The Program
Our Goal: You’ll come to Hack Reactor excited and ready to work hard. Twelve weeks later, you’ll stumble out the front door exhausted, amazed with yourself and your portfolio, and completely prepared for your first developer position.
The Curriculum: Web application development is in the midst of a revolution, and our curriculum is based on the new status quo for web apps: rich, interactive, and built in JavaScript. (Read more about this new paradigm in our blog post, “How Our Students Build Apps”.) You’ll build browser-based applications using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, and server-side components in JavaScript and Ruby on Rails. You’ll use the same developer tools and practices that professional developers use, like git and test-driven development. Here are some of the tools that you’ll master:
The Schedule: Hack Reactor runs from 9am to 8pm, six days per week. Days alternate between structured introductions to projects and all-day hackathons where you complete the previous day’s projects and code on whatever else interests you. Here’s what a structured day looks like:
- 9 a.m.: Breakfast. Talk about tech and life over coffee and bagels in the classroom.
- 9:30 a.m.: Live Coding with an Instructor. We’ll introduce the exercises or project you’ll work on next, and start doing it live on our giant projector. In addition to explaining the concepts you’ll need to know to do the work, we’ll explain how to figure out the things you don’t know. Students shout out questions — it’s an interactive sport.
- 10 a.m.: Hack. You’ll work in pairs or groups on real-world projects. When you get stuck, you’ll flag down a passing instructor and they’ll show you how to get yourself unstuck. Sometimes this means explaining underlying concepts, and sometimes it means showing you what to Google or which question to ask in which IRC channel.
- 12 p.m.: Exercise. We make time for everyone to attend classes at a gym nearby. (Membership is provided.)
- 1 p.m.: Lunch. You can find a meal at any of the amazing nearby lunch joints.
- 2 p.m.: Learn -> Code. As in the morning, we’ll introduce new concepts by beginning a new project together on the projector, and send you out to work on it.
- 5:30 p.m.: Dinner.
- 6:30 p.m.: Events. Every evening is different. You’ll ask guest speakers about their work, attend meetups, go through mock interviews, or hack on projects with a rotating array of guest teachers. The program technically ends at 8, but many students work well into the night.
Week-to-Week Overview:
- Weeks 1–6 are a structured deep-dive into software engineering, the Web, and a broad array of development tools.
- Weeks 7–12 are project-oriented study, individually and in teams. Some of this will involve building new projects from scratch; some will involve contributing to existing codebases. We’ll also be building your portfolio during this period.
- Near the end of the program, we’ll hold a hiring day and introduce you to several dozen potential employers in a speed-dating format. During the program, we’ll help you with practice interviews and help you put your best foot forward.
Tuition: $17,780.
Deferral Program: We’re very motivated to put together the best student body we can, and in service of this goal, we’ve established a deferral program. If you’re unable to finance the tuition, we’ll do our best to cover the difference until some time after your graduation. If you’re interested in the program, please apply, regardless of your financial situation. A third of our students are participating in the deferral program.
Scholarships: We believe our school and our field benefit from diversity, and we provide a $1,000 scholarship for women and underrepresented minorities.
Housing: We have arrangements with a local hostel to provide a reduced weekly rate, and we’ll also introduce you to other incoming students so you can make other arrangements as needed. Students are ultimately responsible for their housing needs and expenses.
twitter
