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Ready to apply for the MLH Fellowship?

MLH Fellowship

Hey, there! We're so excited to hear that you're interested in becoming an MLH Fellow in our upcoming batch.

At Major League Hacking (MLH) we know the power of hands-on learning first-hand. Every year, more than 135,000 aspiring technologists around the world participate in MLH events where they learn the skills that help them land jobs, launch startups, and everything in between. You can't learn these necessary skills in most classrooms, which is why so many people take their education into their own hands and join our community every year.

The MLH Fellowship is a collection of programs designed to make learning these skills easy, fun, and fast. By pairing educational and fun content with practice experience, you can learn a lot in a very short period of time. Whether you're looking to build out your initial portfolio of personal projects, polish up a project you're passionate about, or start contributing to Open Source, we have a program for you.

Upcoming Terms and Deadlines

Spring 2025: Starts 27 January 2025

  • Deadline for Applicants from APAC: 30 November 2024
  • Deadline for Applicants from other regions: 31 December 2024

The application takes approximately 30-45 minutes to complete. You can save your work at any time and come back to it in the future.

Eligibility Check

Before we get too far along, let's confirm your eligibility for the program. In order to apply for this program you must meet all of the criteria listed below.


Create your Profile

Let's start by collecting some basic information about you and where we can find you on the internet.
Basic Information



Portfolio/Resume
We ask you to share a copy of your resume and links to your online profiles to help us better understand your experience level and background. The more information you can share with us, the better!

You must share at least one of the listed items with us to submit an application. Uncheck the box next to anything that you don't currently have.


Please upload on doc, docx, or pdf files.


Enter your GitHub handle here.


Enter your LinkedIn handle here.

Programs

The MLH Fellowship is a collection of 12-week programs designed to help you level up your tech skills quickly. Whether you're looking to build out your initial portfolio of personal projects, start contributing to Open Source, or gain practical experience solving real problems for companies, we have a program for you.

In this section you'll learn about some of the key ideas behind the fellowship and tell us which programs you're interested in.

Citizenship / Visa Status
Some opportunities require you to hold citizenship or a visa in your country of residence or the country where the employment partner sponsoring your participation is located.
Country

Warning ⚠️
We do not currently anticipate having any available projects for fellows residing in the following countries:

Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malaysia, Micronesia and the Pacific Islands, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam


If you reside in one of the above countries, you are still welcome to apply, but know that your application will likely be closed without review since we have no available matches.

Country Type Other
Program Selection

MLH Fellowship Program:

  • Software Engineering

Experience what it's like to solve real-world software engineering problems by collaborating on projects from real companies & government partners.

  • Web3 Engineering
Experience what it's like to work with emerging technologies powered by blockchains.
  • Site Reliability Engineering
For aspiring SREs who want to learn the skills required to keep systems running at scale.


Select as many as apply.

Scheduling Preferences


Times displayed in local timezone. Please select all that apply. You'll be expected to be available Monday - Friday during this window throughout the program. Your meetings will take place two days and the other days will be used for collaboration on your project(s).

Education Experience

Overview

If you are enrolled but have not started classes yet, select "Yes".
Current Academic Experience






Other Academic Experience

Past Academic Experience
Please list up to 5 of your most recent academic experiences, not including your current institution if you are enrolled in one, in descending order (most recent to oldest).
Institution Name Type Graduation/End Date

Professional/Work Experience

Overview

Job Search
You indicated you'll be looking for a coding job within the next 12 months. Tell us about your plans.


Developer Experience

Experience
Please rate your level of familiarity with the following programming languages:
Very unfamiliar, have never used Somewhat unfamiliar, have used before but am not comfortable Somewhat proficient, use occasionally Very proficient, use frequently


Check all that apply.
Interests

Code Sample

Overview

At Major League Hacking we don’t believe in whiteboarding interviews. Instead, we prefer to talk about the code you’ve written. As part of your application you should submit a code sample that you feel demonstrates your abilities. We’ll review this sample ourselves while looking over your application. If you’re invited to a tech interview, you’ll talk about this specific code with your interviewer.


Code Sample Requirements:
  • Representative: The sample should be representative of your abilities. If you’re submitting a group project, make sure you contributed a substantial amount of code. Projects that are based mostly on a tutorial aren’t representative of your own abilities.

  • Existing sample: This is code that you wrote for a purpose other than this application.

  • Public on GitHub: Your sample should be viewable on GitHub publicly. If you can’t make the repository public, convert your code to a secret GitHub Gist instead.

  • Multiple files: Your sample should consist of multiple files and be of substance. It’s hard to have a conversation about a single function.

  • Not too large: It’s difficult to have a conversation about a mono-repo with dozens of microservices. It should be immediately clear what you contributed to the sample. Dense frameworks with lots of boilerplate such as Django or Laravel don’t usually make for good code samples. Lightweight frameworks such as Flask and Express are good examples.

  • Real problem: Your sample should solve a real problem or accomplish a real goal. While some class projects will meet this criteria, most won’t. There’s nothing wrong with the binary search tree you wrote, but it’ll be hard for your interviewers to get to know you through that kind of sample.

  • No Jupyter notebooks: We need to see your ability to write a project that an end user can use. It should be deployable. We don’t accept Jupyter notebooks or other exploratory code samples because it’s difficult to have a conversation about your coding skills with these.

  • Aligned with our available tracks: The Fellowship currently supports projects primarily in the following coding languages: JavaScript, TypeScript, Python (especially the SRE track), and Rust (especially the Web3 track). You will give yourself the best chance of admission if you submit a project in one of those languages. You may still submit in any language you like, but you may be asked to provide a supplemental code sample later in the admissions process in order for us to assess your proficiency.

Examples of good code samples

  • A web app with JavaScript
  • A web server (backend only)
  • A desktop app
  • A command line app

Examples of poor code samples

  • Jupyter notebooks
  • Tutorials
  • Simple static sites with no logic (i.e. without JavaScript / similar)
  • Algorithm implementations / competitive coding solutions
  • University or bootcamp coursework (as these often contain too much boilerplate and aren’t representative of your own abilities)

What to do if you don’t have an appropriate code sample:

If you don’t have a relevant code sample, our best advice is to attend one of the upcoming MLH hackathons and submit whatever you build there. MLH has hackathons taking place every weekend of the year and they are open to both students and professionals.

Code Sample





Essay Questions
Essays are an important part of how we evaluate applicants for the MLH Fellowship. Make sure you include enough information to help us understand who you are, why you want to be an MLH Fellow, and what you would bring to the program.

Your essays are your first impression to our admissions team. The best essays show us how passionate you are about this opportunity and give us lots of detail about you and your interests. Take your time here and show the best possible version of yourself! There is no word count minimum, but we recommend at least a paragraph or two for each essay.

We recognize that many applicants will want to use AI-enhancing tools to polish their essays (ChatGPT, Bard, etc.) While we recognize the value that these tools can provide in enhancing or streamlining your writing, we have found that applicants who rely too heavily on these tools are unlikely to be ready for the high-level communications required to participate in the program. Our recommendation is to write your own personalized essays from scratch and only use AI tools for enhancements or corrections. Submitting a fully AI-crafted essay may result in your disqualification.



Optional Questions

Demographics
We invite applicants to self-identify as to their pronouns, gender, race/ethnicity, and veteran status. Completion of this form is entirely voluntary and declining to provide this information will not subject you to adverse treatment. Any information that you do provide will be maintained confidentially and will not be shared.

All individuals seeking to join the MLH Fellowship are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected characteristic. You are being given the opportunity to provide the following information in order to help us measure our own diversity and inclusion efforts and to comply with applicable federal and state Equal Employment Opportunity record-keeping and reporting obligations.





Misc.