Your experience level sounds a lot like mine before I was accepted into the App Academy (I'm a student here right now). I'm not a software engineer either but I had been teaching myself to code in Python (with a Django framework) for about a year to a year and a half before applying.

It took me about 1 month here to cover the same amount of material that took me 1 year to cover on my own. Being self taught is great, but learning in a classroom full of equally motivated students guided by an incredible teacher is even better. If I get stuck, I can turn to any of my fellow students and they'll help me out. Likewise, I often learn the most by helping others get unstuck. And, of course, our instructor is always there to help us think about problems in new ways. He gives lectures daily and then for the rest of the day he helps us out in a more personal, one on one basis. His great skill is his ability to break down complicated ideas and present them in an easy to understand manner.

While I could learn all of this on my own, it's hard to overvalue the effect of learning in an accelerated environment like the App Academy provides.

I've actually been blogging daily about my experience at the App Academy. You can check that out here: http://krisallenfields.tumblr.com/