SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Oct 18, 2016) - Holberton School, the two-year school for full-stack engineers, today announced it had opened the admissions process for its January class. The school's inaugural class, begun January 2016, already has half the class hired into Apple, Docker, DropBox and more -- and includes a student who received funding to start his own businesses.
"What a great first year we've had with motivated students and unprecedented support from the tech community here in Silicon Valley and around the world," said Julien Barbier, co-founder and CEO of Holberton School. "We encourage everyone to apply who has a thirst for knowledge is motivated to work hard independently and in groups."
In its first year, Holberton students have received renown participating in a number of different projects and events. From hosting the first ever International Botathon in July 2016 to holding a session on innovative ways to play Pokemon Go by staying home. The school's numerous achievements included introducing highly qualified mentors from well-known companies, articles published under both student and founder byline, and even having one student receive a coveted internship at NASA's SETI Institute.
The San Francisco-based school offers an alternative to college, online courses and coding bootcamps. It trains world-class full-stack software engineers in two years by using a system already proven in Europe to scale to graduate thousands of elite engineers a year. The curriculum is based on peer-learning, a methodology where students help each other to learn and reach their goals. In the old educational system this is called cheating, in the business world it's called collaboration. The school also uses a project-based approach -- meaning no formal teachers, no lectures -- students learn by building -- which guarantees that students are fully prepared to take on the most demanding jobs and maybe even hunt for asteroids.
To become students at Holberton, candidates go through a four-step selection process, based solely on talent and motivation, and not on the basis of educational degree, or programming experience. The selection process is designed to actually be the beginning of the curriculum so that applicants start learning -- and collaborating -- through it. The process, which does not require technical knowledge or programming experience, consists of three levels:
- Level 1 - Small online projects and tests that applicants can complete at their own pace
- Level 2 - A step-by-step challenge during which applicants create a website. At this level, the candidates are encouraged to begin collaborating, an important component of learning at the school.
- Level 3 - On-site or Skype interview
Open to all
Holberton School is open to anyone -- ages of 18 to 128, whether a high school graduate or not, and whether an experienced programmer or not. The selection process is based only on talent and motivation. The Holberton School will enable students from every community and background to have the opportunity to become a software engineer.
The Holberton School prides itself on offering unique teaching and tuition models that are focused more on project learning thank the traditional in class, lecture style of learning and do not require students to pay a dime until they are employed. Holberton is also the first school to use Bitcoin technology to record and secure student credentials and diplomas. In keeping with the school's unorthodox teaching methods, this innovative school has made its mission to teach the students about the realities working as developer by going as far as waking up the students in the middle of the night to report project crises that they will likely face in the real world.
About Holberton School
Holberton School is a project-based alternative to college for the next generation of software engineers.
Using project-based learning and peer learning, Holberton School's mission is to train the best software engineers of their generation. At Holberton School, there are no formal teachers and no formal courses. Instead, everything is project-centered. The school gives students increasingly difficult programming challenges to solve, and give them minimal initial directions on how to solve them. As a consequence, students naturally look for the theory and tools they need, understand them, use them, work together, and help each other.
Read more about Holberton School:
- Holberton School website
- Holberton School Meetup page
- Holberton School blog
- Facebook page
- Follow Holberton School on Twitter
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Joe Eckert for Holberton School