CodePath Update, June 2022

This month at CodePath, we kicked off our biggest summer yet with over 3,000 students benefiting from our summer offerings. We are thrilled to have summer programming underway and for all the energy that the CodePath community—students, teachers, mentors, and employer partners—will bring during these next few months. 

At CodePath, when we make promises to students, we keep them. While many other coding programs out there offer only a few hours of supplemental interview prep, we know from our research that that’s just not enough.

For most Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and/or first-generation college students, the interview prep gap is hundreds of hours. Therefore, our best chance at helping our students land top tier tech jobs is to close that gap as much as we can—by providing multiple 12-week summer courses which include on average 100+ hours of effective interview prep.

Summer Courses

Intro to Software Engineering, which started classes June 1, is a foundational-level course, great for those interested in finding out if a career in tech is right for them. Taught by professional engineers, this course covers the valuable core concepts in computer science and provides hands-on practical experience coding in Python as well as preparing for the technical interview process. 

Thanks to our partnership with Reboot Representation, 115 women-identified, underrepresented minority CS students were admitted into this summer’s Intro SWE course. In total the course has over 700 students admitted for the summer!

Several sessions of our most popular course, Technical Interview Prep, also started this month. In these courses, students learn how to ace the technical interview with insights into real-world software topics and practice solving challenging algorithmic problems in whiteboard and coding interviews.

Research has shown that applicants who completed 5 or more practice interviews improved their odds by as much as 30%. Our students complete an average of 20 full practice interview sessions, which means their chances of landing a competitive tech role go up by 120% - this is the impact we are making for thousands of underrepresented CS students. 

In order to reach and support students not yet admitted into our courses, CodePath recently launched the Technical Interview Challenge series on YouTube. In these videos, real students (with the help of CodePath CLO and longtime software engineer Tim Lee) practice problems they’ll be asked in interviews with top tech companies and viewers are encouraged to code along. 

Pre-Internship Programs

Next, the Futureforce Tech Launchpad, kicked off in-person at the Salesforce Tower last week! In partnership with Salesforce, this 10-week program is hands-on and immersive, designed to make students job-ready. The curriculum covers full stack web development, engineering soft skills, and a capstone project, all while providing students with 1-1 Salesforce mentorship.

Additionally, our Summer Internship for Tech Excellence (SITE) program in partnership with Workday, Course Hero, and Schmidt Futures, which also launched this month, addresses a key barrier to underrepresented students' presence in technology - early access to coveted internships at tech companies. 

CodePath designs and delivers research-backed, and intentionally executed programs such as SITE, which focuses specifically on Black, Indigenous, Latinx students, in addition to students from low-income backgrounds, and students that are the first in their family to attend college. These programs address systemic issues at the core of tech's diversity crisis, bringing diverse, top talent with unique perspectives to leading engineering teams. 

Through programs like Futureforce Tech Launchpad and SITE, CodePath remains committed to expanding access to underrepresented students and recognizes the potential that employers can have in providing these opportunities earlier on, which will help create a more robust and diverse talent pipeline in tech.

Additional Summer Updates 

Beyond courses and employer programs, hundreds of students receive invitations to their first internship through our employer hiring partnerships. CodePath’s Internship Connection Program provides junior year Black, Latinx and Indigenous CS students with the professional and technical skills they need to land their first technical internship. Students hired through this program and our Virtual Career Fairs are now starting their summer internships with CodePath partners. 

We're prepping students this summer so you can hire them this fall. The deadline for employer partners to participate in our fall virtual career fair is July 30. Schedule a call with our team to access an engineering talent pipeline that is both better prepared and more diverse. 

Lastly, a big thank you to our friends DriveWealth and Base10 Partners for hosting a group of CodePath students interested in pursuing careers in fintech to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Opportunities like these are so important because being in these spaces demonstrates to our students what is possible, and inspires them to be tomorrow's leaders.