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What we look for in students

hackerschool.com

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Re: What we look for in students

#41

Post by fakeer »

cuttooth wrote: post #10

I'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…

Hey, it's free :-) As a matter of fact they offer living assistance in some cases.

Re: What we look for in students

#42

Post by dbancajas »

future_grad wrote: post #32
dbancajas wrote: post #29

Hi, This will be a tldr. I am a senior PhD student this fall 2013. I have always wanted to sharpen my C++ OOP skills and overall programming skills. I'd like to think I have a good grasp of computing systems since my phd is centered around computer architecture/vlsi. But in most times, when I read other people's code, mostly simulators with 50K-100K lines, I have a hard time following through as I think my fundamenta…

Hey, don't worry so much. You seem like you would be a great applicant. You obviously want success if you're a senior PhD student and I think you would be a great fit. Good luck to you! I hope the best.

Thanks for the advise! I will definitely apply!

Re: What we look for in students

#44

Post by Jayschwa »

Schwolop wrote: post #37
zachallaun wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 throug…

Curious about this - what if someone (say, me) has a job and has no immediate intention of leaving it, but also wants to get better at programming and is willing to take a 3 month sabbatical to do so. Recognising that you're unlikely to capture a referral fee for such a person, would you truly ignore that in the admissions process?

They would. Your scenario is not uncommon. Seasoned vets in a secure position still raise the quality of the batch and rub off on the newbies.

Re: What we look for in students

#45

Post by mataug »

dbancajas wrote: post #43
mataug wrote: post #9

I have a friend who has been to HackerSchool, and I hear its really awesome, I have been wanting to attend ever since then, sadly I can't afford to support myself there.

Would you know of someone who can write an in-depth review of HS?

This post in itself an in-depth review of HS, You can also read https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=Hacker...

Re: What we look for in students

#46

Post by revx »

bti wrote: post #13
xinn wrote: post #11

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.

Are you female? They have tuition assistance for women. Apparently men don't need financial assistance...

See previous comments - the tuition assistance is from outside companies like Etsy. The school itself doesn't charge tuition anyway.

Re: What we look for in students

#47

Post by vu2srk »

As an ex-hacker schooler (I was there for two batches), I've been part of countless debates around the whole financial assistance part.

Assuming men are the majority who are interested in programming, and in turn are holding majority of the programming jobs, would you agree with me in hypothesizing that women need a little more security in leaving their jobs, which may not be in the programming field? (I knew quite a few of them who came in from different fields and did programming on the side).

Agreed that the situation in which women are now wrt programming jobs is a chain effect of a whole bunch of other things - with reasons as deep as cultural. But I think the financial assistance is not meant to differentiate, it is only meant to give security to those who need it. A generalisation on that front happened to be in the form of gender. I hope this gives a clearer picture.

Also, I was an international intake and even though I couldn't get a visa to take up a job in the States, HS has only been as helpful as they can be in helping me try.

Re: What we look for in students

#48

Post by nicholasjbs »

xinn wrote: post #36
antics wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, there is no "tuition" and therefore no "tuition assistance". The living stipends are provided by external companies, like etsy, and they are provided as an outreach effort. Now. On a purely practical note, HS is a business, and the core objective is to deliver excellent batch dynamics. The responsibility is to attendees and attendees only -- how are they delivering an experience that makes the time (and,…

Do you think a lower standard is required of female applicants in the application process than of male applicants?

Male and female applicants are judged by exactly the same standards. From our blog post when we first offerred grants:

"We're not going to lower the bar for female applicants. It frustrates us a little that we feel the need to say that, and we think it underlines the sexism (intentional and not) that so pervades the programming world.

But we want to say that now, so people don't have to waste time asking or debating the point. Women will be judged on the exact same scale as men. We think to do otherwise would be insulting and counterproductive. We care a lot about getting more women into Hacker School, but we won't do it at the expense of the quality of the batch."

From: https://www.hackerschool.com/blog/1-summer-2012-applications...

Re: What we look for in students

#49

Post by nicholasjbs »

dbancajas wrote: post #29

Hi, This will be a tldr. I am a senior PhD student this fall 2013. I have always wanted to sharpen my C++ OOP skills and overall programming skills. I'd like to think I have a good grasp of computing systems since my phd is centered around computer architecture/vlsi. But in most times, when I read other people's code, mostly simulators with 50K-100K lines, I have a hard time following through as I think my fundamenta…

Sometimes I feel like you guys are looking for Android/iOS/Ruby/Php programmers

Few if any people in a given batch do Android, iOS or PHP.

I just queried our internal student site, where students can tag themselves with skills, and found the following: 2 students tagged PHP (neither of which are currently using PHP); 3 tagged Android (none of which are working on Android stuff IIRC -- e.g., one is writing a type inference engine in ML); one tagged with iOS (he's a former iOS developer from a very well known startup, but hasn't been doing much iOS this batch); and 12 tagged C++ (I don't actually know how many are currently working on C++ projects).

Re: What we look for in students

#50

Post by nicholasjbs »

deepGem wrote: post #23
nicholasjbs wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the specifics of the situation, but it can be a sign that the person doesn't actually like programming. This isn't always the case -- e.g., we've had alumni who had stopped programming to raise families -- but it's frequently true (e.g., for people who study CS and then get an MBA. When they apply to Hacker School it seems more often than not they're looking to find a cofounder or learn enough to hack t…

What about people who have switched from programming into management, rejected that, and have gotten back to programming :)

That's totally cool :)

(The thing that would make us skeptical is if the person just said they wanted to get back into programming, but hadn't actually done it.)

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