Finding The Best Code School: From Scratch On To Web Development. A blog about choosing the right code school to help you get a job as a developer after you graduate.
Choosing the best code school for you is a difficult choice when there are so many options out there. In this article I outline how I went about choosing a code school and got myself into web development after graduating from Flatiron School’s Software Engineering program in NYC.
I had been doing customer service at an online business for several months when I found out that my job was being outsourced to the Philippines. After going through a painful interview process, I was left with no job and no prospects. I couldn’t find anything that paid more than $10/hour and even those jobs wanted people with degrees or relevant experience (which I didn’t have). Having been down this road before, I knew that my only option was to take matters into my own hands and make something happen on my own. It took me several months of research and interviews before choosing a great coding bootcamp that would allow me to have a career in tech.
I went to Flatiron School’s Software Engineering program in NYC. It was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life, but it was also extremely challenging –
My new blog is called, “Finding The Best Code School: From Scratch On To Web Development.” A blog about choosing the right code school to help you get a job as a developer after you graduate. In my new endeavor, I will be comparing and contrasting each of the following topics by individual schools:
-Schools Offered
-Career Services Provided
-Job Placement Statistics
-Student Reviews
-Program Lengths
I’ve been researching this topic for a while now, and I am finally done! After looking at every single code school in North America, I compiled my data (and personal opinions) into list form and ranked them from best to worst. As a side note, I only looked at code schools that offered web development programs. While there are many code schools that offer coding bootcamps for programmers and other roles within the tech industry, my focus was on those who offered training for web developers. If you’re interested in becoming a programmer or another role within the tech industry, then refer to Course Report’s list here.
I decided to share my experience in choosing a web development code school, and hopefully it will help you choose the right one for you. I wrote this blog post since I received a lot of emails and messages from readers asking me which school they should choose.
I am going to go over some questions that might help you figure out what type of coding school is right for you, but first here’s a little bit about me.
I started out with no coding experience, then went to Flatiron School to learn web development. Once I graduated, I was able to get a job as a junior developer and have been working at different startups ever since.
Since I started learning how to code, my goal was always to get a job as a web developer after graduating from Flatiron School. In order to do so, I knew that based on the current market and the skills necessary for getting hired (after learning how to code), it was necessary to learn two programming languages: Ruby and Javascript.
I also had strong preference for learning in an immersive environment where I could focus solely on learning how to code without having other responsibilities getting in the way. Learning in an environment like that would allow me to fully dedicate myself to my education and most importantly, allow me to
Choosing the right code school is not an easy decision. In this post, I’ll cover some things to look for when deciding on a coding boot camp or code school.
When it comes to choosing a coding school and looking at job placement percentages, you need to look carefully at the numbers. The job placement percentage is not always what it seems.
For example, a coding bootcamp may report a 95% job placement rate which sounds great but if you dig deeper you could find that the number represents all students who have applied for jobs even though they haven’t completed the program.
Some schools will consider a student employed if they are working in any role that uses the skills they learned at the school even though it’s not related to web development. So for example, if a student who attended a front-end coding bootcamp lands a job in QA that uses HTML and CSS, some schools would consider them to be employed as a front-end developer.
It’s important to look at all of these factors when evaluating job placement percentage and figuring out which code school is best for you.
I’ve been mentoring a friend of mine to help him get the skills and experience he needs for a job in web development. He’s just started the Software Engineering Immersive course at Makers Academy to learn Ruby, Sinatra and Rails. Before that he took an Introduction To Web Development course at General Assembly.
This is an account of how I helped my friend choose his school and why I think both Makers Academy and General Assembly are great choices, but totally different from each other.
We talked about what his goals were and what kind of person he is. What he wanted was to get a job as a web developer after graduating. He wanted to build things on the web, not necessarily games or mobile apps or data visualisations, just websites that connected to databases and did some kind of work (they don’t have to be useful!).
What kind of person was he? He thought he was good at solving problems, working with people and picking up new skills and languages. He had no prior programming experience but he’d used HTML and CSS quite a lot before so he understood how websites worked.
I’ve been in the market for a code school since my current job is super stressful. I need to be somewhere that I can relax and focus on learning. I also want to learn new skills, so I can fill out my resume a little bit more.
I’ve come up with a list of questions that I will ask each school, as well as what each school’s answer was. Hopefully this will help you choose the best code school for you!
List of Schools:
Code Fellows
Dev Mountain
General Assembly
Hackbright Academy
Galvanize
FullStack Academy