Hackbright Academy: Find Top Courses & Training Locations

All students are paired with engineer mentors and are provided with career support throughout the program. Financially, students are also offered various scholarships and payment plans to ensure tuition flexibility. Also, if a student accepts a full-time job offer from a company within the network, Hackbright Academy will refund a part of the tuition fee in favor of a placement fee.

Website: https://hackbrightacademy.com/

Will be posted here: https://www.nobledesktop.com/classes-near-me/schools/hackbright-academy

Founded in the Bay Area in 2012 by David Phillips, Hackbright Academy is now a woman-led coding school that is changing the face of the tech industry. From its inception, the school has made it its mission to “#ChangeTheRatio” of gender representation in the male-dominated field of technology. Under the leadership of CEO Anita Hill, the school exclusively serves women and people who are gender diverse. Hackbright Academy offers both in-person and online courses in software engineering, as well as preparatory courses for those who need additional skill-building support before studying software engineering. Alongside lecture-based and lab instruction, software engineering students receive comprehensive career counseling included in their studies. Graduates of the school enter the workforce prepared to take on “brogrammer” culture and succeed as talented software engineers.

School Locations

Hackbright Academy is based in San Francisco, where it has a dedicated campus for its in-person software engineering courses. For prospective students located outside of the Bay Area, live remote versions of Hackbright Academy’s in-person courses are also available online. Remote students will receive the same training as their in-person peers and will work on the same Pacific schedule. Hackbright Academy’s free course in Python for beginners is also available online and is self-paced.

Subjects Taught at Hackbright Academy

Hackbright Academy offers a single software engineering program that is available in full-time and part-time formats, as well as a prep class and a free self-paced Python class. In their software engineering program, students learn full stack software development.

Hackbright Academy allows prospective students to compare the courses they offer. To weigh these options against other coding classes, coding bootcamps, and software engineering bootcamps in your area, use Noble Desktop’s Classes Near Me tool.

What Classes Are Available?

The primary offering at Hackbright Academy is its signature software engineering program. Students receive an introduction to programming, data structures and APIs, and major web technologies including HTML and CSS. They also learn the fundamentals of databases, SQL, and JavaScript, along with data modeling, data structures, and the principles of computer science. By the end of the program, all students will have applied what they have learned in an independent project designed to demonstrate their skills to employers. The program’s final modules are dedicated to career preparation and coaching.

Hackbright Academy recommends that students applying to their software engineering program have at least 37 hours of experience with coding and be confident in a few fundamental coding concepts detailed in their application process overview. For students who need more training before taking the full software engineering program, Hackbright Academy offers a short, part-time prep course. By the end of the course, students will have experience with Python and the basics of programming logic, and they will have developed familiarity in using coding skills to solve problems.

For students who want to test the coding waters before committing time and money to intensive training, Hackbright Academy also offers a free course in the basics of Python. Students who take either the prep course or the free Python course develop the necessary skills to apply for the full software engineering program.

Class Formats

Students at Hackbright Academy can take the full software engineering program in-person or live online, full-time or part-time. The full-time version of the course runs 12 weeks, and students attend classes, labs, and professionalization events eight hours a day, five days a week.

The part-time course delivers the same content and preparation over 24 weeks, allowing students who are already working a full-time job to attend Hackbright Academy for three hours on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and eight hours on Saturdays. Hackbright Academy emphasizes the role that community plays in their students’ education. All students will get significant experience in coding alongside a classmate, individual attention from course instructors, and 1-on-1 mentorship from two industry professionals.

In the part-time prep course, students can study in-person or live online, for two-and-a-half hours on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and four hours on Saturdays, for five weeks. The free Python course is offered online and is self-guided, and includes videos, activities, and quizzes to test students’ new knowledge.

Admissions Process

To apply to the software engineering program, students submit an online application. If their application is approved, they will then participate in an interview process: first, an admissions interview; and second, a technical interview and exercise to demonstrate facility with the necessary coding skills to succeed in the program. Students who have completed the prep course or the free Python course receive only the second interview. After the interview process, prospective students will learn within a week if they have been admitted to the program.

To apply to the prep course, prospective students submit just an online application. For the free Python course, students need only a working email address to access module materials.

Admissions for all courses are rolling, and there is no cost for any of the applications.

Pricing & Payment Options

The full software engineering program currently costs $14,900 for the in-person version and $12,900 for the remote version. A $250 deposit is required upon admission, and the remainder is due upfront. Hackbright offers need-based partial tuition scholarships to a select number of students who apply for them, and also recommends that students apply for other partial tuition scholarships. Students who have completed the prep course receive a $1,500 discount on tuition for the software engineering course. Hackbright Academy has also collected a short list of loan providers that work with students to fund their tuition in the software engineering program. In addition, select eligible students can also apply for Hackbright Academy’s tuition deferral program, which allows students to defer the bulk of the cost until they are employed.

The prep course typically costs $500, but is currently discounted to $249, and requires no deposit. The online Python course is completely free from start to finish.

Career Support Services

Career preparation is built into the curriculum for Hackbright Academy software engineering students. Throughout their studies, students learn how to succeed in the tech job market. They prepare their materials for interviews and participate in industry networking and professional mentorship. Students have access to Hackbright Academy’s career development team outside of class time as well and can consult individually with a team member.

Alumni Outcomes

Hackbright Academy boasts a 99% graduation rate and a 71% full-time industry job placement rate, with a median starting salary of around $88,000 annually. The vast majority of successful students go on to become software engineers. Hackbright Academy reports that they have graduates now working at major tech companies such as Amazon, Intuit, Slack, Twitter, and Yelp.

What Do Students Say?

Graduates of courses at Hackbright Academy speak positively of their time enrolled there. Hackbright Academy’s main selling point is its mission to break down gender barriers in the tech industry, and student reviews emphasize that this fact is borne out in their experiences at the institution. One software engineering graduate reported that “it was amazing to be surrounded by only women,” describing how “Hackbright was much more emotionally supportive and there was a lot less…ego blustering going on” than in a traditional coding program. Students praise the collegial environment, the collaboration among peers, and the support they received from instructors and staff.

While some students pointed to how the curriculum could be vigorous and the workload intense, and that it could be easy to fall off track if they weren’t careful, many of those same students reported that taking the course was still an important and useful stepping stone in their career trajectory. “The first week is incredibly difficult for someone with no coding experience, and the first six weeks after that are intense, time-consuming, and essentially a drink from a firehose of information,” wrote one graduate of the remote software engineering program. Even so, she said that she “[c]an’t recommend this program enough for someone who is willing to put in the time and effort to utilize all of Hackbright’s amazing resources.” Coding school can be a major investment, and for these graduates, the investment was worth it.

Pros & Cons

Every coding program has benefits and disadvantages. Students looking into Hackbright Academy can use the list below to help decide where they want to commit to studying.

Pros of Hackbright Academy Courses

Full-stack training in their software engineering course
Free Python class to build skills to succeed in the software engineering course
Supportive environment for women and nonbinary people who are underrepresented in the tech industry
Comprehensive career training throughout the program and support for job placement post-graduation
Dedicated 1-on-1 mentorship with industry professionals
Courses available online for remote access to Hackbright Academy education and career coaching

Cons of Hackbright Academy Courses

In-depth courses on individual coding topics and courses in specialized subjects (e.g., digital marketing, graphic design, social media, etc.) are not available
Live courses can have overwhelming workloads and rigorous demands on students’ time
Live online courses are offered only on Pacific time, and in-person courses are located only in San Francisco
Expensive (the software engineering course costs over $12,000), with limited options for financing

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Hackbright Academy

School Locations

Subjects Taught at Hackbright Academy

What Classes Are Available?

Class Formats

Admissions Process

Pricing & Payment Options

Career Support Services

Alumni Outcomes

What Do Students Say?

Pros & Cons

Top Courses at Hackbright Academy

Full-Time Software Engineering Program

Part-Time Software Engineering Program

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Subjects Taught at Hackbright Academy

Software Engineering

Map of Hackbright Academy Locations