LEARN Academy

If you’re a hopeful web developer or engineer in San Diego, Learn is the only bootcamp I recommend. A couple primary reasons: 1. internship and career services 2. program’s willingness to change.

The internship experience speaks for itself. To have the opportunity to apply classroom skills to a functioning business is so important. One of the biggest barriers to finding employment is job experience; the internship does help address that deficit. Learn’s career services is also a real strength. A week of the program will be devoted to preparing you for a job search, from the obvious things like creating a new resume to the less obvious, like taking LinkedIn head shots. I do not know how else I would’ve pulled everything together and very much appreciated Bryan’s guidance.

I also mention the program’s willingness to accept feedback as a highlight – and it absolutely is. Prior to attending Learn, I worked at a university managing a program and have real understanding of how difficult it can be to modify classroom focus or process. Learn does a really impressive job of soliciting and responding to feedback. Every cohort changes – new projects, new format, emphasis on new skills – which is incredibly difficult to do. It does help them stand out; each cohort gets better.

As a final note, I do think it’s important to stress that you will not get everything out of Learn if you do not put in the work. Most career switches take about 18 months. Learn’s program, including internship, is 4 months. I do believe that in order to be most successful, you have to put in extra time outside of Learn’s allotted 40 hours/week. It is an intense program and requires focus for success. Know that the job market is tough for junior developers or engineers, but if you do the work, it pays off. I encourage you to control your fate as much as possible. Take advantage of learn alum, meetups, their recommended prep work, pairing programming, access to teachers and each of their unique strengths.

Learn is great. They will work hard on your behalf. Full recommendation from me.

November 2, 2019

Learn Academy is a fast-paced program for getting practical experience with many different relevant technologies in a short amount of time. The immersive portion happens quickly, students are exposed to Git, data structures, and we were pair programming daily through the day’s projects. The curriculum is structured for layering in new technologies, and before you know it, you’re familiar with relational databases and doing a deep dive into the inner workings of Rails.

The instructors are fantastic. The student to teacher ratio is very favorable for student-teacher interactions, and they were consistently pivotal in getting me on track with the material on pace to get through the assessments. There is a lot of information, so be 100% prepared to have no life while you’re working through the curriculum. I thought 100 hours a week would be an exaggeration, but I was consistently logging 95-100 hours each week studying the material straight through the weekend.

The past four months have been a grueling yet highly rewarding experience. You get out of it what you put into it, and you have to put a lot into it if you want to get through the totality of the curriculum, but at the end, you will have the skills and confidence necessary to land your first position as a developer.

November 11, 2019

My time at LEARN Academy was one of the best experiences of my life honestly. I came into it expecting to be good. But it ended up being great! I knew it would be challenging, which it was. I knew it would be hard at times, and it was. And I knew it would be a lot to take in, in such a small amount of time, and it was.

LEARN Academy and their instructors teach the content in way that makes it stick in your head. It is fast paced but as long as you are willing to put in the hard work and proper effort, you will pick it up very quickly.

Additionally, LEARN has you develop applications to practice the content which really brings everything together. Working with other students in the cohort is one of the best ways to learn because you’re all learning the same content, at the same time.

One of the best things about LEARN is their career services. You are taken on a startup crawl in downtown San Diego so that you really get to see what tech companies are really like. After that, they help you practice technical interviews, real interviews, and prep you for your internship at the end of the cohort.

Overall, LEARN Academy is the perfect bootcamp if you’re looking to become a software developer. I came into it having went to another bootcamp a few years back and there really was no comparison. LEARN is a hundred times better than the bootcamp I went to before. I recommend LEARN Academy to anyone interested in getting into the industry!

November 26, 2019

Hey All!

I came to find LEARN academy having had about 3 years of professional experience in Product Management and Database/Manufacturing operations. I had been doing basic SQL (self-taught) for 2 years, loved it but found I was missing knowledge of the other tools that go around it. I did research on a number of schools, Hack Reactor, Thinkful, and LEARN… finally ending up at LEARN.

Why I chose LEARN?
It’s local in SD and I thought it would be nicer to have an actual class room to go to every day with people to interact with. The price was on the lower end of the ones I researched at 12.5k. They offered a guaranteed internship with a local tech company for a month after the 3 month curriculum ended.

What I got out of it?
Ultimately I think the biggest take away was the structure of what Full-stack was. Backend vs. Frontend, linking the two together, translating data into real world UI’s. LEARN teaches React on the frontend which is obviously a hot tool and something that a lot of employers are looking for these days. They drill how to do self discovery as there’s only so much that anyone can cover in 12 weeks and LEARN did a good job of teaching patterns for learning… ultimately stressing that this is just the first small step on a long journey. You don’t go to a bootcamp and wake up a Software Engineer, there is a huge amount of work that needs to be put during and after the program to ultimately realize you’re true potential and goals. The people that I saw fail in the process were not paying attention daily, not invested, and somewhat entitled. The individual is responsible for the information they retain and put to use, the institution is responsible for delivering the advertised curriculum. LEARN delivered the curriculum and more… The internship was crucial. I got to do mobile development with React Native, building a full chat interface. This is where you build some industry connections and see how production apps function in the real world. It’s a soft entry into job searching and while it’s not promised, I saw some of my fellow students get picked up by their internship companies. The career service manager is fantastic. I am a year out and I speak with the past career services manager and the current career services manager regularly. Rob the founder is always open for communication on Slack (I don’t know how he finds the time to answer everyone’s questions, it’s quite amazing). In my eyes they have really created a community here in San Diego, I look forward to the events and I’ve become friends with not just my individual cohort, but people from all different years and experiences.

Recommendation?

YES. 1000x Yes

December 1, 2019

I come from a kinesiology background and needed a change. I had my fitness business online but I decided to take the technology portion of it more seriously. I did not want to go back to college to start all over so I decided, after lots of research, I wanted to go to an immersive coding bootcamp to jump into a new career.

Before attending Learn, I saw that they have a weekend course called Jumpstart. I attended and got a really good sense of the course work and how the class would be set up. After Jumpstart, I decided it was going to be a good fit to attend Learn Academy and the bonus is that the money spent on JumpStart goes towards your tuition.

The course is hard by taking a lot of brain power while also staying optimistic/humble. At Learn I felt like I had my classmates and my teachers to help me when I got stuck. Now, after having a professional job as a developer, all the soft skills you need for pair programming and learning in a semi-stressful environment is necessary! I work remotely and I constantly need to know how to work well with others and learn new things with other developers. The team at Learn strives to set you up for success and I am very happy I decided to attend Learn Academy!

December 7, 2019

Attending LEARN Academy was easily one of the best decisions I’ve made. I took a fairly traditional path after High School by attending University, receiving my BA, and working 6 years in my degree field. However, I quickly became bored with what I was doing and I knew I needed to make a career change. I was debating on going to back to school to get a second BA, but I was hesitant due to the time and resources it would require.

About the program:

LEARN Academy is not easy. It is not something you can come to for a few hours a day and expect to understand everything and land a job at the end. It takes hard work and dedication. With that said, the staff and instructors truly care about your education and career and go above and beyond to ensure your success. But it ultimately relies on you and how much you are willing to put into it. Although you can start the program with little to no experience, I highly recommend having at least a basic understanding of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The program moves fairly quickly and it can be difficult to keep up if you are not up to speed. Doing your prep work is key!

LEARN’s career services and internship program is what separates LEARN from other bootcamps. The career services are with you every step of the way and are always available, even after graduating. It’s honestly some of the best career services I have ever received. They will help you with resume building, cover letters, interviewing, networking, etc. At the end of the program, you are given the opportunity to intern at a development company. These are real, local development companies and you go to real interviews.

Overall, LEARN is a fantastic program if you are serious about web development. They will give you all the tools you need to succeed and they provide you with excellent support along the way.

December 28, 2019