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đź’ˇ Written by Aaron Hayslip on April 1, 2022
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In March 2021, Parsity launched as a 100% online code school, offering both Full-time and Part-time Flex programs. Before launching Parsity, I founded and ran an in-person coding bootcamp (Project Shift) for ~3 years.
In a time of global disruption, thanks to the pandemic, the initial mission of Parsity was to produce the same outcomes as Project Shift (near 100% placement for graduates in Software Engineering positions at an average starting salary of ~$67k) but at a fraction of the price - the in-person nature of Project Shift meant that tuition was $24,900 (and TBH, we somehow managed to always lose a bit of money every year).
Parsity costs less than 1/3 of Project Shift at $7,900 ($6,900 with scholarships) but has become even more rigorous in terms of admissions requirements.
As for outcomes, we’re on pace. Technically, 92% of graduates land a Full-time Software Engineering job with a starting salary of $68,750.
I say “technically”, because as everyone knows, you should always question how Coding Bootcamps like ours came up with these numbers. And if you’re familiar with us (or our predecessor, Project Shift) you know how important transparent and unbiased outcomes are to us. To that end, we’ve always been members of CIRR (Council on Integrity in Results Reporting).
If you’re unfamiliar with CIRR, it’s an organization that was founded many years ago with the purpose of providing a reporting standard for Coding Bootcamps. It has ensured that we cannot make up numbers and it even goes so far as to require us to audit our numbers and to back every “placement” with a copy of the students’ official offer letter.
However, if you go to the website here (at the time of this writing) you’ll notice that the last reports available are from 2020, and it’s now 2022. Parsity has a problem with this. We owe it to potential students and partners to be able to publish statistics quickly.
So what’s going on with CIRR? To be honest, I’m not exactly sure. Despite my repeated attempts at communication, I’ve had very little success in getting a response. I do know that CIRR’s recent CEO, Sheree Speakman (who was always amazing to work with), is no longer with the organization. In fact, it appears that the fate of the non-profit organization is in the hands of a small group of volunteer board members.
That being said, this “Annual Report” is an attempt to report our statics in the most transparent way possible, despite not having the support of a third party like CIRR.
To that end, here are a few notes about the statistics below:
- There’s a fine line between us being transparent about our statistics and protecting our student’s privacy. We’re a small organization dealing with small numbers.
- You cannot verify this, but we’ve continued to collect copies of all offer letters from our graduates, which means, this data is firmly backed.
- We have refrained from creating any special vocabulary. For example, we didn’t make up words like “qualified graduates” which is a trick some have used to create deceptive statics. In the places where we have created terms (”inactive” for example), we’ve gone to lengths to define them.
- I’m personally very proud of these statics, but they also tell a story that there is (and always will be) room for improvement. My personal takeaways will be noted below the numbers.
Okay, let’s get into it!
The Stats
- At the time of this writing (April 1, 2022), since March, 2021, Parsity has enrolled 46 students.
- 25 of those 46 students are currently in the program, and will not be counted in this report.
- This report primarily covers 2 Full-time programs and 1 Part-time program from 2021.
- Our Full-time program is a ~3-month program where students are expected to quit their jobs and devote all their time to Parsity. Students do not begin searching for jobs until they’ve completed the program (passed all evaluations and finished their final project).
- Our Part-time program is the same as the Full-time but is a ~6-month program where students can hold their own full-time jobs and complete the program in twice the amount of time. By nature, this program is far more flexible than the Full-time program (we’re even considering renaming it to “Part-time Flex”). Students do not begin searching for jobs until they’ve completed the program (passed all evaluations and finished their final project).
- Of the 46 enrollments, 6 are currently considered inactive.
- Inactive means that they started the program, but life got in the way and they’ve had to pause it. These students may rejoin a future cohort at any time (and some have), with no additional costs or penalties.
- Of the 46 enrollments, 2 withdrew.
- Withdrawal means that they have taken the decisive step to discontinue Parsity.
- Of the 21 students considered in this report, 6 went inactive and 2 withdrew leaving us with 13 graduates.
- Graduation means that you’ve finished all course work, passed all evaluations (coding projects) with a 70 or above, and have completed your final project.
- 9 of these graduates were Full-time students.
- 8 landed jobs.
- $66,250 average starting salary ($55k min, $75k max)
- Cohort 1 Time to Offer: 92 days
- Cohort 2 Time to Offer: 117 days
- 1 finished the program’s curriculum (and therefore officially graduated) but never entered Career Services.
- Career Services is a program we provide all graduates to help their job search. For up to 6 months, they meet regularly with a Career Services Coach one on one to process their job search until they land their first position.
- 4 of these graduates were Part-time students.
- All 4 landed jobs.
- $71,250 average starting salary ($60k min, $80k max)
Aaron’s Key Takeaways
- If you finish the program, there’s a 92% chance you’ll get a job for $68k in less than 3 months after graduating.
- If you finish the program and start Career Services, that goes up to 100% (though we still don’t do guarantees or other tuition gimmicks).
- If you start the program, there’s a 38% chance you won’t finish on time.
- This is the “negative” stat that I want to zoom in on. After going over each of these individual situations (those who “withdrew” or went “inactive”), I have the following conclusions:
- About 70% of this is unavoidable. People get sick, lose their jobs, have loved ones pass away, etc which makes an intense program like Parsity difficult to keep up with. The silver lining is that with Parsity, they CAN’T FAIL OUT. They just delay. This means that this 38% always have the opportunity to join the graduates, then career services, then the 100% who land jobs at $68k.
- The other 30% of these are students who are not yet ready for Parsity. There is only so much we can catch in the admissions process, but we’ve responded to this directly by creating dev30.xyz which has replaced our previous Prep Course (JavaScript Course we used to offer to prepare students). With dev30, we start training students in so much more than just JavaScript - we train them in their habits, mindset, and network (in addition to their skills in JavaScript).
- A quick note on salaries: I have no hard data to back this (since we have not collected follow-up data on graduates), but it’s safe to say that within 3 to 5 years, all of these $68k salaries should turn into $100k+ salaries. At least I’ve rarely met a graduate where this wasn’t the case.
- The future of our stats: As long as CIRR remains in a state of hiatus, we’ll continue to publish these every ~6 months. In the meantime, we’ll be researching other 3rd party groups who can help us stay accountable to an unbiased reporting mechanism.