I took a break from my startup and PhD in EE at Stanford as well as 6 years of work at Apple to do hacker school. It has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life and I would do it again if I could. There were people with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences during my batch--from programmers who learned how to code before they could speak :) to a baker who had only started programming a month before the beginning of the batch. The only requirement is that you enjoy it so I encourage anyone who wants to grow as a programmer to apply.
I know both David Nolen and Alex Payne - they are fantastic engineers and awesome people to be around. If nothing else, I highly recommend people apply just to have a chance to interact with them :)
I really can't emphasize enough how awesome Hacker School is. I was in the last batch.
If spending three months working on open source projects, developing & stretching your coding skills, meeting awesome people, & living in NYC sound awesome, then you should apply.
The acceptance rate has varied considerably by batch. It's generally pretty low, but I think the numbers are incredibly misleading. The reason is that most of the people we say no to don't really want Hacker School for what it is (e.g., they're looking for some sort of Rails bootcamp, or they want to prototype apps and products, not focus on becoming a better programmer) and/or because they don't seem to actually like programming very much.
I think we accept the majority of people who a) really enjoy programming, and b) have a clear idea of what Hacker School is and is not. If you meet those two criteria, your odds of getting in are quite good :)
Hello! I was actually looking into applying for this a few days ago. However, I am new to development in general -- I only have knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript/jQuery. Would this prevent me from being accepted?
In short, you need to have programmed enough to know that you actually enjoy it. We look for people who are smart, friendly, intellectually curious, enjoy programming, and want to get significantly better.
> While New York can be a very expensive city, it can also be reasonable if you plan correctly. You can certainly find a room for under $1,000/month.
I wonder how hard is to find such a room for someone who's not an US citizen and doesn't live there. Anyone who's been in that situation care to provide more info? Do you just go to craigslist/AirBnB and try to book a room for 3 months?
I'd love to apply to Hacker School, but currently I don't think I could afford 3 months in NY without any income.
I roomed with 3 other hacker schoolers in a 4 bedroom apartment about 20 minutes away from hacker school (by train), and rent was $600 a month. I found the place through craigslist. Once you get accepted you can coordinate with other hacker schoolers and people from previous batches to help you find affordable places to live. Also, there were people from India, South Africa, Netherlands, Sweden and France during my batch. Most of them found housing in a similar way (through craigslist/airbnb or previous hacker school alumni)
This sounds awesome! I've just started learning about Clojure and Clojurescript and have encountered a lot of David Nolen's work. It'll be amazing to be able to hack with and learn from him for those 3 months.
He's a great and very smart guy - definitely take advantage of his time while you have it. His work on the core.logic and ClojureScript has been a serious boon to the community.
