I was absolutely the LEAST technical person I knew. I realized I wanted to do this last year, when I was in college studying Business & Finance. I was working on a side project/start up and realized I wanted to code so bad, and I wanted to be writing the code instead of business dev. That in and of itself, helped me get into these programs.

I applied to App Academy first. Because I dropped out of school, the no tuition appealed greatly. Ned and Kush are awesome. I was "accepted" pending the prep work and final interview. I was a total noob, and still had a PC so setting up an environment was hard. I didn't pass the final interview, but Ned was incredibly encouraging and said I could apply again.

I applied to DBC at the same time as AA and was accepted as well. I have the best parents in the world, and they bought me a refurbished MacBook Pro which helped immensely. I spent a couple months going to my local library every day for 4+ hours and made great progress. I went up to the Bay and saw the class room. I had regular "office hours" with Keith and Karim who are awesome and incredibly patient.

Unfortunately my mother was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. I live in Orange County, and the 8 hour difference from here to San Fran played a role in hesitation. DBC also said I needed to simply wait another month or 2 (I was supposed to go in May) but because of the cancer, I decided to stay.

Around that time (late April) I applied to somewhere closer, and was accepted into General Assembly Web Development Immersive in Santa Monica. Because I had already been doing prep work, I completed it quickly and started class June 17. I am currently starting my 5th week of a 12 week course tomorrow.

So far we have been going really fast. The first segment was the class doing a résumé generator project in bootstrap, JavaScript, and a ruby backend also using MongoDB. We then paired off, and in groups of 2 the whole class is building any project we want, but it will be done in 3 weeks. Then with the remaining time left, we will build 2 more project each lasting 3 weeks (3 projects).

What I like most about General Assembly is after the program they have an Apprenticeship Program where you work for a local tech company (a partner company) for 3 months, 4 days a week. Every Friday you come back into GA and talk about what you did during the week, and then they offer more workshops to hone your skills further. I am working my ass off to make sure I am one of the students who gets accepted into the Apprenticeship Program.

I like the apprenticeship because of the subtle transition from student into junior dev. I like being close to my mom as well. The partner companies seem really cool, although GA hasn't told us that much about it, because they want us to remain focused.

If I can get into the Apprenticeship Program, I will obviously do that. I still want to get up to the bay as well. I applied to Catalyst (now Hack Reactor) in January because I like JavaScript, and am considering going to either DBC, AA or HR after this program, but that might be unnecessary and would put me in another 10-15k in debt on top of the 12k I am already in from GA.

Overall, these are great schools. Having had some experience with 4 of them, they are all awesome and have great teachers with great experience. From being a strictly bis-dev guy who is actually able to hold his own in the class...if I can do it anyone can as long as you realize it will be VERY hard and you have to make sure this is what you want to do.

If you have any other questions, my email is on my profile.