You forgot "You are financially well-off."
And here I was, excited at the prospect of an easy way out of this agonizing feedback loop.
What we look for in students
11–20 of 54 posts
Re: What we look for in students
#12I really want to do this at some point, but I'm still in college, and the schedule never lines up with when school starts and ends. Have any college students attended hacker school/what do you guys think about college students attending? (I'm a Comp Eng major btw).
Re: What we look for in students
#13You forgot "You are financially well-off." And here I was, excited at the prospect of an easy way out of this agonizing feedback loop.
Are you female? They have tuition assistance for women. Apparently men don't need financial assistance...
Re: What we look for in students
#14You forgot "You are financially well-off." And here I was, excited at the prospect of an easy way out of this agonizing feedback loop.
Are you female? They have tuition assistance for women. Apparently men don't need financial assistance...
I don't think they mean it that way. They just want more women to participate.
Re: What we look for in students
#15I really feel that I meet all the requirements mentioned here, but sadly, I was rejected for the previous batch.
Looking back, I want to believe that I was rejected because I was living abroad and they probably felt I wasn't really sure about moving to The U.S. They also need people who can legally work here as the referrals are their business model.
Well, I came here anyway on a sabbatical year. Been learning iOS programming, attending meet-ups and meeting awesome people. Just finished my first app and it's doing pretty well on the App Store.
I might apply again, trying to convey everything they look for in my application.
Re: What we look for in students
#16Hacker School's filtering process seems to work well. I've been in two batches, and it has continually surprised me how they manage to bring so many smart people together, yet avoid the outwardly-arrogant assholes that seem prevalent in a traditional Computer Science or Engineering university setting.
Maybe not thinking you're hot shit and being willing to go back to school is a passive filter for non-arrogant people :-)
Re: What we look for in students
#17I really feel that I meet all the requirements mentioned here, but sadly, I was rejected for the previous batch. Looking back, I want to believe that I was rejected because I was living abroad and they probably felt I wasn't really sure about moving to The U.S. They also need people who can legally work here as the referrals are their business model. Well, I came here anyway on a sabbatical year. Been learning iOS pr…
There's an important thing I didn't mention in the post: Like any admissions process, ours isn't perfect, and we know we make mistakes. We have to make decisions on a relatively small amount of information, and even if we do a good jobs 90% of the time, we're still going to get it wrong dozens of times a batch.
Since I don't know who you are, I can't speak to the specifics of why we said no. In any case, I'm glad to hear you've had success learning iOS and are considering applying again :)
Re: What we look for in students
#18I really feel that I meet all the requirements mentioned here, but sadly, I was rejected for the previous batch. Looking back, I want to believe that I was rejected because I was living abroad and they probably felt I wasn't really sure about moving to The U.S. They also need people who can legally work here as the referrals are their business model. Well, I came here anyway on a sabbatical year. Been learning iOS pr…
I'm a facilitator at Hacker School, which makes me responsible for a large number of admissions decisions.
While we do make money through referrals, our ability to place someone at a company we work with is not something we consider while doing admissions. (This may be hard to believe, but trust me.) We have a significant number of international students, as well as students who we don't believe will get a job through us for one reason or the other, each batch. We admit based on whether we think someone will make a good Hacker Schooler.
We also try to respond to anyone who asks for clarification about a decision. I'd love to hear from you, and I'd be happy to look into your last application; especially so if you think we made a mistake! Ping me at zach@hackerschool.com.
Re: What we look for in students
#19Just curious. Could someone ballpark the minimum cost to support yourself to go to hacker school? this is something I've been thinking about doing.
Re: What we look for in students
#20I'm fine with a program like HS existing if people want to join it, but I'll have no respect for them until they treat both genders equally in terms of the tuition assistance. Note that I'm all for women joining the program, but I'd presume people with the time to commit to the program are a) not working, and b) don't have much money, so it's completely unfair to exclude men to receive assistance just because they ha…
To clarify, we don't have any "tuition assistance," since we don't charge anyone tuition. Hacker School is entirely free for everyone.
(We do have a limited number grants for living expenses, which other companies pay for, that are currently only available for women.)