Profile photo for Anthony Phillips

He are some considerations from my answer to a similar question(Is going from high school to a coding bootcamp a viable option?):

We have had a good number of people come directly to Hack Reactor (Hack Reactor - The CS Degree for the 21st Century) from high school or early in their college career. As with any choice, you are giving up something and getting something at the same time.

I'm going to speak from and try to convey my own personal experience because I really think your question should be about the personal/social sacrifices that you are going to be making by not going to university. The pictures will mostly represent the university experiences of the founders of Hack Reactor. After having reflected on this from having written the answer, I think my stance is that you should either go to university or promise yourself you will take at least a year off of work within the next 4 to accomplish all the things you will miss from the university experience.

By not going to university, you are giving up:

  1. A long period of time that you are essentially allowed to figure out your autonomy without massive consequences
  2. A unique social experience - The dorm experience is a special one.
  1. Summers off is baked into the experience, and you can travel for three months at a crack(Marcus's travels during university)

  1. Opportunities to volunteer and invest in yourself in ways that you would not likely prioritize without the cultural support that university gives to investing in this way (Volunteering at this school in LA was one of the formative experiences that let me know my passion was in education)
  1. Friends that you will build strong bonds with (3 of the 4 co-founders of Hack Reactor went to University together - the two closest people are Tony and Shawn, the third closest on the left is Marcus.)
  1. Deep theoretical knowledge of the physics behind computing and the electrical engineering behind computing.
  2. A rounded education - As a Biology undergrad, I had to take "The Monster and the Detective" and "A History of Jazz" to satisfy requirements.


By not going to university, you are getting:

  1. A 2-4 year head start on everyone else that graduated in your class - The students that graduate from Hack Reactor (some of whom went to university, some of whom didn't) have a ~99% placement rate after graduation as of May, 2014. The average starting salary is ~105k. Their counterparts who went to university will likely have a starting salary between 90-100k, four years from now.
  2. A faster "proof of concept" - I went to university, became pre-med, did hundreds of credits in the Neuro and Bio departments, and graduated without ever being forced to step foot in a hospital. I volunteered on the side at a hospital, but it wasn't until I graduated that I really started understanding whether this would be the career for me. Six months after graduating, I realized I didn't want to become a doctor. Doing Hack Reactor will tell you pretty definitively within three months whether you want to program for life or not.
  3. Money - I still have college loans. Many people have tens of thousands of dollars in loans long after they graduate. Hack Reactor is just a much cheaper route to get into the industry.
  4. More practical skills - Many universities still do not teach version control or deployment. Some don't teach TDD. Most developers either learn these things on the job or on the side during university.


One question you could be asking is: "Will I be likely to succeed?" Our data indicates you have about the same likelihood to get a job as people with degrees that enter the course. It is true that you may have some social obstacles that you may need to overcome (getting hired is as much social as it is technical), but if you are on board to work on all pertinent skills (technical or not), the data we have seen is auspicious.

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