By: Jane, Admissions Specialist
In March, we will have reached our first year of facilitating our program entirely online as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, we were saddened that our students would not experience the hands-on, collaborative, in-person learning model that Ada is so well known for. It was difficult, but our Education team worked tirelessly to translate our in-person program online as accurately as possible. Even after adapting our program online, there were bumps along the way, so we opened channels of feedback from our students to let us know what was working well and what could afford to be adjusted for a better learning experience.
A year later, we look back and see that our students not only adapted to the digital program but also thrived on their ways to internships and full-time jobs. Cohort 14 students boasted the best average interview week scores, and they gave Ada a 95 Net Promoter Score. We also graduated 47 software developers with Cohort 13 in January, of which 87% already have full-time jobs.
Our students’ success has nulled our concerns around whether our program can be successful in an online format. Our students have proved to us that it is possible, and our Education team has already done the legwork of translating our entire program into a digital experience. Naturally, as we reflected on what would be our next steps, we realized much of the groundwork was already laid to expand our online class. So that is what we will be doing with our next admissions cycle! We will accept 48 students for the Seattle class and 48 students for an entirely digital class, accepting a total of 96 students for Cohort 16, our biggest class to date. With this digital class, we hope to provide a more accessible option for those who want to become Adies but are unable to make the move to Seattle.
We hope to provide more opportunities for folks outside of Seattle who want to join a growing network of Adies who are not only changing their own lives but bringing much needed change to the tech industry.
To accommodate the increasing class size, we are staffing up! We are welcoming two Program Directors that will manage Instructors and classroom procedures for both the Seattle and Digital class. We are also welcoming two new Associate Instructors and a Program Associate that will help support the digital class.
