42 school in the USA is an American dream accessible to everyone

    The innovative 42 school of programming provides free tuition and accommodation in Silicon Valley, even for those who do not understand anything in the code.




    This planet cannot be stopped already: the world is obsessed with programming and people are ready to enter the IT after thirty-five and even forty. Of course, such a demand could not but give rise to supply - an avalanche of schools, courses, online formats and anything else appeared. 21 days - and you are C ++ god, JavaScript guru, Python Jedi. Just pay, and there the card will fall. Meanwhile, effective training is primarily the practice, motivation and experience of teachers. There is a school that combines all of the above and almost completely eliminates fear. We think that you have heard about 42 school more than once, but did not go into details. We will tell you, as we went through its pool (Piscine) from our own experience.

    About us


    We, Daniil Brodovich (Head Of Product) and Anastasia Westfal (Director of Marketing and Recruting), want to share with you our story about what you can learn absolutely free at a programming school and what a modern innovative school in the USA looks like. We hope that our story will inspire you, future and true IT-specialists, to take another step on the road to your dream.

    This experience helped us to plunge into the IT environment, to see enormous enthusiasm and energy in solving many problems, which you will not often see in the most dynamically developing startups, not to mention traditional educational institutions.


    School Feature


    The main highlight of 42 school is the lack of control over students by teachers. The work, at the first stage, is checked by the students themselves, after which the work of the students is analyzed by a computer program. At the same time, work can be failed even if it is successfully completed by 95%, if you make a mistake in the first of 20 tasks per day!
    There are no special standardized textbooks, there are only short short videos, and the creators believe that the student can find all the necessary information on the Internet and other students.

    The learning process at 42 school is like a quest game. Performing tasks, the student gains experience points, thanks to which he goes to the next levels. So, only the progress of the material depends on its own productivity.
    Every day, the program provides for the study of a new topic and its task. Students upload the completed task to GitHub, where a classmate will check it. However, it sometimes even happens that successful work is rejected at the last stage by a computer program if all conditions are not met.

    History of creation


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    The founder of the innovation school is the French businessman Xavier Niel, who has taken a solid place in the field of telecommunications in his country, launched a free modem Internet and continues to develop mobile business. In 2013, he created 42 school in Paris in order to confirm that classical education at colleges and universities is out of date. By the way, Niel himself did not graduate from the university, but studied programming in the parent's garage.

    In 2016, the second 42 silicon valley school was launched in Silicon Valley. Over $ 100 million was spent on the construction and operation of the school in California. According to his idea, until 2020, school 42 should teach as many as 10 thousand students.

    In the spring of 2017, the creator of VKontakte and Telegram Pavel Durov visited the school, calling this school “the future of the education system”.

    "Difficulties" of learning


    The first month of training is a real test. All students are driven into a tight time frame, throwing more and more tasks, the complexity of which increases with each subsequent task. The concept of a holiday this month does not exist, since on Saturday and Sunday you need to work on team projects, and the school day lasts from 8:42 to 23:42.

    Only after the successful passage of the first month, the load decreases a bit, and there is time for rest or entertainment. To do this, there is a special game room with board games, tennis tables, etc.



    The school’s work area is a huge computer lab equipped with about a thousand monoblocks of the iMac system. All of them are united in a single network, each student stores data under his login on a common server. The laboratory is open 24 hours a day, therefore, at 4 nights you can meet students.

    It is worth noting that part of the tasks is allowed to be written off from friends and then done reverse engineering. But when checked by students and sometimes by cadets, they often ask for a detailed description of the solution. As practice shows, if you did not realize how the problem was solved, then by copying it you made it worse only for yourself and run the risk of getting a rating of “-42” for the entire academic day, which is very negatively reflected in the system in the profile of personal progress.

    After successfully passing the monthly test at school, which only 10% -20% pass, we got the opportunity to continue our studies, but having excellent experience, we had to go back to 1World Online - one of the fastest growing companies in Silicon Valley, according to Inc. 5000 . In just one month, we got enough to apply the knowledge for better understanding and more productive work with our team of programmers, for example, to quickly find groundwork on GitHub if you need to quickly refine the product.

    How to proceed?


    Absolutely anyone can enter the school, regardless of nationality, social status, age and university education. The most important plus is that you do not even need to have basic programming skills for admission. Studying will give a chance to live in the heart of California, make new friends and improve your English.

    Formally, for admission it is necessary to fill out an application on the website and pass the “compliance” test, in which there will be tasks on the quality of memory and the ability to think logically. After, you can go on an open day. On admission, no one tests programming skills.

    The school provides free housing for a month, so the only financial difficulties will arise when buying a ticket in the United States and issuing visa documents. It should be borne in mind that the school does not provide a student visa, but it is not required when entering the school, they just ask in the questionnaire whether you are legally in the country.

    The main differences from traditional education


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    Innovation School 42 is fundamentally different from the traditional education system around the world:

    • Lack of entrance exams and diplomas;
    • Training is automated and presented in the form of gameplay;
    • There are no teachers and textbooks;
    • The student himself is responsible for his studies. Only those who really need knowledge, and not getting a diploma, study here;
    • Intensive supply of information in a short time without days off, instead of stretching the training for several years;
    • The school combines the principles of teamwork and independent achievement of the goal;
    • Continuous development and updating of information that meets current industry trends.
    • First, language C is mastered, after which the student himself chooses which languages ​​he wants to learn, following a certain hierarchy


    It is also worth noting that the branches of school 42 work in Russia and Ukraine. In Ukraine, the educational institution operates under the name UNIT Factory, and in Russia as School 21. In these organizations, teachers are also absent, the principles of teamwork and equality, and free training prevail.

    Thanks to such bold discoveries, it is no longer necessary to fly to the USA to get modern knowledge of the programming languages ​​C, C ++, Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, etc. The innovative trend has every chance to take its rightful place among the educational giants and even make them a solid competitor .


    If you still have questions about 42 school, write in the comments.

    Only registered users can participate in the survey. Please come in.

    Would you like to study at 42 school?

    • 35.8% Yes, this is the school of the future! 57
    • 16.9% No, they do not give a diploma 27
    • 44% I already know how to program 70
    • 3.1% I'm just studying there 5

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