Avocademy

When I started looking for a career change in 2021, I found UX/UI Design and thought it would be a good fit for me. After researching tons of online courses and even colleges, I decided Avocademy seemed like something I could try for the price, and find out if it was really a good career direction for me.
What really attracted me was the unlimited mentorship, which I utilized during the foundations program. I sometimes met with mentors 3x a week when I needed help with the course work. 
What ended up loving most was the community that Avocademy creates. Having peers moving through life in a similar situation is grounding, and keeps you moving forward.

I'm really proud of the progress I've made in just a few months. I'm currently in their Career Jumpstart program getting ready to apply for jobs.

I'm going to be super honest here in this review. When I first heard about Avocademy, I wasn't exactly eager to join the program. It definitely piked my interest, but over the last year or so I've heard enough "enter the tech career of your dreams—no degree or coding—all for the low-low price of $10,000!" pitches to last a lifetime. I wasn't really buying it, especially since the program was relatively newer and I didn't have much knowledge about the UX/UI field in general. But, after a couple of months and some very frustrating happenings in my personal life, I decided to give it a go. Compared to all of the comparable "low-cost" programs out there, I honestly couldn't find anything that beat Avocademy's prices. So, I started the program. 

I personally love the layout of how Avocademy teaches UX/UI. I've still yet to hear of a program that teaches you this field in the way that they do (not saying it doesn't exist, I just haven't heard of it). You will basically walk through the entire process from start to finish, building the blocks as you go, and come out at the other end knowing significantly more than you would've thought (with something very cool to show for it). A necessary disclaimer, however, is that you will still have a lot of self-teaching to do when it comes to UX/UI software. There's just too many out there—you'll have the learn some tips and tricks and all that kind of on your own (talk to your mentors though, a lot have very helpful resources and tips). 

So, yeah! I learned everything now that I know about UX/UI because of Avo. I tried self-teaching with a free program and while yes, the information was there... it wasn't condensed into a format that was easy to follow or absorb. UX/UI is one of those things (IMO) that you need laid out in an organized, visual, curriculum or you'll end up floating out in the endless sea of online information about the field. Personally, I found Avocademy to be great and am grateful to myself for taking the leap and trying something new. It deserves to be said that no program is an all-encompassing magic button that'll make you an instant whiz at all things UX/UI. However, if you take advantage of all of the tutelage and resources given by the Avo team, you'll do well. If you have the dedication to learn and the willingness to practice, you'll do well. Learning UX/UI is a process but the Avocademy program made it feel like more of a fun one than something stressful, and for such a big career shift that's something I'm very grateful that this was my experience.

I couldn't recommend Avocademy enough! I tell my spouse at least once a week (or more) about how happy I am to have signed up with this program.

I chose Avocademy because it was an affordable UX bootcamp for me and the services they offered (especially the one-on-one mentorship) was unbeatable. From the resources, content, and feedback I received, I learned so much! The mentors are nice, approachable, and gave great feedback/advice. Before moving onto the next assignment, your work had to be approved by a mentor, which I liked, because I felt like I wasn't just being passed along. Someone actually cared about the work I did and wanted to help to make it better! Yes, sometimes it was frustrating because I would have to make multiple changes to my work due to different mentor feedback, but honestly, one mentor may have caught something another didn't, so it was nice to have that variation in feedback.

I am currently in career jumpstart and just started the job hunting process. It was great collaborating with team members to work on client projects and it gave a sense of "real-life" experience. Avocademy prepared me well for the job hunt (already on day 3: received multiple recruiter emails/calls and have interviews lined up). Maca is great to work with, she's super approachable and really cares about your success! 

Overall, Avocademy really did set me up for success and I couldn't be happier with this decision!

Avocademy has easily been a top 5 life decision thus far! During my senior year of college, I was still lost until I came across Avocademy, they saw my strengths and explained to me how I could utilize them as a designer. Completing the course was smooth and I felt like everything I needed to know as a beginner was there and easy to digest. The mentoring is top-notch and the student-specific feedback is one of the best features of the course. A year later, I secured a paid internship as a Product Design Intern and am incredibly thankful for Avocademy. This program completely readjusted the trajectory of my life, and my future, and most importantly I can comfortably say the future of my family is secure. 

So I just finished the job search part of Career Jumpstart or CJ at Avocademy. The overall process was fun, difficult at times, and such an amazing process overall. It's broken down into two parts: projects and job search.

Projects
So for this part they post projects for people to submit for and then connect you with other grads from Foundations on projects with real world stakeholders. You work as a team to complete projects to finish out your portfolio and sometimes can even lead a project later on. I worked on three projects which allowed me to get a greater feel for what it's like to work on a real design team and a real world project. It also helped me grow my UX/UXR skills and find an area of focus for my career search. Each project is different and can be something like a website evaluation and design recommendation to creating a brand new product from scratch. Now these projects can be intense at times, so I would strongly suggest doing one at a time at first. I did two projects at once because I wasn't working and it was fun but challenging at times due to the workload. Most people finish projects in about 2 months and then begin the job search portion which can last about 6 months but people have been finding jobs sooner.  Big takeaway for this part is to communicate with your team about your real world time constraints and things that come up. Communicate, communicate, communicate. 

Job Search
The second part is the job search and they help you with mentor calls to prep for interviews, resume reviews, how to work through design challenges, and more. There's also a weekly call for job seekers to talk about struggles and lessons learned which was super informative and encouraging. I applied to just shy of 130 jobs my first week (they tell you to apply to 160 in your first month) and I think it really is great advice. I started interviewing pretty soon after I started and just got a job at a great company that I'm super excited about. I had a number of years in the job market before this but I know a large part in what got me the job was what I learned from the projects I did. I was able to talk about how my experiences, good and bad, from those taught me things that would set me up for success as a researcher for the company.  I am incredibly grateful for Avocademy and CJ.