There was a point in time where completely unqualified students memorized and gamed the admissions process. Someone who did the remote interview copy and pasted the answers around the internet.
This led to a very large amount of students that were just not prepared for the program in any way, and it also coincided with the window in time that HR decided that they weren't going to remove any students for performance issues.
It was a fucking mess. I know people who mock interviewed students from those cohorts and they decided to completely disassociate with the school because of the experience.
I know people who technically interviewed them at their companies and they blacklisted Hack Reactor after too many of those rotten apples couldn't write a simple for loop. Some of these interviewers were Hack Reactor grads themselves.
I know someone who hired one of the people from those cohorts and had to fire them for performance after trying to give them half a year and excessive mentorship to improve.
It's a shame that shit like this has happened, because in my eyes it's irreparably tarnished the Hack Reactor name. I've given away my hoodie/tshirt to Goodwill because it just doesn't mean anything special to me anymore.