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What we look for in students

hackerschool.com

61 pointsnicholasjbs51 comments

I'm fine with a program like HS existing if people want to join it, but I'll have no respect for them until they treat both genders equally in terms of the tuition assistance.

Note that I'm all for women joining the program, but I'd presume people with the time to commit to the program are a) not working, and b) don't have much money, so it's completely unfair to exclude men to receive assistance just because they happen to be of the majority who are interested the field.

To clarify, we don't have any "tuition assistance," since we don't charge anyone tuition. Hacker School is entirely free for everyone.

(We do have a limited number grants for living expenses, which other companies pay for, that are currently only available for women.)

The tuition assistance is precisely for this reason that majority interested are men. The assistance is supposed to increase the interest among women.

The money is an extra, it's added on. It's not as though they thought about paying for everybody and then took it away for men, that would be silly.

To be clear, there is no "tuition" and therefore no "tuition assistance". The living stipends are provided by external companies, like etsy, and they are provided as an outreach effort.

Now. On a purely practical note, HS is a business, and the core objective is to deliver excellent batch dynamics. The responsibility is to attendees and attendees only -- how are they delivering an experience that makes the time (and, indirectly, money) commitment of the students worth it? The issue of "fairness" does not enter the conversation because this is not a charity. Or, more straightforwardly, their responsibility is not to people who did not get in.

Now, ok, you might argue that you are not convinced that having a roughly-equal gender ratio is beneficial to the batch as a whole, but I am in the current batch and I'm telling you it makes a huge difference. If you don't believe me, let's chat over email or skype.

Do you think a lower standard is required of female applicants in the application process than of male applicants?

Absolutely not. I have been quite impressed with each and every female participant. It is incredibly obvious that no one in the batch was a pity case. But even if you don't believe this anecdotal evidence, consider that the ratio is worse this time around than any other batch. Since the facilitators are acutely aware of the batch balance (and other statistics), it clear to me that this decision was deliberate, and that it reflects a very strong male applicant pool this time around.

As for my speculation, given the rejection statistics, I'm guessing the HS facilitators could have chosen to admit many more females before this would have even been an issue that should have borne consideration.

Male and female applicants are judged by exactly the same standards. From our blog post when we first offerred grants:

"We're not going to lower the bar for female applicants. It frustrates us a little that we feel the need to say that, and we think it underlines the sexism (intentional and not) that so pervades the programming world.

But we want to say that now, so people don't have to waste time asking or debating the point. Women will be judged on the exact same scale as men. We think to do otherwise would be insulting and counterproductive. We care a lot about getting more women into Hacker School, but we won't do it at the expense of the quality of the batch."

From: https://www.hackerschool.com/blog/1-summer-2012-applications...

Hacker School's filtering process seems to work well. I've been in two batches, and it has continually surprised me how they manage to bring so many smart people together, yet avoid the outwardly-arrogant assholes that seem prevalent in a traditional Computer Science or Engineering university setting.

Maybe not thinking you're hot shit and being willing to go back to school is a passive filter for non-arrogant people :-)

One negative signal for us is if you previously programmed and then stopped (e.g., you studied CS and then become a product manager).

Interesting. Why is this a negative signal?

Not passionate about programming 〈/guess〉

It depends on the specifics of the situation, but it can be a sign that the person doesn't actually like programming. This isn't always the case -- e.g., we've had alumni who had stopped programming to raise families -- but it's frequently true (e.g., for people who study CS and then get an MBA. When they apply to Hacker School it seems more often than not they're looking to find a cofounder or learn enough to hack together a prototype and aren't interested in programming as a craft, which is totally cool but not a fit for Hacker School).

What about people who have switched from programming into management, rejected that, and have gotten back to programming :)

here here. That's a global maximum.

That's totally cool :)

(The thing that would make us skeptical is if the person just said they wanted to get back into programming, but hadn't actually done it.)

Folk with mental illnesses such as depression or ADD are going to raise false positives here. In my case, depression cost me my twenties.

You can't really ask people "hey, have you ever had a mental illness that you may be super uncomfortable about discussing". Not just because it's problematic, but because it'll probably open you to something involving expensive typists (people call them "lawyers" for historical reasons too tedious to enumerate).

I'm not sure how to get around this. Maybe a blanket statement of some sort.

All the applicants get interviewed. Hard to believe the facilitators wouldn't say, "So hey, you quit programming for five years. What's up?" Also, I know that they're not necessarily looking for work experience--if someone loved programming but waited tables for five years, they'd still probably have some personal projects for fun they'd have worked on. If not, they probably wouldn't be a good fit for Hacker School anyway.

Plus, and I'm only going on my own experience and observations, the mentally-deranged fit right in at Hacker School.

Hi, This will be a tldr. I am a senior PhD student this fall 2013. I have always wanted to sharpen my C++ OOP skills and overall programming skills. I'd like to think I have a good grasp of computing systems since my phd is centered around computer architecture/vlsi. But in most times, when I read other people's code, mostly simulators with 50K-100K lines, I have a hard time following through as I think my fundamentals are not really strong. I spend about half the time learning new language intricacies I didn't know rather than understanding how the whole thing works. I have made some efforts into advancing my own understanding of the languages by studying in my own time (currently on Accelerated CPP by Koehnig) but then a conference paper deadline suddenly comes up and I have to reallocate my efforts. If not a conference, my professor will be writing a proposal and needs my help. I feel like there is always something that takes away my focus in learning. Would I make a good candidate for hacker school? Sometimes I feel like you guys are looking for Android/iOS/Ruby/Php programmers, although you have clearly stated that HS is language-agnostic, I still feel like I'd be the lone wolf in HS trying to learn advanced C++..

Hey, don't worry so much. You seem like you would be a great applicant. You obviously want success if you're a senior PhD student and I think you would be a great fit. Good luck to you! I hope the best.

Thanks for the advise! I will definitely apply!

Sometimes I feel like you guys are looking for Android/iOS/Ruby/Php programmers

Few if any people in a given batch do Android, iOS or PHP.

I just queried our internal student site, where students can tag themselves with skills, and found the following: 2 students tagged PHP (neither of which are currently using PHP); 3 tagged Android (none of which are working on Android stuff IIRC -- e.g., one is writing a type inference engine in ML); one tagged with iOS (he's a former iOS developer from a very well known startup, but hasn't been doing much iOS this batch); and 12 tagged C++ (I don't actually know how many are currently working on C++ projects).

I have a friend who has been to HackerSchool, and I hear its really awesome, I have been wanting to attend ever since then, sadly I can't afford to support myself there.

Would you know of someone who can write an in-depth review of HS?

This post in itself an in-depth review of HS, You can also read https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=Hacker...

As an ex-hacker schooler (I was there for two batches), I've been part of countless debates around the whole financial assistance part.

Assuming men are the majority who are interested in programming, and in turn are holding majority of the programming jobs, would you agree with me in hypothesizing that women need a little more security in leaving their jobs, which may not be in the programming field? (I knew quite a few of them who came in from different fields and did programming on the side).

Agreed that the situation in which women are now wrt programming jobs is a chain effect of a whole bunch of other things - with reasons as deep as cultural. But I think the financial assistance is not meant to differentiate, it is only meant to give security to those who need it. A generalisation on that front happened to be in the form of gender. I hope this gives a clearer picture.

Also, I was an international intake and even though I couldn't get a visa to take up a job in the States, HS has only been as helpful as they can be in helping me try.

You forgot "You are financially well-off."

And here I was, excited at the prospect of an easy way out of this agonizing feedback loop.

Are you female? They have tuition assistance for women. Apparently men don't need financial assistance...

I don't think they mean it that way. They just want more women to participate.

See previous comments - the tuition assistance is from outside companies like Etsy. The school itself doesn't charge tuition anyway.

I really feel that I meet all the requirements mentioned here, but sadly, I was rejected for the previous batch.

Looking back, I want to believe that I was rejected because I was living abroad and they probably felt I wasn't really sure about moving to The U.S. They also need people who can legally work here as the referrals are their business model.

Well, I came here anyway on a sabbatical year. Been learning iOS programming, attending meet-ups and meeting awesome people. Just finished my first app and it's doing pretty well on the App Store.

I might apply again, trying to convey everything they look for in my application.

There's an important thing I didn't mention in the post: Like any admissions process, ours isn't perfect, and we know we make mistakes. We have to make decisions on a relatively small amount of information, and even if we do a good jobs 90% of the time, we're still going to get it wrong dozens of times a batch.

Since I don't know who you are, I can't speak to the specifics of why we said no. In any case, I'm glad to hear you've had success learning iOS and are considering applying again :)

I'm a facilitator at Hacker School, which makes me responsible for a large number of admissions decisions.

While we do make money through referrals, our ability to place someone at a company we work with is not something we consider while doing admissions. (This may be hard to believe, but trust me.) We have a significant number of international students, as well as students who we don't believe will get a job through us for one reason or the other, each batch. We admit based on whether we think someone will make a good Hacker Schooler.

We also try to respond to anyone who asks for clarification about a decision. I'd love to hear from you, and I'd be happy to look into your last application; especially so if you think we made a mistake! Ping me at zach@hackerschool.com.

Curious about this - what if someone (say, me) has a job and has no immediate intention of leaving it, but also wants to get better at programming and is willing to take a 3 month sabbatical to do so. Recognising that you're unlikely to capture a referral fee for such a person, would you truly ignore that in the admissions process?

They would. Your scenario is not uncommon. Seasoned vets in a secure position still raise the quality of the batch and rub off on the newbies.

Thank you Zach, those were the conclusions that I jumped into only to make myself feel less bad about not making the cut. It is clear by the comments here that your process gives an equal opportunity to each one of the candidates and referrals are not a decision factor.

I'll reach out to you by e-mail. With so many applicants, I thought you couldn't afford to explain the reasoning behind rejections on a case by case basis. That's why my reply to the rejection e-mail was the standard 'thank you for letting my try' note.

I'm a student in the current batch, and can confirm that their ability to make money off recruiting fees is not a factor in the admissions decisions - I made it very clear in the admissions process that I would not be looking for a job after the batch, because it only seemed fair to let them filter on that if they wanted to. It was and has continued to be a non-issue. In fact, the founders/facilitators I've talked to are enthusiastic about my plans, and offered me great advice.

I joined the last batch (winter 2013) after having been rejected from the prior one. The rejection sucked, I questioned my programming skills, my legitimacy as a real developer. Turns out I'm just awful at interviewing - spent most of the time talking about startups for some reason, probably because it seemed safer than exposing my relative programming inexperience at the time.

I'll second the sentiment that admissions are based purely on fit for Hacker School, not likelihood of making money for them, gender, or any other criteria. I just came across as too much of a "startup guy" first time around in the limited interview time.

Regrettably, I'm not an autodidact and my ADD can sometimes get in the way when to learning programming. Knowing this from an applicant, does that dissuade you from accepting that person?

Much of what I have learned in programming already was simply finding ways to automate tasks at my current job - the motivation to learn was there, I suppose, and helped keep the ADD at bay. But, for all I know the stuff I wrote could just be child's play and no real indicator of talent. Something that led me to change my mind about applying a few months ago. Have any of your students felt something similar before they started attending?

This should NOT stop you from applying. Do it.

For me, this is by far the most reassuring submission on HN this week.

I really want to do this at some point, but I'm still in college, and the schedule never lines up with when school starts and ends. Have any college students attended hacker school/what do you guys think about college students attending? (I'm a Comp Eng major btw).

College students are completely welcome, and we've had a number attend (everyone from first year undergrads to fifth year PhDs). We typically have the most during our summer batch, where it's been ~10% undergrads and ~10% grad students the past couple of summers.

We've also had a number of students who have taken a semester long leave from their BS/MS/PhD program.

We try to make our summer batch work for students, but with such variation in university schedules, it inevitably conflicts with some schools. I'm sorry to hear yours is one of them :(

Hey, thanks for posting. Same situation as you. Seems like an amazing program and would love to do this at some point as well, but with the alignment of our schedules...do we see this ever happening?

What can we/HS do to assist people like us?

Hey I'm a bit late on this but I figured I'd chime in. I'm part of the current batch and I left school two weeks early to attend, so its possible even if your schedules don't line up. That said, I was only a part time student last quarter and it was still pretty tough doing HS by day and finishing up my finals by night, but I made it happen, feel free to email me if you want to talk about it (email in profile).

Just curious. Could someone ballpark the minimum cost to support yourself to go to hacker school? this is something I've been thinking about doing.

It depends a lot on your circumstances (e.g., if you have student loans, dependents, etc), but if you're just supporting your self and are willing to live cheaply, you can do it on $5 to 6k (this number is based on an informal poll of our students I did a few batches ago; it's also what I personally live off of during a batch).

why is there a requirement of moving to nyc? An outlying suburb, borough or state isn't good? like living in nj etc.

There's no requirement to move to NYC proper. We should make it clearer that we mean the metro area. We have several students commuting from NJ this batch.

Just applied. Crossing my fingers. Thanks for posting this.

I hope the best for you!

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