

Alex Payne, Peter Seibel, Jessica McKellar, more are Hacker School Residents - nicholasjbs
https://www.hackerschool.com/blog/8-alex-payne-peter-seibel-jessica-mckellar-david-nolen-and-stefan-karpinsky-are-hacker-school-residents

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tgebru
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.

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guiambros
Cool. How old were you when you did this? At some point I may do a sabbatical,
and decide for hacker school than a more traditional school

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tgebru
I'm 29 and just did hacker school this last summer. The youngest person in my
batch was 18 and the oldest was 38 :)

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ibdknox
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 :)

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vitno
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.

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sharkweek
_Was this site's design inspired by Y Combinator?_ - _Yes. We copied most
everything except the 90s markup._

thought that was hilarious

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nicholasjbs
I'm cofounder of Hacker School. I'm happy to answer questions about the
residency program or Hacker School in general.

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jmohsenin
What's the acceptance rate? I'm design-focused (currently at CCA) but I'd
really love to do this to cement my programming skills.

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nicholasjbs
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 :)

Hope this helps!

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nandemo
> 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.

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tgebru
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)

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nandemo
Ah, $600 is not too bad! Thanks for the info.

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julsonl
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.

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ibdknox
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.

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julsonl
I'm not actually part of the hacker school batch (though I wish I were). I
might try my hand applying for the next semester.

