Applying to the Recurse Center (and getting rejected)

RC is a self-directed, community-driven educational retreat for programmers

I first heard about the Recurse Center (RC) in my first job at a start up post-university. RC describes itself as a self-directed, community-driven educational retreat for programmers. Although I thought RC sounded very interesting conceptually, I was surrounded by engineers and the colleagues I knew who participated in RC were people I admired, I had no idea how to code at the time.

Fast forward a few years and an aggressive self-taught programming agenda, I managed to land my first technical role as a junior data scientist. Although I’ve learned tons in this role, I was keen to expand my network of individuals who knew how to code, learn a few programming things outside the scope of my job and spend a lot of time programming in a safe, self-directed environment. Enter RC.

I spent January working on my application, refining my coding project and answering the essay prompts to the best of my ability. I applied on the 1st of February 2022 and was selected for the first round behavioural interview on the 11th of February. I interviewed three days later.

I was asked the following questions:

1. To describe RC in my own words;
2. Why I was interested in RC;
3. What I wanted to achieve during my time there;
4. How I would go about achieving that (while taking advantage of RC’s self-directed, community-driven nature)
5. My favourite programming language and;
6. In my opinion, the most elegant syntax in Python (my favourite programming language)

I struggled more than I anticipated with the interview. The interviewer pressed me several times on a number of my answers relating to why RC and what I wanted to achieve. I don’t think I had enough clarity and expressed myself carefully enough on why and how I was going to achieve what I wanted at RC specifically. I felt a bit flustered during the interview and I didn’t feel confident coming out of it. Two weeks later, I found out I would not progress to the final round.

To summarise, the timeline from when I submitted to when I was rejected:

Day 0 — submit application

Day 11 — selected for behavioural interview

Day 14 — completed behavioural interview

Day 29 — rejected

If I could redo the process, I would:

1. Have a clearer sense of what RC specifically would provide. It’s not enough to state you’re keen to be in a safe, community-oriented environment or grow your network of programmers. I wish I had done more homework in order to have a RC-specific answer to these questions.
2. Have a clearer sense of how I would go about achieving my goals. I presented a plan of how I would go about planning to achieve my goals, rather than something more concrete. I hadn’t anticipated preparing this for the interview process, but I also wish I had. It would have given me more clarity in my own goals. Also, I would have planned and spoken about specific goals that also took advantage of RC’s self-directed, self-organising structure.
3. Apply when you’re not busy! I interviewed the weekend I moved house as they have a few days of slots available right after I was selected to interview. They allow you to request a different day and I wish I had taken advantage of that!

RC doesn’t provide feedback for your application but they do allow you to apply again after three months. I’m disappointed but there are learnings I’ll take forward if I end up applying again. I hope this helps anyone applying and best of luck!