The FastTrack'D program requires you to devote eight hours a day to classes, five days a week, for two months. Obviously, this requires you devote all your time and energy into the coursework. So basically, you're looking at a minimum of two months unemployment, unless you can somehow manage a part time position elsewhere.
I thought that I was taking a big risk by leaving my dead end job to give my best shot at their program. Then I met my classmates. Many of them had completely uprooted their lives to relocate to Memphis, where Cook is headquartered, for the duration of the class. As the weeks rolled on, many of my class mates were kicked out due to performance reasons. Herein lies the problem I have with Cook: they attracted all of this potential talent from across the country, and then simply dropped them from the radar for poor performance. There was zero attempt on Cook's part to aid these students along the way. They're eating, breathing, and sleeping Java for 8+ hours a day, ALL while being homesick and concerned with the financial burden of supporting themselves through your class. You need to cut these students some slack. I get that the company is looking for "the best of the best" and cutting them from the program was purely a business decision, but you're not investing in the people who took a significant risk on you.
Let's change gears. Now, we have the people who finish the course. Great! Good on them. Now what? Do they get deployed into the field!? Well, no. Despite having completed all the coursework, some students earn a "Certificate of Achievement" instead of a FastTrack'D diploma (and thus, stable employment). Anyone earning this certificate will not be hired into cook as a Java Programmer, but instead will be contracted out to a third party company for a completely different job. So even if you do make it through the course, there's absolutely zero garuantee that you will be hired on as a Java programmer.
None of this will be communicated to you on the front end. Do not buy into the friendly recruiters. Frankly, I've had nothing but bad experiences with Cook. I don't intend to ever go back either. The corporate culture felt incredibly fake.
Please, please be incredibly cautious if you choose to go down the FastTrack'D path.
