Fullstack Academy of Code

I have never been to any other bootcamp, and I have never had any other instructors teach me software development.

I have, however, met many different humans in my life. I can tell you without any hesitation that this organization is run by some of the best you will find anywhere. Forever curious and honestly intelligent, enthusiastic, good-willed, and optimistic. This is what makes them such good teachers and this is why I insist that I can confidently say that Fullstack Academy will be a positive investment of time, sweat, and money for anyone with an honest curiosity and inner desire to learn.

I have attended a lot of classes in my life, and I have a very strong belief that the absolute most important thing to evaluate is the teacher. A good teacher teaches you so much more than just the material, they show you an example of what it means to have a positive and fruitful relationship with the subject, and they give you space to foster that relationship yourself. That is absolutely what I got from attending Fullstack Academy.

I am 100% satisfied with my experience, I got everything I hoped for and more. I felt completely prepared to enter the workforce as a Fullstack developer, I found myself able to meaningfully contribute to the work of a succesful engineering team, and I found that I had an incredible foundation from which my learning and understanding in this field has exploded.

If you are accepted, make sure to attend with your whole heart. Stay late into the evening whenever you can. You never know when David or Nimit will be perched on a desk at 7pm, a small huddle of students eagerly listening to their every word, relating stories, memories, and pearls of wisdom on everything and anything. These are teachers whose words you will remember.

Enrolling in Fullstack Academy was one of the best things I have ever done. In college I dabbled in a couple CS and web design courses really enjoyed them, but for some reason never pursued web development further. Coding was always in the back of my mind while I carried on with my career in a different field in which I never felt quite at home. I heard about the emergence of coding bootcamps a couple years ago and knew instantly that this could be my chance to make a big change.

I researched and applied to a few of the immersive coding programs in NYC and was accepted to all of them, but Fullstack really stood apart from the pack from the beginning. The founders, David and Nimit, were both seasoned engineers and entrepreneurs and really knew their stuff. I also liked how Fullstack teaches the MEAN stack, which was unique from all the schools teaching Rails. During the interview process, I truly felt challenged, yet supported already – when I got stuck on some problems during the interview, Huntly was able to provide me just enough direction to help me figure it out on my own without giving anything away. I felt like I really learned something during the interview, which really impressed me. I also felt like Fullstack did a better job than other schools of gleaning my learning potential through their unique interviewing style. Also, I was able to gather from my contact during the interviews and admissions process that the people at Fullstack really cares about their students – I didn’t feel like a number like I did at some of the other, bigger schools that seem to churn people in and out.

Prior to the program we completed a month of pre-work, about 100-120 hours. This was incredibly challenging for a noob like myself, working alone while finishing up my old job. Scott, our online instructor during this period, was incredibly helpful and made himself available for live sessions to help me through any difficulties. I think it was really beneficial to complete such an intense amount of pre-work, since we all arrived with a similar knowledge base and could hit the ground running. The pre-work gave us a solid foundation in JavaScript and object-oriented programming and an intro to Node.js.

The on-site program curriculum walked us through programming and the MEAN stack from the bottom up – building upon concepts week by week to complete the stack. We received interactive lectures and then daily projects to apply our learnings in Node.js, building Express servers, MongoDB and database management, some SQL, a little HTML/CSS/SASS, AngularJS, REST APIs, and more. We crammed SO MUCH into our heads during those first 6 weeks that I sometimes couldn’t remember ever hearing about certain concepts, but amazingly, when it came time to do projects during the second half of the program, everything started coming back to me and all the concepts came together – I was amazed at how much I actually knew.
I was thoroughly impressed with the skill and passion exhibited by our instructors – Zeke, Omri, Joe, and Gabe – they all really knew their stuff and knew how to break complicated ideas down into a digestible form for the students. They all seemed to really love software engineering and, more importantly, teaching it.

The career support was also excellent. Shanna gave us great resume and interviewing advice, and continued to help us after we graduated and connect us with contacts wherever she could. Charlotte, the operations manager, also helped create a fun and smooth experience for everyone throughout the program with fun activities, parties, and other support as needed during the admissions process and during our time at Fullstack.

Now I’m extremely happy with my new career as a software engineer, and I have Fullstack to thank for empowering me to transform myself.

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.

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.

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.