Launch Academy: Find Top Courses & Training Locations

Launch Academy also focuses on career development and accommodates guest speakers, helps with portfolio reviews, initiates mock interviews, and promotes post-grad support. As a partner of Skills Fund, Launch Academy encourages flexible financing options including a $500 diversity scholarship.

Launch Academy takes its name seriously. The school’s bootcamp is space-themed, intending to launch coding students’ careers into orbit. Evan Charles and Dan Pickett joined forces to graduate the first class in Cambridge, MA, in 2013. Since then, Launch Academy has taught web development to over 30 additional classes from its Boston headquarters. The co-founders established the school intending to bring immersive tech education into New England to serve a more local population of future coders. Launch Academy hosts only one class of students at a time, allowing the school’s full-time instructional and career support staff to dedicate their attention to the latest batch of coding recruits.

School Locations

Launch Academy was born in the Greater Boston area and still calls Boston its home. While the school does advertise its classes outside the region, Launch Academy’s founders are dedicated to serving their local community.

Subjects Taught at Launch Academy

Like many coding bootcamps, Launch Academy’s course uses a full stack development approach. Graduates of their bootcamp will have learned how to work with HTML5 and CSS, JavaScript and Ruby, and databases and APIs. Prospective students who want to compare their coding education options before committing to a course can use Noble Desktop’s Classes Near Me tool to find web development classes and web development bootcamps.

What Classes Are Available?

Launch Academy exclusively offers its signature immersive web development bootcamp. The course’s curriculum strongly emphasizes project-based learning. Each unit features multiple “challenges” through which students develop skills for approaching real-life problems with coding solutions. At various points in the bootcamp, students will learn how to analyze a voter registration database, write a digital resume, create computer games, and develop social media platforms, along with other practical yet creative activities that harness their growing array of full stack web development skills.

Launch Academy also maintains a website called Codecabulary, which features free resources for beginners who are interested in learning to code but aren’t yet ready to commit to the full bootcamp experience.

Class Formats

From its inception, Launch Academy has used a hybrid format for its bootcamp. Recruits spend 8-11 weeks on asynchronous but collaborative digital preparatory instruction, guided by the on-call instructional team and supported by students’ growing community in group work. Then, students gather for an additional ten weeks of in-person sessions in Boston. Since 2020, Launch Academy has also offered the option of participating in their cohorts fully remotely. No matter how they participate, students spend full days coding together with their instructors and work as teams to develop applications, filling out students’ professional portfolios. Bootcamp instruction culminates with each student producing a web application of their very own, which they demonstrate during “Career Kickoff,” a day dedicated to networking with employers.

Admissions Process

Admission to Launch Academy is competitive and begins with a Zoom interview. Applicants can expect to ask questions about the program and answer the interviewer’s questions about their goals and experience in addition to participating in a session on how they would solve a problem that the interviewer poses. Interviewees are also required to deliver a five-minute lesson on a subject of the applicant’s choice. The bootcamp is as rigorous as the interview process: 63.8% of accepted students successfully graduate from the program.

Pricing & Payment Options

The base price for Launch Academy’s bootcamp is $17,500. Tuition financing is available through Ascent. The school offers $500 scholarships for veterans as well as women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ students. Launch Academy also recently partnered with Women Who Code to offer $2,500 scholarships to 200 women in the remainder of 2021. Enrollees who participate in the three-week “Preflight Challenge” before coursework begins may also be eligible for a partial scholarship.

Career Support Services

Once on campus, students of Launch Academy will network weekly with industry professionals during guest talks that are incorporated into the school’s curriculum. The bootcamp’s project-oriented instruction ensures that students have a robust portfolio of work that they can use to demonstrate their skills to employers, and Launch Academy’s career coaching supports students in refining their application materials and interview skills.

During the final day of on-campus instruction, students present the applications they have designed to prospective employers looking to recruit junior coders. After graduation, Launch Academy students have the opportunity to continue working with the school’s career support team and learn new coding skills as well. Even if students do not graduate from the bootcamp, Launch Academy’s career services continue to support them for at least six months after the course’s end.

Alumni Outcomes

Launch Academy participates in the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting, tracking and sharing statistics on their students’ outcomes. Within 180 days of course completion, 76.7% of graduates find employment in their field, with the most common job titles being Software Engineer and Software Engineer Intern. The median annual salary of employed graduates is $73,500, and students start work at major businesses like Amazon, Liberty Mutual, Microsoft, and Salesforce.

What Do Students Say?

Graduates of Launch Academy speak highly of their time in their cohort. They remark on the support they receive from instructors as well as the career coaches. One graduate noted that Launch Academy’s “staff was extremely accommodating, honing in on each individual[’]s strengths and weaknesses, paying close attention to where we’d best fit in next, and where we needed a little boost.” Graduates praise not only the staff but their cohort classmates as well: “Never, even at notable universities and other long-standing educational institutions, have I seen or experienced such a positive energy.” Students learn to collaborate as they would on a real coding team at a real tech company, building a community together.

The biggest criticism that graduates had was the intensity of the program, as Launch Academy expects that students work 60-80 hours each week during live instruction. Another graduate recalls that the bootcamp “was absolutely 110% the most difficult thing I've ever done, but it transformed my life for the better.” The program’s emphasis on collegiality and community makes what could otherwise be a grueling experience instead of an inspiring one.

Pros & Cons

Prospective students investigating their options for studying at a coding bootcamp have lots to consider at Launch Academy. This is a shortlist of takeaways:

Pros of Launch Academy Courses

Project-based learning ensures students develop a significant portfolio of work to demonstrate to prospective employers
Supportive instructors and staff
Tight-knit cohorts
Positive learning environment
Full stack development curriculum prepares students for a wide range of coding careers
Free coding resources are available for students looking to sample the school’s approach before registering for a course

Cons of Launch Academy Courses

Intensive; requires students to code for 60-80 hours per week for ten weeks
Selective admission with a 63.8% graduation rate
Expensive; limited funding available to lower the cost of tuition

Featured Classes from Noble Desktop

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Featured Classes from Noble Desktop

Top Certificate Programs

Featured Classes from Noble Desktop

Top Certificate Programs

Top Courses

Featured Classes from Noble Desktop

Top Certificate Programs

Top Courses

Launch Academy

School Locations

Subjects Taught at Launch Academy

What Classes Are Available?

Class Formats

Admissions Process

Pricing & Payment Options

Career Support Services

Alumni Outcomes

What Do Students Say?

Pros & Cons

Top Course at Launch Academy

Full Stack Development

Subjects Taught at Launch Academy

Coding

Map of Launch Academy Locations