - never waited for more than 2 minutes and always got my questions answered in a constructive way - they don't just give you the answer, they teach you how to solve the problem so that you can debug similiar issues in the future on your own. PLUS there are people available 8am to midnight every day, which was amazing. 

I will be joining Flatiron's software engineering immersive program in a couple months, and I'm very excited to be starting with them! While I only had a taste of the online prep course through their admissions process, the modules that I completed are all very well designed. The online platform/Learn IDE is intuitive and easy to use. Concepts are explained nicely, and support is readily available if needed. If you are thinking of applying, I encourage you to do so. Flatiron's admission process consists of a personal interview and a technical interview, both of which were fun and incredibly engaging! Based off the admissions process alone, it is clear that Flatiron places an emphasis on both a great curriculum and a great community. 

I am a recent graduate of Flatiron School, and I am proof that it works. After 15 weeks of education and training without any previous experience, I landed a job (2 months post graduation) in which I feel comfortable and competent and able to contribute. Flatiron can't teach you EVERYTHING, and, thus, I still have much to learn about professionally coding, but they prepared me exactly as they said they would, and I have a job because of it. If you are dedicated and committed to learning, studying, falling, getting back up, and continuing to push yourself to learn this craft, you will do just fine, and while I know that the money can be preclusive for many people, they offer lots of scholarships and financing options that make it viable for almost anyone.

Flatiron, as an organzation, cares to the nth degree about their students' success and the promise they make to them about finding employment after graduation. They definitely push quality of instruction/curriculum over quantity of students cranked out and are thriving because of it. The curriculum is strong and ever evolving to keep up with the changes in the industry, and the programming fundamentals that you learn are top notch. I will be forever grateful for Avi, Adam, Joe, and the entire staff for helping me pivot my professional life and try something new.

Solid course to gauge multiple factors. Those would be course content, teaching style, personal ability, and interest in development.

The prep course gives you an outline as to what you would receive as an education from Flatiron. You get a chance to examine what the quality of the content would be and how it would be taught. You get to experiance real coding at your own pace. With the Learn IDE environment you don't need to spend hours setting up your own envoirnment, one is provided for you. It takes me longer to install ubuntu and get everything going on my own machine, but the Learn IDE was a simple install, instantly you are conected to Flatiron's servers where you code from.

Working on the prep course can help you gauge your own ability. Do I need to work on the basics a bit more? Is programming right for me? Do I even like this? All for free! During weekdays, if I had a question, communiy members or staff would respond on the sites built in chat usually within an hour or less!

My own recommnedation is to take a chance. You can always uninstall the IDE if you aren't interested. But you might find you like like the interactive environement, the interesting topic videos, and the nice online community that is provided.  The course really swayed the opionon on whether I wanted to do a bootcamp or not.

After taking the course, I chose to attend Flatiron. The application and interview process was pretty painless, Place info into webpage, and arrange for 2 skype interviews. One for personability, the other for technical ability. After investing so many hours in the prep course I was pretty confident during the interviews, that 1: I wanted to be there, 2: I could do the work. I haven't started yet, but am thrilled to be going.

Flatiron's Bootcamp Prep course gave students a comprehensive overview of the browser tools and Javascript. The labs were challenging but tightly connected to their corresponding lessons, which clearly explained topics for beginners. The best part about taking this (free!) course is the direct flow of communication between students and TAs. There's almost always (if not always) TAs online that address questions that students post in the chatroom. Fast response time, and if the issue isn't clearned out after some time, the TAs happily help you out over video chat. They've done such a great job creating a stimulating, supportive environment for us!  

When I decided to attend a bootcamp, I had my heart set on Hack Reactor because I had read over and over that it was the Harvard of bootcamps. The thing about bootcamps like Hack Reactor is they have impressive job outcomes because they're extremely selective; they only accept students who could already get a great job without the program, e.g., PhDs, Ivy Leaguers, exceptional coders. In case you're reading this and can't decide on a school, I hope that steers you in the right direction.

Now on to my wonderful experience at Flatiron. I did the web immersive program and was able to finish in 5 1/2 months. I learned Ruby, Rails, JS, and React, which are extremely relevant today. The course material is very well written. It's not at all dry or tedious like other online classes tend to be. The lectures are very easy to watch and the instructors are very passionate about what they do, which comes across in their videos/chats. The other valuable thing you'll get from Flatiron is a comprehensive guide on how to make yourself marketable to potential employers. That comes in the form of course material and a career coach.

Don't expect the school to do all the work and find you a job. Like anything in life, you have to put the work in. Although, they do have recruiters connecting grads with hiring managers from startups to major companies. 

I accepted an offer about three months after I graduated. I'm currently a Software Engineer Apprentice with IBM. The team I work with uses Rails, which has been easy to transition into with what I learned at Flatiron.