Here's the structure that makes us affordable.
1. Text-based curriculum (cost efficient to write and update; better for students to learn).
2. Ask questions anytime on our platform (questions will be also used to improve the curriculum, so we don't expect students asking the same questions over and over again -> cost saving).
3. We have a good system to grade all your assignments (some automated, some manually reviewed by mentors).
4. We are not venture backed, so we don't have to be aggressive with pricing to please investors.
Think of us as a platform to maximize your self-learning. The biggest fear of self-learning is that you have no one to guide you. We solve that problem. We guide you on the whole journey, but we don't do a lot of hand holding. So, we can be affordable and effective at the same time.
Dedicating less than 10 hours a week is absolutely alright. It will just mean your time to completion will be longer. Many of our students are either studying or working full time. The curriculum is fully flexible for your own schedule.
Yes. All the materials in this course are designed for self study. There are guided coding challenges, well structured tutorial labs. We may sometimes ask you to watch a few videos but those are rare, most of the time you will be putting the new concepts you learn into action.
Yes! You can use mobile browsers, but we don’t have apps. It’s a very comprehensive curriculum, which often requires a computer to do assignments.
The curriculum is mostly text and image based. Text based curriculum is more suitable for programming as it is much easier to code along. We do add videos for certain topics that is better explained with motion graphics, such as demoing a tool.
More importantly, most programming related documentation and resources are going to be text based in real working environments. If you can't learn from reading, you might find it difficult to continue learning in the future.
Our learning style is a lot of doing, practicing and reading. We find this the most effective when it comes to learning coding. We will also ask you to do many things from scratch, so you will actually able to do them after the program.
The content comprises of readings of theories and coding exercises you need to do (and we review each coding exercise you complete as well).
You can learn anytime you want and access the materials, and you will also get support from us when you need them
You can also ask questions anytime you want. On average, 60% of the questions are replied within 60 minutes. And, 99+% are answered within 24 hours.
For more information, check out https://www.altcademy.com/how-we-teach
Yes. All the materials have a comfortable learning curve. If you ever get stuck, there is the live Q&A, chat room and Office Hours where you can get help from our Mentors and support from your classmates.
Career Guidance is a course that helps you prepare for job finding.
Included in the Career Guidance course, there are resume review, social profile review, job market research guidance, technical questions and behavioural question training, plus two mock interviews.
The two mock interviews will be part of the "1-on-1 Mentorship Office-hours".
There will be assignments you need to hand in for each of those components (except mock interviews), and our mentors will review them and help you improve.
Yes. If you are still reading our FAQs by now, you are determined enough to get started!
No, it does not count towards Office Hours. So you can ask as many questions as you want in the Q&A platform.
Yes, all of our curriculum updates will be available to all students regardless when they start the program.
Questions asked on the Q&A platform will be viewable by all students of the program. Mentors will answer new questions as soon as possible. Other students can also comment on questions.
Many of our students ask very interesting questions on curriculum topics and also topics not covered in the curriculum as well. It is a great please to start a discussion too.
60% of the questions are answered within 60 minutes, and 99+% of them are answered within 24 hours.
Both operating systems are fine! We have instructions for both OS, so you don't have to worry about it. 😁
Yes. You will be learning a range of new skills through online challenges and labs, and produce a lot of work through assignments, projects, providing constructive peer review and self assessments. We believe the best way to learn something is to put it in action.
No. The course is conducted completely online so you can join from anywhere in the world.
Yes. All learning materials are in English.
You can access the learning materials and curriculum online anytime, anywhere, 24/7.
For 1-on-1 Mentorship Office-hours, you will book a time slot with a mentor and ask any questions or discuss over projects and challenges.
We cover basically all timezones, so you will be able to find many time slots throughout the week. We have an online widget showing available time slots once you are inside our platform.
Note that 1-on-1 Mentorship Office-hours is only available to Personalized Career Path.
There are no group projects in the current programs. You have to be able to build things from scratch on your own. Once you can do that, you can start working with others.
No time limit. You can take as long as you want; however, we do encourage you to finish within the timeframe so that you will stay sufficiently motivated to keep learning and get the most out of it!
We designed the program to be self paced, so you can learn around your own schedule.
Yes. Personalized 1 on 1 Office Hours slots will be available across different time zones and scheduled in your local time zone. You can checkout this example Office Hour calendar to see if there are Office Hour slots that fit your schedule. Deadlines will also be based on your local time zone.
Not at all. Our program is designed around your schedule and pace. You can learn anytime and pause anytime. You control your own pace and learning schedule. If you learn faster, you can complete faster, and vice versa.
No, we don't typically offer in-person classes unless you are a large business. We deeply believe that online courses are more efficient and effective for learning.
Yes. We offer a lot more than any resources you can find online. For example, we provide a synchronous but adjustable schedule for each cohort so you are motivated to keep learning with your peers. We have an in house Q&A platform where you can get help whenever you are stuck, the platform already has 400+ technical questions asked. We match you with a Mentor who will provide help and do regular check ins in a private chatroom. You can also choose to have personalized 1 on 1 live Office Hours via online video conferencing with your Mentor.
We recommend 10 hours per week of learning if you have a full-time job. You can do 40 hours a week if you have the time capacity. You can also learn at your own pace. For example, if you are busy this week, you can put your studies to next week.
You can learn Full-stack Web Development in 25 to 50 weeks if you spend 5 to 10 hours/week on learning. Our programs are also suitable for full-time learning since our online programs are completely self-paced. For example, we estimate that the Full-stack program will take 500 hours to learn and complete all the exercises and projects, so if you spend 40 hours per week, it should take ~12 weeks to complete.
No, there is no job guarantee. Just like attending Harvard or Yale would not provide job guarantees.
We recommend you to do some research on your local job scene before committing.
You need to enable and allow cookies in your browser in order to log in to any websites including Altcademy.com.
Very little of math is involved in web development.
If you can solve the problems below, you will be fine!
– What is 1 + 8 * 5?
– When x + 10 = y - 5, and y = 27, what is x?
You can also read this article we've published: Read this before you learn coding
All of the programs are suitable for a career change!
If you want a holistic and complete understanding of web development, you should learn both the front-end and back-end web development, which is called Full-stack Web Development.
If you want career guidance and help to get hired, you can pick the Personalized Career Path option upon enrolment.
Our Career Guidance features in the programs are designed to help you with:
– Resume review
– Job market research
– Technical questions
– Interview training
– Social profile review
Employability is varied with different people, but we try our best to help!
Learn more about our Career Guidance at: https://www.altcademy.com/become-a-professional-coder#get-hired
Note that Career Guidance is only available for Personalized Career Option.
If you complete all the required projects, you will become competent enough to continue building out your portfolio and knowledge. You can essentially build anything you want.
Keep in mind that your portfolio needs to be unique to be attractive to employers.
If you go through our Career Guidance program, you will gain the required interview skills and a suitable resume.
Keep in mind that each person has a different past experience and employability.
You have the skills to really work in a real life workplace when:
– you can build anything you're tasked to do (and we train you by asking you to clone websites)
– you can answer technical questions (and we train you with our Career Guidance program)
– you continue to improve and learn (this is required for any coders regardless of experience)
Note that Career Guidance is only available to students with Personalized Career Option.
Altcademy is 100% online!
We designed our program with beginners in mind. So, we go through all the fundamentals first before teaching more advanced concepts.
Yes, we provide digital certificates upon completions of our course(s) and program.
For the digital certificates, you employer can access them online. You can also export them as PDF files.
Yup. Your projects will be on Github and hosted online so others can check them out.
Yes, definitely. You can still join the batch as a late enrollment.
You can simply enroll via https://www.altcademy.com/enroll, and there will be an option to select the start date.
Yes, we will teach both Git and Github. In fact, you will use them almost every day as you advance with our programs.
100%! You will be required to build things from scratch, like cloning the landing page Apple.com or a working version of Twitter with photo upload, in our programs.
Our philosophy is to make sure you can do things from scratch all by yourself. That's the best indicator of competency!
You will have access to the learning materials for the foreseeable future!
You will still get our Certificate as long as you complete the courses in the program. We just want to incentivize students to work harder by implying a soft deadline.
