Fullstack Academy

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?

When I decided to change careers and commit to web development, I knew that I needed to choose the best boot camp in Chicago. I did my due diligence and found Fullstack Academy. 

Fullstack's excellence begins with its application process. It is not easy to get in, but it IS worth it. Study, take some online courses, do some reading -- make sure you are ready to commit because boot camp is no joke!

The instruction at Fullstack is truly phenomenal. In addition to their solid knowledge base, Nick and Connie bring an enthusiasm that is infectious and they make coming to class a joy every day. (Bonus points: Nick makes AMAZING cookies -- ask him about it and he will deliver.) I was fortunate enough to be a part of a wonderful cohort, and when we graduated, I was literally brought to tears thinking about how much we had accomplished together. We were truly a Fullstack family.

Post graduation, I felt fully comfortable asking Nick and Connie for advice in my job search. Within 4 weeks, I received 2 job offers at companies I was really excited about. During my interviews, both companies were pleasantly surprised by how knowledgable and capable a boot camp grad could be. Truly, I owe it all to Fullstack's education and preparation.

Fullstack Academy is more than just a code bootcamp - it is the next step, should one decide to attend, to advance one's career as well as one's self.

I am a graduate of Fullstack's Web Immersive Program beginning in September of 2016 (1609 cohort). I've watied a while to write this review in order to go through the entire process and let my ideas settle instead of writing an impulsive review and after 4 months of graduation, I am ready to write about my experiences.

I had finished a short contract position as a developer working on a back-end task scheduling program at a large company. Near the end of the position, we worked on front-end functionality and it piqued my interest. After looking and listening to many reviews, I applied and decided to being Fullstack Academy's Web Immersive Program in New York City.

The first month of remote foundations helps establish fundamentals of programming in Javascript and encourages you to interact with the rest of the cohort through their forums. It was a great place to start meeting people and getting involved with them before starting with them on campus. 

After fundamentals, the immersive begins on campus. My cohort was about 40 students and we did not realize on the first day that we would become such a close family and masters at our craft, thanks to Fullstack Academy. For the next three months, we learned about wed development, went to seminars on saturdays to expand our development knowledge (on campus), grueling worked on projects to put on our resumes on our own and with teams. We all spent anywhere from 8-12 hours a day together working through problems, challenges, and helping each other along the gureling program. Nearing the end, the career team comes in and helps us prepare however they can for the upcoming search be preparing our online persona as well as our programmer profiles on paper and online.

My biggest take away is not only the web development skills, but the family I established at Fullstack Academy. They are there for you when you're down and struggling with yourself from the job search, they are there when you're successful with the search, and they're there when you need some guidance. I've experienced a great many feelings after finishing Fullstack Academy, and the people I have met there have been there for me the entire step of the way.

Not only did I leave Fullstack with the experience I need to enter a development market, but I met some of the greatest people I know today on that campus in NYC. If anyone asks me today about what bootcamp i would recommend, I would easily recommend Fullstack Academy not only for the education and academia, but to meet some of the best people you can ever meet.

Looking back, Fullstack Academy was easily one of the best career moves that I made in my life. I find myself constantly recommending it to all of my friends and acquaintances looking for something better in life. It’s easy to fall into complacency and just assume that you are stuck at a job or career that you hate, but Fullstack really gives you an opportunity to reinvent yourself.    The most notable thing about Fullstack is its culture, one which I’ve never been a part of in my life. It really motivates and challenges you to break out of your shell and really connect with the people around you. I’ve met some of the smartest people and made some life-long friends and despite all of the challenges that come with re-programming your brain in 13-weeks, there was always a friendly face to help you through any crazy trouble you may be struggling with.    Even now I still feel the ripple effect of Fullstack Academy. The community is growing so large, and there is always something bringing me back whether it be the alumni events, old cohort mates looking to catch up, or interviews with new Fullstack grads. Needless to say, my company has since hired three Fullstackers all of whom are doing excellent work, it makes me proud to say that I went to Fullstack Academy. 

I graduated Fullstack Academy’s immersive cohort around mid Feb 2017. Loved it so much, and I guess they liked me too, because they offered the fellowship position for another 3 months( Accepted the offer immediately :) )! That felt pretty good since it the fellowship is pretty selective. So I think I can offer a unique perspective from being on the inside going through the program as well as someone outside looking in. It was really amazing seeing the wide range of backgrounds my classmates and students came from. Watching the students grow and learn so fast and knowing that I helped in some way was really rewarding.  

I thought what was really great about Fullstack aside from the great instructors and strong curriculum was actually the culture. While it did feel like an intensive bootcamp during the workshops it also felt like just hanging out and learning with a bunch of your friends all the time. There was just this feeling that everyone was there to help everyone else. I think this helped foster the learning environment just that much more. By the end of the program I felt like our cohort bonded a ton and I feel like they are some of my closest friends now too. Bi Weekly Board Game nights with free pizza definitely helped with that too! 

As a teaching fellow I definitely saw how much effort instructors and teaching fellows work to make sure students learn as much as they can. Tons of office hours before class, after class, and even during lunch. Extra review lectures were done whenever possible as well. One of the most awesome things was watching the students learn so fast even though I had gone through the same program just a a couple weeks prior. Last week everyone was struggling learning React and Redux. Next week everyone is building a Fullstack app. Pretty amazing honestly.

If you’re interested in going to fullstack or just coding in general. I would start off with the simple Code Academy JavaScript track and see if you like it. After you finish that, if you enjoy it and are interested in trying to get accepted into an immersive bootcamp I would do CodeWars till you can do 6kyu problems pretty easily and some 5kyus. Definitely the best decision of my life. 

Fullstack has a special place in my heart, but I'm going to resist the urge to wax melancholic and stick to some concrete points. I completed the Full-time Immersive program in December 2016, and worked as a Teaching Fellow for the Jan-April 2017 cohort.

Why should I do it?

You should come to Fullstack if you're serious about switching careers, and if you're ready to be totally immersed in software engineering. The curriculum is rigorous and thorough, and will give you exposure to and experience with concepts that are essential to every web developer. You'll have the opportunity to push your knowledge much further than you thought possible in such a short time. And attending Fullstack will provide you with a valuable professional network to leverage when you're searching for work and beyond.

Academic Environment

I came to Fullstack expecting to get my ass kicked, but I didn't expect it to be so much fun. A week or two into the Immersive program, most people realize that they're all in the same boat, and there's a sense of camaraderie and support that outweighs any type of competition.

One of Fullstack's core tenets is its "no assholes" policy, given how often you'll be collaborating with your peers. Anyone considering Fullstack should be aware that they're going to be spending a huge amount of their in-class hours collaborating with others. Learning how to communicate your ideas and work with people of different backgrounds and styles is one of the most valuable professional skills you'll get out of this place.

And then there are the teachers. I learned under Ben and Dan, and was a fellow under Gabe, Joe, and Cassio. All five were amazingly knowledgeable, humble, skilled at explaining difficult concepts, and incredibly generous with their time. The support network at Fullstack is no joke. When my own instructors were too busy, I never found it difficult to find another teacher or even student that could help me, either by asking around or posting on Slack.

Also, Chris Thieke is the man.

Teaching Fellowship

Every Immersive cohort has a group of fellows, around 6 or more students selected from the previous cohort to stick around as mentors. The fellows serve as a bridge between the students and the instructors. Having just gone through the program ourselves, it's easy for a fellow to relate to the academic and emotional struggles that students are going through. 

I was lucky enough to be selected for the fellowship, and it was arguable even more enjoyable than being a student here. I got to teach, which helped me solidify my knowledge. I got tons of experience debugging code, often quickly and on the spot. I formed strong bonds with the other fellows, who themselves inspired and taught me things constantly.

Job Hunting

Nobody (sane) likes job hunting. But there's a process to searching and interviewing for a developer role, and the Career Success team will sure as hell teach you that process. You'll cover whiteboarding techniques, behaviorial interviews, tech resumes, salary negotiation, leveraged LinkedIn/your network, and more. And daily morning REACTO sessions will give you exposure to technical interviewing.

Conclusion

My best advice for anyone accepted into Fullstack is to stay healthy. Eat right, get regular exercise, and spend some time away from the computer every week. This is an intense program that will ask a lot of you, but what you get out might be tenfold. I'll miss it dearly.

My wife and I had just had our first child and we realized we weren't going to be able to live the kind of life we want, if we both continued in our current jobs. I always liked to code, and had even done some Udemy courses on web-development, but I still felt there was something missing. So I decided to investigate Bootcamps. After having an on-campus informational interview with two of the lecturers to find out more about Fullstack, and speaking it over with my wife, we decided to take a risk.

Risk? Yes, bootcamp is expensive, and me being a skeptic was worried that I was being taken for a ride. Moreover, I had a family to support (they were supporting me during the bootcamp) and the pressure to not have picked a dud was big. So, I was nervous. Once bootcamp started, there wasn't even time to be nervous we were learning so much at such a great pace. Looking back, it is the smartest investment I made in my and my familiy's future.

Before I started I wondered if I couldn't just do this on my own for cheaper (I'm a pretty well-disciplined learner after all). But I learned more in 6 weeks at Fullstack, than I could have taught myself over the course of a year. The curriculum is well paced and structured, and it is kept challenging throughout. Not a day went by when I thought, that was a wasted day. 

Why Fullstack though? I had taught myself a little bit of Ruby and Rails, and when playing around with building web apps, JavaScript always seemed to stump me a little due to its nature. So I decided to pick a bootcamp that does JavaScript throughout the stack. Again, looking back this was the best decision for me since there was no context switching between back and front end development, and I got to learn one language really well, instead of learning two a little.

Another reason I picked fullstack was because it was so challenging to get in to. They don't promise to take in everyone and turn them into a coder. They want people who have the aptitude, and have demonstrated at least a basic ability to solve small tasks using code. This meant that the classes could move faster, and I was always being challenged by classmates that were smarter and faster than me. I can't stress how important this environment was for learning to code. If you've never coded before, I highly recommend taking a month to learn the basics of coding and then applying to Fullstack instead of choosing a bootcamp that takes anyone.

Another thing that sets Fullstack apart is the quality of the lecturers. While other bootcamps have gone for an expand at all costs, Fullstack academy has really made quality their primary concern. This came through from day one in their lecturers, who were passionate, experienced and just really good teachers and mentors. They are people that I look up to, and will always credit with changing my life.

But truthfully, in the end, all the preceding paragraphs would mean nothing if it didn't result in a job, and I can happily report I landed a dream fullstack job at a top company in Chicago. Not only did the content Fullstack taught me make me a suitable candidate, all the extra effort they put into helping me perfect my resume, and equip me with interview skills particular to the tech job market made me a great candidate.

I'll keep this short for people like me who would rather be reading bullet points than essays.

• Fullstack enabled me to switch careers. I was an accountant for 6 years before enrolling, now I am coming up on 6 months as a Senior UI Engineer.
• The instructors and staff at Fullstack are incredible and do everything that they can to help you succeed in a fast paced environment.
• The selection process works, you are surrounded by other students who are all driven and passionate about learning Javascript. I made life long friends while at Fullstack who I still talk to on a daily basis.
• Though the curriculum focused on NodeJS, Express, MongoDB (now PostgreSQL), and Angular (now React), many of the concepts taught are applicable across languages and frameworks. I currently work a lot with Perl, Backbone, and Marionette, none of which were taught but all of which I am comfortable working with because of what I learned at Fullstack.

I absolutely recommend Fullstack Academy (or its sister school Grace Hopper) to anyone looking to enter the world of software development. My close friend is starting class next week and I am honestly jealous that I am not in her place starting it all again.

Theres far too much that can be said for it to fit in a review. I lived and breathed Fullstack Academy for about 8 months of my life. I could sit here, and pitch you what you'll learn, why its what you should learn, the support they offer after graduation, the network that... You get the point. I'm not the only review you've read.

Heres the thing - Fullstack Academy is just a special place. Theres some pinch of magic to the formula; who specifically is responsible for it is impossible to say. Fullstack has a knack for bringing incredibly interesting, intelligent, and crazy people through its doors - both as employees and as students. These people will be your life for however long you end up being there - and will change the rest of your life afterwards.

If you're here, reading this review - you've wasted time. Start studying by doing Codewars and figure out which of the courses you're going to do, and either move or set up a battlestation. I attended the on-campus in NYC, but I taught the remote course after graduating. The remote course was honestly just as magical of an experience as the on campus one. Actually, in retrospect, maybe even more magical... Anyways, I digress.

You can not justify not wanting to go here. This is the place you want to be. Its the roadmap to the life you want to be living. It's an experience you'll never forget. It's the modern day Hogwarts.

Fullstack Academy is a great bootcamp. When I was searching for courses, it was clear to me that FSA was the real deal. Fulstack is difficult to get in to. They genuinely want to make sure everyone who they admit is prepared and ready for the curriculum. The Chicago cohorts I have seen have ranged in size from 10 to ~17 students. In addition to instructors there are also fellows - former students who were chosen to work as TA's for the next couple of student cohorts. Personal attention from the teachers is never a problem. In my experience everyone was attentive, kind and hoping to help!

The curriculum is full stack JavaScript. We learned Node.js, Express.js, React Redux Sequelize, HTML, CSS and Git. They teach you everything you need to know to go forth and begin a career in web development. The course is tough, but if you come everyday willing to work and learn, you will get out of it everything you need. Things will seem tough at the beginning, but before you know it, you will look back and realize how much you have progressed. If you're interested in learning web development, I truly believe that Fullstack Academy is one of the best bootcamps in the country.

They help you build your resume, practice technical interview questions with you, and set up interviews with a handful of companies with a hiring day event, helping to begin your job search.