Check out our review of Flatiron School to learn more about their courses, costs, and student reviews.
Updated in 2023
- What does Flatiron School do?
- Who is Flatiron School for?
- What does Flatiron School cost?
- Ratings and reviews of Flatiron School
- Alternatives to Flatiron School
- How does Flatiron School compare to Pathrise?
What does Flatiron School do?
Founded in 2012 and acquired by WeWork in 2017, Flatiron School is an educational program with options for classes in-person and online. Their campuses are in New York City, San Francisco, Atlanta, Austin, Seattle, DC, Denver, London, Sydney, and a few more cities.
They offer courses in software engineering, UX design, data science, and cybersecurity analytics. Students can choose between full-time immersive or part-time courses. The full-time courses on campus last from 12-24 weeks. Online, they are varied in length. For example, the software engineering full-time program takes 5 months and the part-time program takes 10 months. Alternatively, the UX design full-time program takes 6 months and the part-time one takes 11 months. There is also a self-paced option, where students have access to the curriculum for 15 months.
Flatiron also offers free pre-bootcamp courses for software engineering, data science, and UX design. These programs last 75 hours. The goal is to help people prepare for the often intense admissions processes for bootcamps. They also offer 2 introductory courses to help learn the fundamentals of coding. The first is Intro to JavaScript, which lasts 50 hours The second is Intro to Ruby, which lasts 30 hours. These are both free as well.
Who is Flatiron School for?
For those with no background who want to transition into a software engineering, data science, or product design role, Flatiron School can be a good option.
What does Flatiron School cost? How much work is involved?
Flatiron School admissions processes and costs vary by program. Applicants go through a non-technical interview and a technical assessment for the onsite courses. If accepted, they have pre-work to do in preparation for their first day.
The immersive courses cost $16,900. Students can choose to pay this upfront or with loans. They used to give students access to an income share agreement (ISA), but they have since removed that option.
Ratings and reviews
Like most bootcamps, the reviews online are mixed. There are plenty of people who have found success with Flatiron School and are now working in roles directly related to what they learned in the course. The general consensus is that Flatiron works best for self-starters who are motivated and willing to put in the work. On their website, they list a wide variety of impressive companies where their students now work.
On the other hand, Flatiron was involved in a $375,000 settlement in 2017 based on misleading employment and salary numbers they had released. In addition, students have reported that they felt the lessons were half-baked and the instructors were not very strong. Though, it does seem like there is some flexibility if you do not work well with your instructor.
Alternatives to Flatiron School
As an educational program, there are a fair number of alternatives to Flatiron School.
- One of the most well known bootcamps is General Assembly. They offer full-time, part-time, and 1-day courses on a variety of topics like software engineering, data science, UX design, digital marketing, product management, and more. Read more about General Assembly in our review.
- Students can also consider Kenzie Academy. A full-time tech bootcamp, Kenzie offers in-person and online courses in 2 tracks: software engineering & UX design and front-end engineering. Learn more about Kenzie Academy in our review.
- Similarly, Pragmatic Institute have online courses for people interested in learning skills to break into the tech industry.
- The Tech Academy, Nucamp, Fullstack Academy, Zip Code Wilmington, and Coding Dojo are online and onsite bootcamps that help people learn the technical skills necessary to land a job as a (junior) software developer or data scientist.
- For those in the cities listed above, Designation offers online and in-person design courses on the same campus as Flatiron School.
- Similarly, people can check out Galvanize, which has options for full-time immersive and part-time online courses in software engineering and data science.
- Students interested in taking online self-guided or instructor-led product design courses can check out DesignerUp. Learn more about DesignerUp in our review.
More alternatives
- For people with an interest in data science, Metis has part-time introduction courses as well as onsite and online bootcamp options. Learn more about Metis in our review.
- Current and aspiring data scientists can also consider DataCamp, Dataquest, Promotable, and Data Science Dojo. They offer individual courses, as well as in-depth tracks.
- If you are starting from scratch, you can consider the self-paced course at Data Science Dream Job. Or, check out the part-time and full-time data courses offered by Divergence Academy and K2 Data Science.
- Coding Temple, QuickStart, and RMOTR are Python data science and web development bootcamps, focusing on the fundamentals.
- Aspiring designers can consider Designlab. This online bootcamp that teaches the necessary skills to land a job as a UX designer. Read more about Designlab in our review.
- Similarly, Bloc, Skillcrush, OpenClassrooms, Perpetual Education, Interaction Design Foundation, Helio Training, V School, Memorisely, and InternStreet are online bootcamps and resources with tracks in web development and design.
- Offering a variety of diploma programs, certificate courses, and other training, BrainStation is for students who are looking to pivot into a new career in data science, UX/UI design, development, and product management.
- You can check out Udacity and Springboard. They are online educational platforms that students can use to brush up on the basics or advance their current tech skills. Read more about Udacity and Springboard in our reviews.
- edX is one of the largest online learning platforms. They have courses from top universities like Harvard and MIT as well as big tech companies like Microsoft. Learn more about edX in our review.
- Codecademy is one of the most popular coding programs online. They provide free courses on many different programming languages. They also offer membership options ranging from $20 to $40. Learn more about Codecademy in our review.
More resources
- They can also check out Hack Reactor. This software engineering bootcamp offers full-time online and onsite courses as well as part-time online options.
- GrowthX Academy, allWomen Academy, University of Arizona Bootcamps, and One Month are online bootcamps with courses in growth marketing, UX design, and sales and business development.
- Similarly, there are Coursera, Simplilearn, Learn UX, Treehouse, and Pluralsight, which provide free and low-cost courses.
- Udemy is an online learning platform with over 100,000 online video courses in a wide variety of topics. Udemy students can pick & choose classes, often paying around $10 per class.
- Free online resources, SoloLearn and the Mode tutorials have tracks in SQL, as well as other programming languages.
- Aspiring software engineers and web developers can also consider CodeX Academy, a self-paced coding bootcamp with mentorship opportunities. Learn more about CodeX Academy in our review.
- Students located in the Bay Area or looking to work in Silicon Valley can check out Tradecraft, which has tracks in product design, growth marketing, engineering, and sales.
How does Flatiron School compare to Pathrise?
Flatiron School is a bootcamp, with courses for people who are interested in learning a completely new skill, like UX design or software engineering. At Pathrise, job-seekers in our program should already have a background in the field they are interested in so that they can participate in and fully benefit from our technical workshops, where we provide a more specific curriculum based on what they will see in their interviews.
All of our workshops and sessions at Pathrise are live, as well as recorded, so that job-seekers in our program can review them afterwards and continue learning. Our program is flexible, with only 2-4 hours of sessions per week and 1-on-1 sessions that can be scheduled whenever job-seekers need them. Our curriculum is personalized to work on the specific skills that people struggle with the most.
Specifically, Pathrise focuses on technical and behavioral interviewing as well as resume and LinkedIn optimization, portfolio building and strengthening, cold email and reverse recruiting lessons, and negotiation templates and guidance. Job-seekers in Pathrise find a job, on average, within 3-5 months of joining the program.
Pathrise is a career accelerator that works with students and professionals 1-on-1 so they can land their dream job in tech. If you want to work with any of our mentors to get help with your technical and behavioral interviews or with any other aspect of the job search, join Pathrise.
Apply today.
