4-week Admissions “Piscine”

We call it the “piscine” (French for “swimming pool”) because you will be thrown into a totally new and immersive experience, in which only motivation, willpower and hard work will keep you afloat. This 4-week intensive basic training, based in our Silicon Valley facility in Fremont, is an incredibly rewarding, once in-a-lifetime experience.The “piscine” is the last step of the selection process. After applying on-line and passing the tests, it will be determined if you are eligible or not for participation in our next “piscine.”Many students consider it to be one of the highlights of their student life. During the “piscine,” everyone around you shares a similar passion for coding and is facing the exact same dilemmas at the same time.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to come and spend 4 weeks, 7 days a week, day and night, coding your heart out with several hundred other candidates all hoping to earn the same prize: to be a full-time student at 42.

We will start with the basics, and using a computer, you will write your first lines of code before moving on to more complex coding exercises. It won’t be necessary to have any previous programming experience. We simply ask that you know how to use a mouse and a keyboard.

Throughout this bootcamp experience, you will try and you will fail, over and over again. However, the good news is that this trial-and-error process is necessary in order to find solutions to problems that you once thought impossible.

You will learn by doing it this way (by yourself or in a group; without teachers; without lessons), that it works.

The “piscine” is a type of training in-and-of-itself, so if, in the end, you do not move on to the next level of the challenge to become a full-time student at 42, you will still be rewarded with the knowledge that you have received throughout this competition.

So what are you waiting for? Grab your towel, and let’s go to the “piscine!“



There are a limited number of shared dorm room spaces available. Students seeking a space in the dorm will need to submit an application after passing their on-line logic tests.
The results for admission into 42 are announced within the two weeks following the end of each “piscine.” The official announcement is made using social media. An email is sent to all of the participants to announce the results. There is no quota for selection; we offer spots to the candidates who have demonstrated their capacities to integrate permanently into 42. On average, roughly one-third of the candidates from each “piscine” are selected into the program.