Apply to our course

In order to apply to our full-time programme, you must:

• Be over 18 years old
• Have the right to work in the UK
  • If you're living in the UK on a visa: whatever your visa status is, you must have at least 20 months left from the last day of the cohort you're applying for
• Speak conversational English (and no, we're not sticklers on grammar)

We get asked this a lot, so we're going to elaborate a little bit here. Firstly, we prioritise a cohesive cohort of people who we think will work well together over any strong individual candidates.

Learning to code is just part of what makes you a good developer. We're looking for candidates who can help us fulfil our goal of making the tech industry a more diverse and inclusive place. This means people who are excited to be part of a collaborative, peer-led learning environment. You should be willing to sacrifice some personal gain for the group's learning. For example, we'd rather a group presents a technically incomplete project than one person stays up late writing code that no one else understands.

The tech industry is disproportionately white and male. If this describes you please reflect on how you can help change this. Do some research on how to be a good ally to those who are under-represented in tech so you can be a positive influence on your cohort.

Finding your own solutions to problems is an indispensable skill for a developer. We'd like you to apply these same google-skills to educating yourself on the important social issues including (but not limited to) those touched on above.

Founders and Coders will always prioritise marginalised people's safety over the comfort of the privileged. If you don't like the sound of any of this then we'd ask you to reconsider your application.

Before we will consider your application, you must complete the following prerequisites:

Create a GitHub account

You will use this account to host the repository of your application website.

freeCodeCamp

Register for an account and complete the following eight sections:

Responsive Web Design Certification

• Basic HTML and HTML5
• Basic CSS
• Responsive Web Design Principles
• CSS Flexbox

JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures Certification

• Basic JavaScript
• ES6
• Basic Data Structures
• Basic Algorithm Scripting

Codewars

Reach 5 kyu in JavaScript on Codewars.

You should attempt katas that's reflective of your rank, meaning:

• When you're at 8 kyu, attempt 7-8 kyu katas
• When you're at 7 kyu, attempt 6-7 kyu katas
• When you're at 6 kyu, attempt 5-6 kyu katas
• When you reach 5 kyu, continue with 5-6 kyu katas

We suggest you focus on practical katas that help solidify your JavaScript knowledge. If you find yourself stuck on an intricate maths problem for over two hours, it might be better to move on to a new kata.

Create a personal website

Your application website needs to be written by you and it must fulfill all of the following requirements (use this as a checklist, if you will):

• Be built in HTML, CSS and vanilla JavaScript
• Tell us about why you are applying for the programme
• Be hosted on GitHub
  • Take this opportunity to research a bit on how Git, GitHub and command line works
  • Attempt to make your commit history tell a story
• Contain a link back to the GitHub repository that contains the code for your site
• Contain a link to your public freeCodeCamp profile
• Contain a link to your Codewars profile
• Include an image carousel written in vanilla JavaScript, it must:
  • Be built into your application website (a link to a separate page will not be accepted)
  • Be responsive (works on mobile and desktop)
  • Display one image at a time
  • Move between images when clicking navigation buttons
  • Toggle automatically looping through all images with a play/pause button
  • Allow keyboard navigation between images with the left/right arrow keys

Your website should:

• Be creative, show us with your code who you are
• Demonstrate your learnings from the prerequisites

Your website cannot:

• Use a GitHub theme
• Use any JavaScript or CSS libraries like Bootstrap or jQuery
• Use an image carousel package like Flickity ⁠— we want to see your own code