Fullstack Academy

I began Fullstack right after graduating from Columbia with only an introductory CS course and some online tutorials under my belt. I had majored in Religion and was looking for a course that would accelerate my fledgling interest in programming to professional capability. It's an understatement to say that I found so much more at Fullstack.

As many of my fellow peers have said in their reviews, the community at Fullstack is truly unbeatable. The instructors are by far some of the best teachers I have ever had in any subject. That we were able to learn as much as we did in 13 weeks is a testament to their skills both as programmers and teachers. And my cohort was simply ... an amazingly talented and beautiful bunch of people. In a field like programming, where so much depends on teamwork and collaboration, who you work with is vital to the quality and depth of your learning. Fullstack did everything possible to foster this kind of exchange at every step in the curriculum, and I walked out learning more from one day of working with a fellow Fullstacker than I had in months of online courses. 

The curriculum itself is one of the most comprehensive, well-thought out and rigorous that I've ever gone through. If you want to master the MEAN stack, you undoubtedly will by the end of the course. Of course, it's impossible to learn everything there is to know about Javascript and fullstack development in 3 months, but Fullstack preps you to the point that picking up additional skills afterwards becomes intuitive and easy. I personally taught myself React in a couple days after graduating, and know that my fellow fullstackers have applied for jobs working in PHP, Python, Go, etc. Fullstack gives you the best possible foundation, after which you will have the confidence and agility to keep building on your skillset.

Finally, David and Nimit are reason enough to attend Fullstack. They are incredible founders, and I would encourage anyone who is interested in startups and entrepreneurship to learn from them. I shared an idea I had for an e-commerce company with them early on in my Fullstack journey, and both David and Nimit encouraged me to the point that I went off and launched the company right after finishing Fullstack. They gave me advice, introduced me to some amazing mentors in the field, guided me both from a technical and business perspective, and generally have been my biggest supporters till date. They also allowed me to find the first two developers on my team... fellow fullstackers from my cohort :). Although David and Nimit always emphasize that Fullstack is not a start-up incubator (people are there truly for the love of code!), it's no exaggeration to say that attending pushed me to pursue a dream I never could have otherwise. I am forever grateful.

In sum, Fullstack is the best thing that ever happened to me. I don't know a single person, either in my cohort or any other, that felt differently about their time there. If you want to spend 3 months learning an empowering skillset that will either enhance or change your career, Fullstack is, from my experience, the best choice you could make.

"Everyone here is special" -Nimit Maru, Fullstack Academy of Code cofounder

Not every special person goes to Fullstack, obviously, but this remains a true statement.

If you have been accepted to Fullstack Academy and are hungry to learn web development and are reading this review to figure out which program to choose, congrats, you are on a great path!

I believe Fullstack Academy is among the top coding programs, as it focuses on computer science fundamentals, follows an academically rigorous Javascript curriculum, and continues to add to the already high-quality leadership team, instructors, and staff (including former students) with an endless supply of positivity and humility!

"If you build one thing really well, I can imagine how you could build another great thing. If you build 10 average or half-complete things, all I can imagine is an 11th average or half-complete thing.” -Fullstack Academy of Code cofounder David Yang (https://www.quora.com/profile/David-Yang)

To be successful in this field, one must develop and maintain a deep hunger for learning and problem solving—read a ton of articles, watch a bunch of videos, and ask a million questions!

Curriculum Overview:

Foundations (pre-work): 4 weeks of teaching yourself Javascript & acclimating to a developer environment

Academy: 13 weeks of immersion; during this time you are advised to only:

1. Learn

2. Write Code

3. Teach ("A short-circuit in the learning process" -David and Nimit)

4. Take care of your health

Fellowship (optional): 13 weeks of a less intense version of the above 1-4

Flight: ?? weeks of however much you want to keep learning and job hunting

This is the portion of the education where the school you choose is most important! 

Will you be well-prepared for the lifetime learning aspect of becoming a successful web developer/ programmer/ coder?

Attending Fullstack Academy of Code will give you access to the highest quality resources; what you do with them is up to you!

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Wesley is a Success Engineer at segment.com, where he helps developers, engineers and business-minded folks integrate Segment’s analytics and data platform into their products—complex, intelligent software in countless configurations of common development environments, leveraging many different languages and a host of tools.

In Short
This is the top coding bootcamp in NYC. The school itself has an amazing track record of churning out high quality engineers regardless of previous experience or background.

The Reason
The people. I am not just referring to the co-founders or instructors but the larger community that makes up Fullstack Academy. FS does a great job of selecting motivated and intelligent individuals all of whom are passionate about learning what it takes to become a full stack software engineer. As a part of the community for about 8 months I can attest to the willingness of former students, current students, instructors and co-founders to respond to and ask questions, post pertinent links to educational readings, and work at the forefront of the software engineering world. There is truly a strong community of talented and dedicated individuals willing to share, all you need to do is ask.

My Experience
I want to keep this review short as you can reference other responses to get a deeper delve into the specifics. While my story is mostly anecdotal evidence of the experience, I believe that these personal stories do the job of representing what is possible as long as you work hard, dedicate yourself to the experience, and take advantage of being in this high-leverage environment.

First just so you know, prior to applying to FS, I already held a CS minor and worked for about a year an a half as a front-end developer. This granted me a slightly more well-rounded foundation compared with some of the other students.

The first half of the course is fairly straightforward - getting up to speed on CS concepts, big O notation, getting to learn the ins and outs of JS and your development environment. You do a lot of pair programming during the first half. Something that I can't stress enough is how important pair programming is. Not only does it allow you to meet new people but you are opened up to opportunities to teach people and are often exposed to new ways of approaching problem sets.

Things got really interesting during the second half. I was able to build two projects that were extremely in line with my interests. One being a MIDI enabled web synthesizer, and the other, my final project, being a digital audio workstation where people could record short clips of audio and use the loops to build their own songs. I was lucky enough to be interviewed by Fox 5 News for the final project which was a feature on the news that day.

At the end of the course FS has a Hiring Day in which they invite representatives from companies to see the presentation of your final project and interview a number of students as potential employees. One of the companies there took great interest in the product my group and I created. Thanks to that final product (and my interviewing skills of course), I was offered a job which I accepted only 2 weeks after graduating from FS.

I now work with a fellow Fullstack classmate from my cohort. We remain in contact with David and Nimit as well as our instructors through multiple channels. At anytime they are willing to assist with technical, personal, and industry questions via email, slack, or in person. Both of us have returned to campus both as participants on alumni panel as well as to continue learning as FS has held a number of alumni events. Why? We are eager to contribute to the environment that afforded us the skills and abilities that we now posses. Doesn't that sound like something you want to be a part of?

In Summation
Saying that it was the best career choice I have made thus far in life would be an understatement. I have made some great friends, contacts in the engineering field, and more importantly made myself a much more valuable engineer. However (if you choose to attend) your level of success is entirely dependent upon the amount of work you put in. The resources are all there you just need to make sure you take full advantage of the best learning environment I personally have ever experienced.

If you're sold on the idea of being a software engineer, there really isn’t more of a decision to make. Fullstack javascript is, in my opinion, the best way to learn web development, and no one does it better than Fullstack. FS gave me the opportunity to work at my dream job, and at the end of my cohort, they had to (gently) force me out because I really didn’t want to leave. It was home for 13 weeks. The people are amazing, and I wouldn't trade in my experience for anything.   Before FS, I was a McGill engineering dropout on the run from adulthood, convinced that pursuing one of those career things would guarantee me a long life of disappointment. Eventually, though, I had to do something, and I decided a 3 month bootcamp might be the least terrible / most doable path to a tolerable life.   In the weeks leading up to my cohort, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to keep up after 2.5 years of hanging around and being out of school. I heard that FS would be a really intensive 13 weeks; the stress of university had been too much for me so I wondered how I’d manage the full time gig of FS.   To my surprise, I was able to totally and completely immerse myself in the community and curriculum while staying 100% stress-free. I never worried about falling behind because the instructors are so good at what they do. I never felt overwhelmed or burnt out, even being on campus for 10-13 hours per day, because I always wanted to be there. As FS equips you with the means to learn and build more and more, you really do get the urge to keep iterating on what they teach / whatever project you’re hacking together.   The point of FS is not just to learn a particular stack but to learn how to learn. FS grads are very well prepared to learn new technologies and jump into unfamiliar stacks at whatever job they might accept.    All of the glowing reviews here are so spot on. FS is the most special place, and it’s reborn so many lives. If you’re skeptical, that’s fair. It’s a major investment of time and money. But trust me (and everyone else) - the ROI is ten-fold. If you choose FS, you will not regret it.

This review is long overdue, but I will say that when I was first deciding what sort of bootcamp I should attend over the summer before my senior year of college, I was looking at this very site - Course Report. Hopefully my review here helps others make their big decision as to which coding bootcamp to attend as well (there’s so many now!).

What appealed to me most about Fullstack in the beginning was how nice they were during the admissions process. It was clear they were focused not just on my technical abilities, but also on my character. They also happened to be hosting their first ever Summer of Code program this past summer which was designed explicitly for college students such as myself who wanted to get a leg up with web development. This turned out to be a great aspect of the program later on since I could relate more with the other college kids in the program (we were teamed up in groups towards the end for projects).

If I had to describe the bulk of the program in one word, it would be “rigorous”. This kind of program requires a lot of energy given you’re going to be primarily coding and learning how to code all day long Monday through Friday for roughly 11 weeks. It is not for the weak minded. Be prepared to invest all your time and effort into the program unless you’re some super human living off Soylent, which in that case, that’s just bloody crazy.

In my first week of Fullstack, I described it as a full out marathon and I consider myself more of a short distance runner.

However, this doesn’t mean the whole program was so tiring that I wasn’t having fun. In fact, I made sure to explore quite a bit of New York City during my time there (i.e. one Saturday, I randomly decided to roam around the Met by myself). The instructors were lively and always trying to make sure we (the noobs) understood the new material that was introduced every day.

There were fun activities Fullstack planned out some weeks too. One in particular that was pretty splendid was when the juniors and seniors were grouped up into teams and sent off to the American Museum of Natural History for a “coding scavenger hunt” of sorts. Then again, I also consider learning fun in general (especially if it relates to web dev) and there was no doubt I was being challenged all the time which to people like me is also indeed fun but in a more “arghhh” kind of way.

Let’s put it this way: you’re not going to be bored.

The project phase (or “senior” phase) was even more exciting (yet also tiring) than the learning phase (or “junior” phase) since this is where our actual knowledge would be put to the test and our work open to judgement.

My favorite project was the Capstone (or the final one), which is where I worked with only one other person (Joanna) to create this internal LinkedIn of sorts for Fullstack called Hiredot. Joanna and I described Hiredot as this virtual portal for students and interested companies to explore projects and hackathons as well as create their own profiles and set up hiring event preferences using the stable marriage algorithm/MEAN stack. Granted, Hiredot wasn’t even the first of it’s kind, but I’m proud of what we were able to pull off in such a short amount of time.

My learning team mentor Jimmy Farrell (no, not Jimmy Fallon thankfully) was also especially helpful during this phase and I can truly say he contributed to a large part of my success and happiness while at Fullstack. You da the man, Jimmy!

At the end of the day, I’m just genuinely grateful I was able to enjoy everything Fullstack Academy has to offer, from Ladies Lunches, my learning team laughs, eye-opening pair programming sessions, and the amazingly bright people.

The experience was exactly how others have described it here before… it was like drinking water out of a firehose. BUT since I’m more of a sweet iced tea kind of gal, I’d describe my personal experience as drinking iced tea out of a firehose. And yeah, it was pretty sweet.

p.s. I, for one, feel it’s great that Fullstack is also now branching out to other sectors, like with their new Grace Hopper Academy which has no upfront tuition and is appropriately targeting women who want to enter the tech scene.

p.s.s. If you’re interested in hearing more about my experience at Fullstack, I blogged about my experience every week of the program, so there’s that.

I was a student in Fullstack Academy’s first Flex Immersive course (Jan 2015 - July 2015) which spans over 24 weeks, 3 days a week, 6:30pm to 9:30pm on Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday and 10am to 6:30pm on Saturdays. It is basically designed to cover the exact same material as their full time course, but in a part time schedule that allows you to keep your day job in the process.

This was very appealing to me for many reasons:

• Taking 13+ weeks off of work to pursue a whole new career just isn't feasible for many people. Due to financial reasons, school or family dependencies, leaving your job just might not be an option.

• Many people might not be 100% ready to fully commit to web development as a career. Taking the Flex Immersive course can be a way get the bootcamp immersive experience in a more risk averse format.

• Having class only 3 days a week allows for more personal study time on your days off. Having more time to better absorb the material before moving on to the next topic can be more your style of learning as the momentum of the full time course can be too fast for many people.

Thier Flex Immersive program was ultimately the deciding factor for me when choosing which bootcamp I wanted to attend. There was no other bootcamp in NY that offered their full time immersive curriculum in a part time format (and I believe that is still the case). The class sizes in the Flex program are much smaller than in the full time cohort (13 compared to 25) meaning a better student to instructor ratio. And in general, the Fullstack Academy bootcamp is no doubt one of the better accredited bootcamps in NYC.

Now of course I should say that bootcamps are not for everyone. Immersive bootcamps are very fast paced and even though the Flex course is twice as long at half the speed, it can be just as intensive as taking the full-time program because you’re forced to spend all of your evenings and weekends outside of work learning to code. Some people might just prefer to learn all of this solo; I definitely thought about doing that. But for me, the pros of attending this bootcamp ended up being very much worth it. Following a curriculum of the current web development frameworks and technologies was much easier and faster than trying to figure out what’s worth and not worth learning. Having instructors direct you across common pitfalls in the fraction of the time it would have taken for you to figure it out yourself was valuable in itself. There is just no possible way I could have learned all of this material by myself at the speed that I did.

Definitely do your research when deciding which bootcamp you want to attend, or whether you want to attend a bootcamp at all. But overall, I would highly recommend Fullstack’s Flex program as a feasible way to get the learning experience of their full time course but in a part time format.

My Background:  Undergraduate degree in Economics, MBA in Finance.  Left my job as a Management Consultant within the Financial Services industry to attend Fullstack Academy.  I had very little prior coding experience. 

Founders: David and Nimit are great guys.  Both extremely knowledgable about coding and the industry in general.  No matter how well the program seemed to be running, they were always looking for feedback and ways to improve the program.  Fullstack Academy will just continue to get better over time with them in charge. 

Curriculum: Overall very well structured and always improving.  First half of the course typically consisted of instructor led lessons, followed by paired programming exercises.  Throughout all exercises instructors were available to provide guidance. The second half of the curriculum consisted of two team projects, a 3 day Hackathon, and hiring day.  There was also time spent during the second half of the course to help prepare for interviews.  

Instructors: I was very impressed by the professionalism and knowledge of the instructors.  Every instructor clearly had a passion for coding/teaching (one even described working at Fullstack as his “dream job”.  When smart people are doing something they are passionate about, they do an amazing job.   

Students:  The only commonality was everyones passion to code.  Incredibility eclectic group of individuals who were all amazing in different ways.  One day you would be working with someone who used to be an Investment Banker, and the next day you were working with someone who was a past stunt actor for the Call of Duty video game (those are factual backgrounds).  You will make great friends and you will be surrounded by people who are all working together to help each other succeed.  

Outcome:   I accepted a full-time Software Engineering position about a month after graduating.    I went on a number of interviews (some direct outcomes from hiring day some not).  Overall, I received excellent feedback on my coding challenges as part of the interview process at various companies and I always felt as if I was well prepared.     

Summary:  Exactly as advertised.  You come into a great program with awesome people (instructors and students) and you leave with an in-demand skill that allows you to do something you love. 

I had such a great experience at Fullstack that I just had to leave a comment.

Before Fullstack
Like many students that went through Fullstack, I came from an entirely different career path (Civil Engineering) non-related to programming. After mustering the courage to make a career change, I did my research on how I could best transition to a new career in programming and came across programming bootcamps. 

I was very skeptical at first because these bootcamps offered short programs (ranging between 3-6 months) for a substantial amount of money (~$12000 - $15000). Furthermore, there were also a lot of bootcamps available, so it was tough deciding which one was right for me. I dug deeper and reached out to graduates from many bootcamps such as Fullstack Academy, Flatiron School and DEV Bootcamp. To me, I found the most responsive people were the ones from Fullstack. Some of the major questions that I asked them were:

1.    How quickly were they able to find jobs after graduating?
2.    Did they feel like they were ready for the workforce after completing the program?
3.    Did they feel like their experience was worth the time and money?

I've received very positive feedback. The students I've spoken with had many interviews lined up the week after Fullstack and most found jobs ranging between 2 weeks to 2 months. Even more surprisingly, they all stated that they loved their experience at Fullstack and some have even mentioned that "it was the best career decision they've made in their life".

During Fullstack
As the program is split into 3 parts: 6 weeks of lectures/workshops (Junior Phase), 1 week for break, and 6 weeks for project phase (Senior Phase). 

In the first 6 weeks, we had our work cut out for us. Although the workload was heavy, I felt that Fullstack did a great job scheduling and planning it in a way where the material didn't seem too rushed. We spent a lot of our time learning from JavaScript Fundamentals, Data Structures and Algorithms, Server Side JS (Node, Express), databases (MongoDB, some SQL), Front End Js (Angular), Promises, OAUTH and the list continues... What I loved most about my experience in the junior phase was that all the workshops were done in pairs. This taught me how to adapt to other people's coding styles, which will be very common in the work force. It also taught me how to code as part of a team, which can be very different than if you were to code individually. By the end of the junior phase I would have worked with most people at least once, which made it very comfortable working in groups leading into the Senior Phase.

In the last 6 weeks, this was entirely project based. There was a lot less hand holding from the teaching staff, which gave teams the freedom of how to complete their projects and divide up their work. It was in this phase where I learned the most because I started to see how the entire tech stack fell in place, and what I learned from the first 6 weeks started to make a lot more sense. However, this only came through hours of hard work and debugging which is the learning process all students inevitably will go through. The teaching staff and teaching assistants (Fellows) were very quick in providing help when you are completely stuck with a problem, and did a great job in guiding you towards a solution rather than just simply telling you what to do. Also during this phase, Fullstack helps with your career preparation such as resume building, cleaning up your LinkedIn and Github Profile, interview preparation, whiteboarding sessions, as well as providing a hiring day where many companies come out to see your capstone projects and interview with you. Shanna, who led all this career preparation, has been extremely approachable for career-related questions or advice that I had.  

After Fullstack
After graduating, I was fortunate enough to land many interviews within my first week out, some of which came from the hiring day event. Even more fortunately, I accepted a job offer within 3 weeks of graduating. A large part of this success I owe to Fullstack's continued help in which they called "Fullstack Flight". Shanna was integral in helping us by providing us resources for preparing for interviews with coding challenges, and questions, networking and job application advice, and being accessible whenever we had any questions, even when it came down to salary negotiation! 

As a side note, Fullstack does an excellent job creating a friendly, personal and down-to-Earth environment from planning weekly events for people to mingle, mentor groups and more. From the Fullstack staff to students, everyone was extremely friendly and open to conversation. I never had any difficulty reaching out to anyone for coding help, not even David or Nimit given their busy schedule managing Fullstack. I personally feel that it was because of this aspect of Fullstack that turned it from a good experience to an amazing one. A million thanks to the entire Fullstack team!

In short: one of the best decisions you can make for your career (with a few caveats)

Pros: World-Class instructors, great workspace, in NYC, good amount of personalized attention, GREAT quality of fellow classmates,  High Job Placement rate 97% (I, myself, have found a job as a developer with a higher salary than I ever thought possible), and an average salary that is quite high at 70-80k

Cons: The only major con I can think of would be cons at all bootcamps...There is generally such a wide array of programming abilities coming in that it is difficult for the courseload to be appropriate for all of the students.  We had students come in with five years of work experience, students with Computer Science degrees from Princeton, and students who have been programming since they were very young.  On the other hand, individuals like myself came in with virtually no programming background.  When catering to a class of 20+ students, it is difficult to teach the course at a speed that is appropriate for the majority.  Essentially, I felt like this course was like drinking water from a firehose, whereas some students felt that the curriculum was moving a little bit too slowly.  The only con that pertains to Fullstack Academy alone is the fact that the majority of the jobs that you will be qualified for at the end of the bootcamp are going to be FRONT-end roles. The irony that Fullstack Academy places the majority of their engineers in non Fullstack roles is not lost on me.

 

THINGS TO KNOW :

To be adequately prepared for the bootcamp I reccommend that you do the following before you even APPLY: finish codecademy's course on JavaScript, API Calls, and jQuery; read eloquent javascript cover to cover; finish the codeschool AngularJS course; and get to a level where you can complete difficult programming problems that include recursion etc.....this will accomplish two things, first it will solidify that programming is really the type of thing that you want for a career, and it will get you to a point where you feel comfortable with the ins and outs of programming.

Finally, after the course is over, you are going to have to put in A LOT of work on your own.  Bootcamps really only get you to a solid starting point.  Read various JavaScript PDFs and take supplementary courses online.  After a month or two, you will definitely be at the point where you can interview for Developer roles.

Next, the career counseling is definitely improving, but the majority of the work is going to be done on your own.  A few students do get opportunities from Fullstack Academy's hiring day...and others through reccommendations from Fullstack staff... but the majority need to go out, network, attend career days, attend information sessions, and generally work their butts off to get a job.

As opposed to the majority of students who attended Fullstack Academy; I arrived with a CS degree and a couple of years work experience under my belt.  Even so, Fullstack was a great decision for me.  The greatest assets were definitely the people and the environment.  

  First of all, the lead instructors David and Nimit are the smartest engineers I have ever met.  They were not only capable of solving any issue that I encountered but were also entirely able to communicate the issue and solution to me in ways that I could understand.  While this means that I was able to complete projects with extremely experienced mentors, it also meant that students with more experience were able to gain just as much if not more from Fullstack than the students entering with less knowledge.   Second, with all of the students arriving eager to learn, there is an environment of curiosity and exploration that doesn't exist almost anywhere else.  The students are gaining the technical skills necessary to understand and use some of the newest and coolest technologies while at the same time, they have yet to become jaded and dismissive of emerging technologies.     Fullstack increased my value to prospective companies and made me a better and more curious coder.  My only issue, is that I cannot attend again.   Thank you David and Nimit! 

In one sentence: 

The best career move I have ever made.

 

In many more sentences: 

********* Back Story. You can skip this if you just want to get right to the meat ***********

Before attending Fullstack Academy, I had VERY little knowledge of web development, coding, or javascript.  I had recently finished up a degree in Psychology and planned to move further down that career path.  But, it just wasn’t the right thing for me, so I started feeling around for other fields that interested me more. 

 

I began taking some online courses to learn HTML and CSS and enjoyed them.  It was fun to be able to create something from scratch purely on my own.  Then, I started to get into javascript as a way to make my pages a bit more interactive, but quickly realized that trying to teach yourself Javascript or coding in general is a very difficult task.  There are so many rules and syntactical nuances to follow that it can become a very frustrating process very quickly.  So, I started to look into schooling for web development.

 

There were several options: I could get a bachelors from a University in Computer Science, but felt that that may be a bit to broad. I could get a web-development certificate from a trade school, but those are for-profit schools and cost far too much. Plus, both of those options take two years to complete, and I didn’t want to take that much time.  So, I came across the concept of a coding bootcamp.  I loved the idea.  It’s fast, it’s intense, and it costs less. So, I began researching schools.

 

Most bootcamps offer training in Ruby, but very few offered a Fullstack Javascript experience which is what I was looking for.  Javascript is taking on a whole new role in the development community with newer front end frameworks and powerful new backend frameworks for Javascript allowing for use of Javascript in the entire stack. Of the few schools that I found with a Javascript focus, Fullstack Academy felt the most professional, comprehensive, and well-structured. So, I went for it.  I applied, was contacted, did an interview, and was accepted.  Even though I didn’t have prior experience, they could tell that I had a desire and a passion to learn and I was accepted.  I’m extremely grateful that they chose to take a chance on me.

 

************************** The Meat of the Review ***************************************************

I loved the structure of Fullstack Academy.  Before you get to school, you have a one month introductory course to Javascript.  This was invaluable for me.  I couldn’t have lasted in the bootcamp without putting my full attention into the Foundations work.  This brought me up to speed and helped me to be ready for the deep dive that I would get once I got to New York.  

 

The school experience itself was amazing. Full stack is located about 10 seconds from Wall Street in Lower Manhattan.  The space that they have got is great.  It’s large enough to teach 30-40 students at a time in two groups.  The instructors were amazing. David and Nimit are very good at what they do and are extremely helpful and interactive teachers.  In addition to them, there are several other instructors and fellows that are there to give lectures and workshops and to answer questions. 

 

**** First 6 weeks of the program *****

A typical day at school went something like this. Show up at about 9:00am and start working on a javascript exercise to get yourself going for the day. The first lecture would begin at 10:00.  It would last for about an hour or two and would introduce a new concept for the day. We would then be assigned partners and would spend several hours working on a workshop which applies the concept from the morning lecture.  Then, halfway through the day, we would have a mini-lecture which would allow us to discuss issues we were having in the workshop and ask questions.  Then we would go back out and finish up the workshop for the next several hours.  Then, at the end of the day, we would have a final lecture that would review the concepts from the morning lecture, go over the workshop and the proper way to complete it, and allow us to ask questions and discuss the concepts.  (This repetition of concepts and the ability to apply the principles in workshops every day really embedded the knowledge into me rather than just getting theory and lecture all day.)  This finished up around 6:00pm.  Then, you can leave if you would like to, but I found that many people stayed until 10:00 or 11:00 just working on tutorials or reviewing the workshop, or preparing for the following day. 

 

***** Last 6 weeks of the program *****

The last 6 weeks of the program are devoted to projects.  This is where the majority of the learning takes place.  You build a personal project and a group project.  I found that we would spend upwards of 15 hours per day just working on projects.  I learned so much during this phase because I had to take all that I had learned in workshops and lectures and piece it together into one cohesive project.  I had to go back and review concepts so that I could implement them in my project.  The application of principles in a real life setting is what made this phase so productive and I loved it.  The instructors are always available for questions if you run into a road block on your project, but they are very good at helping you assess the problem for yourself and then helping you find the answers to the problem.

 

Overall, the curriculum and the way that it is taught is very well thought out.  The atmosphere was warm and allowed for asking questions and for collaborating with fellow students. It was the perfect intense learning environment.  But, I have to say that it was VERY challenging.  The rate at which you must learn and acquire concept after concept after concept is unlike anything I have ever done before. It was so much information so fast that my mind hurt at the end of every day.  But honestly, I would have expected nothing else.  I got exactly what I paid for; a ton of knowledge very quickly.

 

*********** Post Program **************

So, then the program ended and I got home… Now is the real test of how effective the program was. I am from Utah, so I didn’t move to an area that is as great of a tech hub as San Francisco or New York.  Fullstack was still great at helping me to prepare myself for a job by cleaning up my LinkedIn, preparing a resume, helping prepare for interview questions, and so on.  They also hooked me up with anyone that they knew in Utah who would be helpful in finding a job.  

 

I have been home from the program for two months now and have been actively looking for a job for about a month of it.  Many places told me that they wanted someone with more experience, but all were impressed with the amount that I knew considering that I was so new to the whole development world.  But, several companies offered first and even second interviews and offers.  I am glad to say that I have now landed a job that is going to be extremely fun and rewarding and pays almost double what I was making just three months ago.  I am so happy to have done this program and now that I have a job, I know that it was a good decision and was a great investment.  I’m in a field that I love and have an entire career ahead of me to keep learning, but Fullstack was the foundation that I needed.  It would have taken me years of self-instruction or other schooling to get where I am now.  I’m glad that I did it and I would recommend it to anyone.