Microbio/chem grad -> CS career: best method?

terenc
Sat, 17 Nov 2012 20:17:49 +0000

How are you able to afford option 2?

When you say you didn’t immediately get med school admission, does that mean you were rejected?
Why can’t you at least attempt med school admissions the second time around?

I think there is something to be said about the significant cost of another two years in college, not to mention the fact that you don’t even know if you would like or do well in CS.

I would consider another option:

There are lot’s of “boot camp” programs out there that teach purely practical programming in a short period of time. For example, there is a program called Dev Bootcamp in San Francisco that charges about $12k and teaches complete beginners to become a web developer in 9 weeks - 40 hours a week. (The total cost is more considering living costs and housing costs, since you’re on your own for that). I’m not affiliated with them, but I work in the Bay Area and have heard of them.

Other similar programs include the Starter League (Chicago), Hungry Academy (this one they actually pay you and guarantee employment, but admissions is very tough), Catalyst (SF), Hackbright Academy (only for women), and App Academy (SF).
Most require tuition and have you cover your own living costs. I think App Academy doesn’t take tuition, but takes a cut of your first year salary if you get a job as a software engineer (they take 12.5%, which is about 10k since a first year software engineer can make about 80k).