Performing Self-Assessment Before Admission

Developer Bootcamps Admission Criteria

There are multiple questions here, the first one being the most common. We hear from so many coders, self-taught or college educated in CS, who want to know if they've reached that skill point that means they're ready for intense developer bootcamps.

Phillip Alexander, now a part of our curriculum and engineering team, talked about what he studied before he applied to Hack Reactor. "I went through the JavaScript track at Codeacademy, watched several Nettuts+ series on JavaScript and Git, and went through the exercises in eloquent JavaScript."

Fellow staffer Nathan Houle shared his story about self-study as well. "I'd written around two hours of JavaScript before I was accepted. I felt ready because I'd taken a Python class, a C++ class, done programming tutorials and written small shell scripts, and done a few years' worth of hobbyist sysadmin stuff. Still, I was one of the lesser-skilled students in terms of JS/programming experience."

As you can see, experiences vary. Co-Founder Shawn Drost and Hack Reactor staff member Ruan Pethiyagoda answer below about how much programming experience you should have. You can cross check your skills with some of our curriculum listed in this FAQ post.

In a recent talk with co-founder Tony Phillips, he stressed the rigor and evaluation we put forth during our admissions process. The bar at some developer bootcamps, unsurprisingly, is higher than others. Reasons range from difficulty of curriculum, personality fit or the vision and mission statement of that school.

Hack Reactor has a very high student to applicant ratio, but everyone who applies will grow from the experience. Challenging yourself never backfires. From an applicant perspective, you want a school that lets in people who you yourself will learn from during peer programming sessions, daily chats and group projects.

In one recent blog post, we share tips on how a potential student can prepare for a developer school. Below you'll find a more direct answer to the above Quora question.

Hack Reactor's coding bootcamp has a unique, robust pre-course workflow that not only gauges your ability, but significantly adds to it. Just from doing an interview with someone on our admissions team, light bulbs will be turned on. We'll be writing extensively about our pre-course materials and process in coming blog posts.