The MLH Fellowship is a 12-week remote internship-style tech program. The MLH Fellowship Prep Program is a 3-week version of the fellowship. The benefit of completing the Prep Program is that your application to the full program is prioritized and you’ll be able to skip to the technical interview.
Below, I will talk about how my application process went for the Prep Program. Note that I applied in early 2022; the application process may have changed since then.
I applied for the Prep Program 3 months before its start date. Applying this much in advance is not necessary, but you are encouraged to apply early since the applications are processed on a rolling basis.
The application process is split into three stages: the written application, the phone screen, and the technical interview. The whole process from submitting the written application to getting admitted took a bit more than a month.
Written application
The first step of the application process is the written application. It is estimated that filling this out takes approx. 30-45 mins. The first part of the application asks basic eligibility questions like whether you know how to code in at least one programming language. The next parts ask about your education, developer experience, and interests. The final parts include the code sample and essay questions — these are the most important, so be sure to put a lot thought into your answers.
Code sample
For my code sample, I submitted a Flutter application that I made as part of a university project. This was a large solo project that I had been working on for the past six months. Code samples should demonstrate your abilities. If you get to the technical interview, this is the code sample you would talk about.
Along with submitting a link to the sample, the application asks you to:
- briefly describe what the code sample does
- briefly describe what you learned when you created the code sample
Essays
The answers for the essays need to be well thought out. The application says the following about the essay section:
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.
Low quality essays are one of the main reasons applicants are rejected from the MLH Fellowship. Please make sure you put some thought into your responses. These are among the only early data points we have to differentiate applicants.
Essays should be at least a paragraph even though there is no minimum number of words. The word limit is 250 words, so these answers need to be concise. I was asked the following essay questions:
Why do you want to become an MLH Fellow?
▹In my application, I talked about how the program would help me become prepared for the world of work.
The MLH Fellowship is a diverse community that welcomes Fellows from a wide range of experiences and backgrounds. What perspective or experience will you bring to the fellowship to strengthen our community?
▹Here, I talked about my background and how it has shaped my interests and goals. I also talked about what I do outside of software development. I tried to tie my answers back to the question by discussing how these contribute to my unique perspective.
Anything else we should know about you?
▹For this question, I summarized my past projects and internships.
After submitting the written application, the automatic reply informed me that I would hear from the admissions team within two weeks. I got an email saying that my application has started being reviewed on the same day I submitted it. Then, two weeks later, I got an email telling me to schedule my first interview.
First interview: phone screen
The first interview is a 10–15 minute video call — it is mandatory to use video; it cannot just be audio. I scheduled the call for the next day. Make sure to choose a date carefully, as the interview cannot be rescheduled.
My interviewer was a past Fellow. After introductions, he started off by asking me questions to confirm my eligibility — these were similar to the questions in the written application. Then he asked me about my interests. For example, he asked me whether I would prefer working at a smaller company or bigger company. He also asked me about why I applied to the program. In particular, I was asked why I applied to the Prep Program rather than the 12-week fellowship. I said I wanted to get a taste of the fellowship before committing 12 weeks. My interviewer happy with my answer. He told me that many other candidates didn’t have a straight answer for this question; it seemed like they would click around the website and apply for the Prep Program without being able to articulate the reason they chose it. So, the main takeaway here is to be prepared for questions related to why you’re applying to the fellowship.
After the interview, I got a survey to give feedback about how the interview went. If there were any problems, like if the interviewer didn’t show up, this is where you can let MLH Fellowship Team know.
Second interview: technical interview
Usually, you’ll hear back after the first interview within 5 business days. I heard back a couple of hours after I finished the first interview. I scheduled the technical interview to be a week later. Again, make sure to carefully select a date, because the interview cannot be rescheduled.
The technical interview required video and screen sharing. During the interview, I used an Android emulator to demo my project. I gave a short introduction about my code and then I told my interviewer to ask me questions so that I had more direction for what to talk about. We discussed my project structure, logical choices I made, and how certain parts of the code corresponds to what can be seen on the demo. The interview lasted about 15 mins.
My code sample was a Flutter project. My interviewer did not know much about Flutter or Dart, so I had to try my best to communicate my logic without going into language specific details. Since the admissions team didn’t give me an interviewer who knew about Flutter, it seemed to me that this interview was more about checking the candidate’s ability to communicate technically rather than about technical proficiency in a language or framework. However, the interview may have been relaxed because I was applying for the Prep Program rather than the full program.
After the interview, I was again given a feedback survey.
Decision
After completing the technical interview, I was given a Matching Survey to fill out. This gave me the opportunity to update any information about my availabilities, technical proficiencies, etc., in case these had changed since the written application was submitted.
Two weeks after I submitted the Matching Survey, I was admitted into the program. About a month before the program, I was given some more information about my batch and was told to complete a survey when I was ready to confirm/decline my enrollment.
Final thoughts
Overall, the process went smoothly. Luckily, the interviewers I had were super friendly. The interviews were fairly informal, so they weren’t very stressful.
Feel free to reach out to me for a chat or if you have any questions/comments:)
