Everything about MLH Prep fellowship

Complete batch of April Prep Fellows

Hello everyone,

Let’s begin with one more journey into sea of opportunities out there in tech world now a days. This time it is one of the newer and more beginner friendly program named Prep Fellowship offered by a very well-known organization named MLH (Major League Hacking).

I have divided this whole blog into 4 sections named as About the program, Applying for the program, Decoding the program, and finally My takeaways.

About the program

The MLH Fellowship Prep Program is a 3-week preparation program for aspiring technologists who are interested in experiencing the fellowship before committing to the full 12-weeks.

This program in unpaid as you will not be getting any stipend, but after this program your path towards applying the main fellowship programs in MLH would become easier as your application will be moved faster than other applicants, and you will be getting advantage over others in terms of interview process and everything.

Full info about the program which would include details about the upcoming batches, what you will learn from the program, your daily schedule in the program, eligibility to apply for the program and the full application process from its official site Prep Program | MLH Fellowship.

Applying for the program

MLH fellowship is on first come first serve type, so your application if it reaches first and if it is good, you will be moved to interview rounds. So major advice from my side is to apply as early as you can, otherwise if seats are filled, then you will not be considered for the batch you are applying for.

There are two stages of application, beginning with filling of a quite descriptive application form and then followed by interviews.

Let’s begin with the application form. Some key points according to me to kept in mind while filling the form are:

1. Be prepared with anyone of your working projects (it doesn't matter how big is the project).
2. Fill the form carefully and try to provide all the details and check all the options which you think are applicable.
3. At the end of the form, you need to describe your project. I would suggest you write as much as you can about the project but don’t fill it will any unnecessary stuffs. Mention the technical aspects of it, features it have, and the technology that you used to build it. Also, you can write about why you have chosen this project and the various difficulties you faced.
4. Then you will face essay type questions. My only advice you to be to write your various strengths. Since the program in a team program so you should be hard working, team player, leader and also have the eager and mindset of growing. You should explain about all of these in your essays and don’t leave any question blank. Fill it as much as possible with a good content. These essays play a vital role in your form to get selected for further rounds.

After you have applied for the program, it usually takes some time like few weeks to a month or so to get the reply back. They would provide you with the reply whether you are progressing to next stage or not. You just have to wait and keep eye on your mail inbox.

There are then normally two rounds of interviews for this particular program. You will get the link to schedule the interviews as per your schedule as they will be giving you various slots for the same.

Round 1: This round consists of normal questions around the form you applied, crosschecking with you that you are eligible or not. Also, there might be some questions like the essay ones which you have already filled in the form.

Round 2: This round is the technical round. In my case the interviewer asked me to show the project which I had filled in the form. So, I showed that in my pc and she told me to explain the flow of project what all I have done in the project, its features etc. Then she cross questioned too, based on what I was telling her. Questions were completely from what I used in the project.

I would recommend you to be confident while answering any questions and be thorough with your project and its implementation. This would surely help you in crack those rounds easily.

Decoding the program

The program as I have told earlier of 3 weeks duration. So, they divided it into two parts: 1st part consists of 1st week and 2nd part consists of last 2 weeks.

In both of these parts you will be given a project with some boilerplate code and with the help of the team you all will contribute to the project as to make it the best as much as possible. You all will be paired with one more individual so that you both can work together on the issues raised on the project or raise some new issues and work on it. This helps you knowing what is pair-programming which is one of the features of this program.

In these 3 weeks you also have to give a lightning talk on any one topic which you love, you will get the opportunity to virtually meet all the members of the team and will get guidance from a mentor which will the pod(team) leader.

My takeaways

There are lot of takeaways for me, and I hope you will get more takeaways than me after graduating from the process.

1. It provided me a platform where I can get to know such great of amount of people and collaborate with them. I got lot of learnings from their journey just by connecting with them. Everyone’s journey is unique and there is lot to learn from it.
2. I also got opportunity to contribute towards the project by solving lot of issues and creating some. Also got the opportunity to review other people’s code and help them get through any obstacles. These traits are very much important to learn while being in any team, so the program accustomed me with this.
3. At the end I was taken out of my comfort zone and had to learn new technologies and apply those, which I did with ease.

So, I am hoping this article would help you in any way possible so your path towards prep fellowship becomes easier.