My Application Process at The Turing School of Software and Design

My last post on Medium was back at the end of August, and in it, I had promised to write again, telling the story of my application process to the Turing School of Software and Design. At the risk of ruining any sort of suspense you may have come to this article to find, I would like to inform you that I was indeed accepted, and that I am currently a third module student.

I did a fair amount of research as I was applying, and I found the applications process at Turing to be a bit different. They had remarked that they frontloaded a lot of their application process to the front, and that they interviewed only who they thought were stellar candidates, and that most of the people that they interviewed were accepted. It made sense. Interviewing candidates takes at least a few man hours to set up and actually perform, and trying to weed out people who weren’t truly serious.

The application form starts out simply enough. Fill in a form, attach your resume. Then submit a writing sample in which you explain a topic. You had to this using a GitHub gist, and do so in markdown. Having a writing sample makes sense. You want to make sure that the applicant can communicate clearly with the written word. I actually wrote my writing sample about content delivery networks because I was working at one at the time. (I later went back and saw that I had a spelling error in the very first sentence of my writing sample. How I got accepted continues to be a mystery to this day.)

The next step was the most difficult for me. I had to submit a YouTube video of myself where I talk about myself, and answer some questions, like why I wanted to attend Turing, my biggest challenge, et cetera. It wasn’t that the questions were hard, it was that I hate listening to recordings of myself, be they video or audio, and I had to edit this afterwards. Figuring out what to say was easy. Saying it, not so much. I totally get why they make you do the video. They want to see more of you as a person, not just a writing sample and a resume. I also suspect that they want to make sure that you’re not a serial killer who wears the skins of their victims. (I don’t know if that’s a specific thing they screen for, but in case it is, I would like to say on the record that I am totally okay with screening out serial murderers.)

The final part was the most surprising to me. It was a logic test that I had to complete online. It was timed, though I do recall that the instructions stated that how long it took me was not taken into account, if memory serves. This is in stark contrast to the application process at places like HackReactor, which makes you code some Javascript just to get to the application, and MakerSquare, where my “technical” interview was a code review. The logic here is that they found that there was a correlation between a person’s ability to do logic problems and their ability to become a programmer. It stands to reason. I found the logic test a good bit of fun, actually. I completed it, and awaited a response.

I don’t actually recall how long it took before I got a response, but I’m sure it was entirely too long. Because I wasn’t freaking out every single time my mail client dinged at me or anything like that at all. But an interview was set up. Being that I was in California at the time and the school is in Denver, it would have to be by video. Normally, I’d have been interviewed by Jorge, who is one of the instructors and the Director of Admissions, but I was interviewed instead by Rachel, one of the other instructors and lead of pedagogy. During the interview, we did a few LSAT logic problems. I recall being nervous. I recall having a few questions. I recall freaking the heck out that I’d have to wait to find out an admissions decision.

This is the point in this story that I would like to take a detour. Turing was clearly my Plan A. I didn’t like my job much and was looking to either do a career change or at least get another job. While I was applying for Turing, I was also applying to other potential employers. One of them was Electronic Arts, specifically in Emeryville. I say that specifically because EA just closed down their Emeryville location, which was home to Maxis.

The next day, I had gotten a response. The interview had taken place on a Tuesday, and I had the answer on Wednesday. Rachel had promised an answer by the end of the week. Just between you and me, I most definitely did NOT want to wait the rest of the week in suspense. As soon as I got the email from Jorge, I contacted the recruiter and told them, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

They asked, “Why?”

I replied, “The ending to Mass Effect 3.”

My technical writings can be found on my blog, at http://www.ploos.io