Thats thinking in circles. If these hypothetical conspirators are so hyper-competent as to deliberately feign incompetence, there would be no evidence possible that could dissuade you, as all evidence against it would just be more evidence of a conspiracy.
Eventually you have to step back, take stock of your own experience with people, software, and their interactions, and make your own judgement. If you have no experiecne with software and people, then ask someone you trust who does. I don't see a whole lot of people who write software who are that surprised at what happened given the makeup of both the timing and the resources put into this app.
Being intellectually honest, I'd have to say that they aren't really comparable. The low acceptance rate is true, but the sheer amount of completely unacceptable applications that are filled out after seeing one of these "make 75k in 3 months" ads contributes heavily to the percentage.
I attended this school and while most of my classmates were highly-intelligent people of diverse backgrounds, I can absolutely say it is much easier to get into Flatiron school than any of the programs listed above.
I've heard that many people who don't know any coding at all often apply to bootcamps and simply just flunk the first coding assessment they get. They probably help account for much of the low admissions rate at any half decent bootcamp (that have coding assessments).
Disclaimer: Former Flatiron School student here. I'm seeing a lot of comments (and the title) about fake employment stats. There is nowhere in the article that alleges this. FS clearly publishes their jobs report and make it extremely accessible from the homepage of their website. The AG does not dispute any numbers in this jobs report.
The main allegations, aside from the SED license, are that they did not clearly state their methods of arriving at these numbers on their marketing materials. While that's true, I have faith that someone who has been thinking seriously about a career change enough to apply to a costly educational program such as Flatiron School would do their research.
Based on my experience, I don't find the numbers they report to be surprising. I'm personally more than a year into my first job (was hired almost immediately out of FS at almost exactly their 'average salary') and many if not most of my classmates have a similar experience. Flatiron, like any school, has students who put in the extra effort and students who expect to be successful when they're done just because they showed up every day. Those students tended to struggle throughout the course, and many needed to take internships before landing a full-time gig.
When I first looked into Flatiron, I checked the jobs report. When I saw that 52% of grads landed a full-time job, my thought was not 'oh good this school gets me a job.' It was 'I know with relative certainty that I will learn enough to be useful in a full-time junior dev role if I continue to work my ass off.'
