Fullstack Academy, Chicago | Fees, Rankings, Address, Admission, Vacancies, Reviews & More

When I first heard about the phenomenon of coding bootcamps, I was incredibly skeptical. However, after completing Fullstack Academy’s Software Engineering Immersive, I am a true believer that a good bootcamp can change your life (and career ??).

Initially I chose to attend Fullstack for two reasons:
1. By requiring students come in with a baseline of knowledge, you are able to move more quickly and spend the limited time of the bootcamp covering more advanced topics (side note: I took the Bootcamp Prep course and was more than ready for to apply for the immersive by the end).
2. The idea of focusing on only one language/stackalso leaves more time for honing skills and going deeper into concepts instead of learning different syntax for essentially the same things.

After completing the program, I still agree with both of those statements. However, they are only the beginning of what sets Fullstack apart…

Before attending Fullstack, I was a middle school math and science teacher. Coming from a background in education, I was very impressed with the curriculum and overall educational experience Fullstack provides for a variety of reasons, including:
• Each lecture is followed by a workshop in which students get to actually practice using the new information.
• The curriculum builds incrementally on itself, introducing concepts in a logical order.
• Fullstack has found a good balance between explaining the most important ideas, while still requiring students to figure out how to implement them on their own.
• It feels like the staff really cares about each student and their success.
• Fullstack purposefully crafts a supportive, collaborative environment by explicitly teaching in the first week such topics as why pair programming is important and how to do it well, how to combat implicit biases, and how to give clear, helpful feedback.
• The instructors elicit and actually respond to feedback!
• On the topic of instructors: each of the instructors is extremely knowledgeable and brings examples from their own experience to highlight what they are teaching.

———-
I particularly took advantage of the Career Success team. During the bootcamp, I appreciated the guidance on such topics as creating a technical resume or harnessing LinkedIn. Then, during my job search I consistently refered back to the materials they provided us. But most importantly, I felt like I could always reach out to Holly, our Career Success counselor, for answers to even the most inane questions! She was beyond helpful in my search for that first job out of bootcamp, which I can’t wait to start next week!

———-
TL;DR Fullstack Academy provides a well-designed curriculum, supportive and knowledgeable instructors, and personalized career support. I couldn’t recommend it more!

Fullstack Academy has developed a challenging and exhaustive curriculum that will definitely keep you busy past 5pm. Fullstack is a great program for people who want balance (i.e. maintain a social life, have families) and for independent learners who have plenty of time to become immersed in the curriculum 24/7. If you’re not sure if you can handle a 10+ hour day at another program or if you can manage studying on your own outside normal class hours, then Fullstack is for you. (Also, it’s very likely that no one is going to plan out your entire day for you on the job, so get used to being self-sufficient.)

The staff and teaching fellows are incredibly understanding and assess each situation on a case-by-case basis if something comes up. They will give you more, if you ask. But you have to ask, but I have never been hesitant since they are all so welcoming. As far as social culture goes, it is what you make of it. Fullstack is a educative environment first and foremost, so I’ve found that your social experience will depend more on students taking the initiative to hang out and organize events. Also, once you graduate, you get to utilize a large and supportive network of Fullstack grads–I got my first dev job thanks to one of those connections. I highly recommend attending Fullstack especially if convenience matters to you and you plan to work in the same city. Many schools advertise the big tech companies where students have been hired but don’t let that be the only factor in your decision–especially if you’re not 100% sure if you even want to work at large companies. While Fullstack gives you all the tools you need to land your dream dev job, wherever that may be. It’s up the students to put in the work to get them.

Attending to Fullstack Academy was the best decision of my life. I have found my true passion and gained a lot of valuable skills. Besides that, I also had the best friendships during my time at Fullstack.

I attended Fullstack from September to December in 2018 at Chicago Campus. Then, I was hired by Fullstack as a Teaching Fellow where I worked there for 3 months. About 2 months after the end of my fellowship, I found a job at my dream company, Google, as a Web Solutions Engineer.

Before Fullstack, I was a PhD student in Molecular Biology at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I had interest to coding before; but it was always like a hobby. After I quit grad school, the best thing I know was coding (seriously, I didn’t have skills in any area besides biology) and I wanted to turn this hobby into a career. I looked at the best coding bootcamps around Chicago and Fullstack was one of the first ones that came up through my searches. I talked to many grads before convincing myself that this will worth the money. After the first week at Fullstack, I already knew it’s worth it!