General Assembly Reviews
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Anonymous
Review of Digital Marketing Course
I was thrilled with the class. I am a career changer and felt like the course laid out the basics of Digital Marketing from start to finish. I feel confident and fully equipped to transition my career. The course also included core business fundamentals and I really appreciated that. Thank you!
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Anonymous
Online JavaScript Circuit
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This was a class I took to learn the fundamentals of JavaScript so that I could apply it towards my work covering APIs. The course we set up for students to succeed with a lot of hand holding through each lesson. This is not a bad thing especially given that we were doing the course from home. By far the most valuable part was the 1:1 sessions with my mentor Sonyl. He was patient and prepared and almost always able to help me figure out the answers to my questions. Whenever we couldn't come to an answer in the time allowed, he always made himself available by email and I sent him tons of questions that way. One of the few downsides to the course was that the in browser coding platform was very much tied to a particular answer. Often there would be multiple ways of correctly solving a problem but if you didn't do it the way the platform was expecting, you'd get error messages. That led to some frustration at times until I figured out that the error messages often pointed you in the expected direction.
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Anonymous
Product Management
Product Management part-time 10-week course. Instructors were great and cirriuculum was informative. However, GA hasn't done to help graduates of that course (and many courses in general as I heard from others) with job opportunities.
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Anonymous
A good decision...if you're willing to work for it
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I decided on taking the course through Genera Assembly based on it's general reputation and the fact that I knew a few people who had completed the course, albiet in other cities, to much career success. Overall, I am quite pleased with my decision as I started my new job about 2 months after finishing the course and I really love what I do now. The curriculum was challenging and fast-paced, and there was always someone on-hand to help if I didn't understand a concept. I know the cohort after mine ran with an updated curriculum. This shows that the staff does take into account the needs of the industry and sets up its students to fill the present gaps. I found this slightly frustrating as I wish they had implemented these changes sooner. My instructor was super knowledgable and experienced. He always did a great job of explaining concepts, oftentimes having to present the same ideas in different ways to ensure that everyone understood what was going on. He encouraged a lot of questions and it was very rare to see him get frustrated with us students not understanding a lesson. The job assistance provided was also really helpful. The careers team did a great job helping us translate our past experience into something that sounded good to employers, though they did some overwhelmed by the sheer number of students they had to help.
Overall, as I said, I am quite pleased with this course. I learned a lot...or at least enough to help me secure a job in web development (there's so much to learn!). I think my biggest complaint is that I'm not sure it's a super selective program, and some of the student did not take the course as seriously as others. This put a strain on the instructors who were sometimes forced to cater to students who hadn't done their homework, or didn't pay as much attention in class, instead of the students who really wanted to learn and springboard their new careers. As I said, I was hired quite quickly post course so this idea didn't affect me too much, but I know a few studnets, along with myself, did feel quite frustrated by the stalling in class more than a few times throughout the course. I believe this feedback was given to the team and steps have been planned to rectify for future courses, however.
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Anonymous
Web Development Immersive
Fast-paced, comprehensive program. I met a lot of really cool people in my class and, although it was challenging, it was also a lot of fun. GA gave me a good base of skills and taught us how to learn new tech quickly, which is vital for a career in this industry.
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Anonymous
Product Management Remote
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Remote experience was excellent and way better then I'd expected. We were still able to have group/partnered activities and engage with the instructor. The teacher, Aditi Joshi is a true master of her field and was a honest pleasure to learn from. The course was the perfect size and the content was dynamic. It felt as contemporary, new and ahead of the trend as possible. I really, really enjoyed it!
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Anonymous
Great Foundational Level Data Science Course
This course was really fast paced and difficult, but I learned more in a short period of time than I ever have in my life. We learned to use Python programming to apply statistics and predictive modeling techniques on real sets of data. If you've know Python or R and are interested in learning foundational level Data Science, this course is perfect for you.
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Anonymous
Refreshing Graphic Update
For all of you who are looking for a first approach or a refresh of what's trending with Visual Design, this course is for you.
I loved how we went over all the basics in design and how we had time to have workshops.
Totally worth it!
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Anonymous
JavaScript
Passionate instructor, fun projects, great peers, real world skills. I've built two full stack JavaScript websites since taking the class, but I think this speaks to my interest in the subject matter more than GA. The class offers an excellent, supported introduction to JS.
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Anonymous
Director of Marketing
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Over the last few years, I have taken TWO courses at General Assembly. I enrolled in both the Front End Web Development Course and the Business Fundamentals and Tactics course. Both were TOP NOTCH learning experiences.
When it came to the FEWD program, I had tried many times to learn to code on my own and had picked up on HTML and CSS quickly. The first part of the program was focused on HTML and CSS, which came more easily to me given my prior experience. When we began to learn Javascript during the second half of the program, this is where I found the MOST value from the GA instructional team. Javascript was challenging and it was the time and attention from my TA and instructors that enabled me to truely understand this language.
The second course I took was Business Fundamentals and Tactics. This class was very stimulating. Both of my instrcturos were ex-McKinsy consultants, VERY bright. I thought it was a great mix of practical skills and soft skills -- we covered things like the business canvas model or deep excel work on how to build a financial model paired with stimulating conversastion around business case studies. During one of the sessions, we had a guest speaker come in from Inbev and he was talking about supply chain and operations of a beverage company, which was very fascinating.
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Anonymous
UX Design Programme
With no background in UX design, I took the UXD part-time programme out of curiosity. It has given me a good foundation to UX design with practical elements incorporated into the 10-week programme. The instructor was excellent sharing with us numermous real-life examples. Really enjoyed the learning experience at GA!
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Anonymous
Web Development
Very prcatical learnings & engaging Instructors who know their stuff!
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Anonymous
Digital Marketing Circuit, good for anyone and everyone!
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I took the Digital Marketing Circuit simply to learn about the field, even though I am not a marketing professional. I found the course to be super interesting, and for an online course, they did a GREAT job of keeping me focused. Here's what I liked about it:
-There's a good split between slide presentations and videos
-Knowledge checks keep you honest
-The projects are fun
-The workload is manageable. Not too much, and broken out in sections.
Like I said, I think everyone should take this course. Marketing is such a key component of any business these days so I'm really happy I learned about it. If you're an entrepreneur who doesn't know much about building an audience, this is particularly a great class for you.
I highly recommend this course! Great way to learn. Thanks GA for the great experience!
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Anonymous
Love Data Analytics!
If you have experience with excel this course is a great way to learn SQL and the instructors were so buttoned up. There was always help when you needed it. You should have some familiarity with excel since they jump right in and the first two weeks or so fly past excel stuff. Majority of the course is for SQL. Would recommend!
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Anonymous
HTML CSS + Web Design Review
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This course is amazing for beginners! I walked in completely new to coding and can say I've confidently walked away being able to code a website from scratch. Don't let the "online" nature of this course fool you. It is work! It takes about 4-6 hours to complete each weeks worth of instruction and projects. That amount could be even more depending on how in depth you want to get. Another tip: be sure to use mentor hours. I rarely did this but you could easily double how advanced you become by utilzing the mentor team. This team is already in development so they know their stuff. Overall, great but challenging experience perfect for beginners.
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Anonymous
UXDI at GA SF
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You're really paying for the name and recognition of General Assembly. If you want to get into UX, it is a good idea to take this course, as it gives a good overall base understanding of UX. But it doesn't go any further than that. You cover only the basics of each topic and the instructors don't bother going into greater details about any individual topic.
It's really important when you're choosing GA to see which instructors you're going to get, becuase that determines your overall expereince as a student.
Personally I don't think the course is worth $15k. But GA gives you the name recognition and network, so ultimately that's kind of what you're paying for too.
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Anonymous
UX immersive course
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Summary:
Don't listen to the demand or trend of next hot jobs. Listen to your heart. Do you really think you can do this for the rest of your life? General Assembly does not guarantee jobs. If I had to go back, I would have taken a cheaper course via different online Bootcamp.
General Assembly itself is nothing but looking to take student's money. Their false belief of job guarantee is a scam to get students interested. General Assembly does not care for individual students who are looking for a career change.
Many of my cohort students had to go out and find their ways to get jobs. People who had design background were in a better position. That does not mean that they got jobs right out of the Bootcamp. Overall, students end up freelancing or work at small to mid start-ups.
When it comes to the course material, I was impressed. The reason why I was impressed is that instructors were knowledge in teaching UX (The quality of UX knowledge in LA is good).
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Anonymous
Quick overview of WDI program
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What is the process like?
Phone call with Admission Producer --> GA Dash exercise --> Interview with Admission Producer --> Bootcamp pre-work --> 3 Months Bootcamp --> Project Showcase + Networking --> Job Searching
My experience
I attended GA WDI HK (May - Aug 2016) and here's what I thought:
- Inspiring and helpful instructors and classmates. GA is really good at creating energetic and friendly atmosphere
- Programming stack are pretty much up to date. Learnt html, css, javascript, ruby, MEAN stack (mongoDB, express.js, Angular.js, Node.js), ruby on rails, postgreSQL, ionic, git & github, AWS, heroku, package managers (npm, bower), agile and scrum method (project management). Please check with your local GA as it will be slightly different !
- Fast-paced and compact course. WDI actually took more than 40h per week
- The students are mostly non-developer trying to make career change.
- To actually get the most out of the program, you should have tried a bit of programming before. Lack of knowledge will give you hard time to pick up the pace. If you are already a developer, you won't get much out of it.
- Guest speaker session is not always interesting/helpful. so i skip some :D
- It is overpriced considering it's more "5-80" course and no job guarantee
- GA WDI is aligned more with startups culture.
- Depending on your local market and your projects, you will get job offer within 2 weeks or more. Finding offer/company culture that you really like is another story though.
- It does help that GA has its own career website and the instructors+outcome producer will help you on job preparation such as mock interview; personal CV, portfolio website feedback and networking event. However, you still need to do extra work by yourself
- It's actually the beginning of your journey after you finished the bootcamp. What you've learnt is just enough to kickstart your career/company.
Reccomendation on what you should do before committing yourself to the program
- Attend the one-day course preview/WDI students showcase and get to know your potential instructor(s). By the way, don't refer to the list instructors in official website WDI page cause it's not up to date.
- learn basic html,css,javascript from https://www.codecademy.com/ https://dash.generalassemb.ly/ http://www.freecodecamp.com . If you are not used to type fast, using computer, searching with google, little idea about webdev; please do so.
- Consider GA WDI bootcamp if you are ready to dedicate the time and money + looking for structured course and get you ready in short period. If you have really high discipline/okay with spending part time learning 6 months - 1 year, free online course such as freecodecamp is actually good too
feel free to contact me on twitter
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Anonymous
The data but not the science, and poor customer support
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As an introduction I must say I did not enjoy my General Assembly experience, so this post may be biased.
However I’ll do my best to stay as objective as possible, as in the end I still believe I got from the course 75% of what I was looking for.
I was moderately satisfied as a learner, but very dissatisfied as a customer. To me the value for money was not there, as when you invest 10kGBP in a course you expect excellence.
But the worst part was definitely the way GA handled those with complaints. Either you shut up or you are told off, that was the sad truth we experienced.
The setting
- Data Science Immersive (DSI) in London, 1st iteration starting 10th October 2016. General Assembly ran other DSI before, but in the US or AsiaPac, never in Europe.
- Cost: 10,000 GBP
- 12 weeks course + 1 week dedicated to preparation to job search (so called “ouctomes”)
- 23 students at the beginning, 17 after 10 weeks (2 left after week 4, another 2 after week 8, another 2 after week 10)
- 2 teachers and 1 assistant teacher for the whole course
About myself
- Software engineer by education
- 15 years experience in the industry (but little as an actual programmer)
- Did online Coursera “data science specialization” prior to joining the course to ensure I liked the area
- Resigned from my job to attend the training
What was good
- Student required pre-work: lots of pre-read and programming exercises to do before joining the course in an attempt to bring everyone at the same level
- Curriculum: wide variety of topics covered, choice of one main programming language (Python)
- Learn with practice: daily homework (during the first 8 weeks), weekly project for the first 7 weeks followed up by capstone project, occasionally pair or small groups projects
- Outcome programme: help to refresh CV, improve online presence, sharpen negotiation skills, eventually will work hard to get you a job. GA has a target of getting 95% of their students a job in the area they studied, and they will do their best to meet it (that’s assuming students comply to all requirements, i.e. most homework/projects completed, 2 or less days absent from the course, strictly follow the job search guidelines, otherwise students may be excluded from the outcome programme)
- Nice office on the edge of the London City
What needs improvement
- They miss “science” in data science. GA is very good at teaching Web Design and User Experience Design, it is their core business. Unfortunately they handle data science similarly to these two areas, which means they think you become a data scientist mostly by coding in python and learning associated data science libraries. The whole scientific/rigorous side of data science is overlooked, statistics are barely covered
- Teachers had too little teaching experience. Data scientists are in high demand, that’s a well-known fact. When I registered for the course, I was given two instructor names, it turned out none of them actually taught us. One of the instructors was actually recruited less than two weeks before the course. With such complex topics as machine learning and little time to prepare, the result was obviously not great. To be fair one instructor worked hard to improve during the course. Still sometimes I felt with my Coursera background, I knew more than they did, and really it didn’t feel like value for money
- Admittedly, they bring people from all horizons and backgrounds in the class in order to increase revenues. The selection process is light and conducted by non-technical people, so pretty much anyone with very little coding experience can get in. Can you really become a data scientist in 3 months starting from nearly scratch, keeping in mind it will require you to learn coding, statistics, machine learning and much more? I doubt it.
- Customer support. The class was overall frustrated with the level of teaching/rigorousness of the course. This was highlighted through surveys organized by GA, but GA didn’t seem to take the feedback into account. After the group complained more, we had individual interviews with GA course producer Still not improvement. Then we wrote an open letter to GA administration signed by 95% of the class, which led to another round of individual interviews (during which the staff was not always nice with the students). Only then GA started giving signs of taking our feedbacks into account. By then 8 weeks had passed (i.e. two third of the bootcamp), and it took a lot of nerves to reach the result. To me it sounded like GA refused to admit that the course had flaws, and kept claiming this was “their way” of doing things, closing the opportunity to improve the situation. Even more than the course quality, the customer service really disappointed me and spoilt the overall experience
As a summary, it’s rather for you if:
- You are not self-disciplined to learn through an online course that will cost you 1/20 of the price
- You desperately want a data job, but not necessarily a data scientist job (that is you are ok with an internship, or a data analyst role etc as this is likely was you will get), and are ready to invest 10000GBP for that
- You have some coding experience and are ready to work very hard for 12 weeks straight: people who got most from the course had already coding experience, and little or no exposure to machine learning
It’s rather not for you if:
- You have very limited coding knowledge, or have family commitments preventing you from working a lot, including on weekends : there is a high risk you will give up as the difficulty will be too high
- You have some prior knowledge of machine learning or other data science related topics that you want to strengthen: you run the risk of being disappointed by the shallow level of what is being taught
- You expect both excellent courses and customer service for the price of 10 000 GBP
My advice to GA:
- Don’t brand the course as “Data Science Immersive”: it’s actually an introduction to data science tools, but not an actual data science course
- Require deeper prior coding knowledge from participants
- Review in depth the feedback collection and handling processes
- Be thankful to students providing constructive feedbacks and not defensive
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Anonymous
def Data_Science_Immersive(Not_worth, The_time, Or_money):
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If you are expecting a six figure salary after a three-month crash course in Data Science, stop dreaming. The course is crammed with difficult concepts by individuals who are not educators and rather former professionals who are best at telling you to "just google it." Although there are many takeaways from my experience at GA's DSI program, my most coveted takeaway is that there are no shortcuts to becoming a fantastic data scientist. The for-profit institution that GA runs will not enable you to become an overnight statistician, programmer, and data scientist. Sure, GA lays a foundation of what is expected of creating a career in DS, but don't expect their provided hiring statistics to be as honorable as they claim since many of the hires come in-house by GA themselves and not in real-world conditions. After networking with past graduates who GA did not bring in to speak to my cohort, I got a massive sense of dread and regret as they are still struggling to find work after GA. The past GA DSI graduates that were brought in to speak were already heavily involved in engineering, computer science, or data analytics. Not individuals who, as GA claims, were not required to possess any prior education or experience in the data science field and to look to pivot careers in a 12-week full-time career accelerator program.Come in with realistic expectations and applicable education or experience to get what you would anticipate paying $15,000 for a three-month course. My only regret is that I'm still in the program and didn't drop like some of the wiser individuals did at the beginning of the course after seeing the disorganization, deception, and undisciplined learning environment that the DSI GA staff puts together. Now, I'm left completing a program that I have diminishing hope and returns for, along with a hefty loan under my belt after predatory advertising and claims by the GA program and staff. I would not recommend anyone attend GA for any program. It would be much more cost efficient to attend community college classes to fill the gaps in your knowledge paired with online resources than pay $15k to a for-profit business that is reminiscent to the ITT Techs of yesteryear.
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Anonymous
Best Data Science Immersive
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Entering the data science boot camp at GA was one of the best professional and academic choices I have made. The material I was exposed is directly applicable to the demands of the industry, as I have found many leading tech companies using them. The time and money I invested in this boot camp have been worthwhile.
The boot camp is indeed heavy on the math and stats - as it should be- after all, data scientist deal with quantitative matters. It combines practical applications of machine learning algorithms. In fact, when the instructors introduce a new method, they take their time explaining the mechanics (math and stats) behind, before they start coding them. The type of datasets they used to describe the new methods range from your traditional "Titanic/iris data set" to more complex ones "NBA players performance" and others, which helps to make the learning process move from simple to complex. The instructors were fantastic at creating a healthy - collaborative - atmosphere in the classroom where students felt free to ask as many questions as they need. They made sure we had a hands-on experience implementing the new models during the labs and made themselves available to us during this time. Beyond this, the instructors also offered their time after school hours to go over the materials with students that had a hard time grasping the new concepts. Also, the evening and in-class TA(s) were super helpful, as they were prompt to answer my questions and provided me with extra materials to complement my learning.
As far as my classmates, many of them had stronger math and programming background, which was not my case. I invested my free time (which was not much during the boot camp) to become better at programming. I decided to be more proactive and took the initiative to get to class 15 min early and master one or two new Python methods. Also, every other night, I asked the instructors and TAs to provide me with math and Python materials that I used while implementing the machine learning algorithms or cleaning the datasets.
Before the boot camp, I considered other online courses like Coursera, edX, DataQuest and others, but I didn’t find in them the depth of explanation I received at GA. Honestly, I got the returns I expected from the boot camp.
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Anonymous
Data Science Immersive
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After graduating with a B.S. in a non-quant heavy major, I wanted to continue my education and applied to the GA DSI program. For such a rigorous and math heavy curriculum, the technical assessment assignment only consisted of coding in SQL and then visualizing those results. If GA wanted to assess if an individual was ready for a quantitatively heavy and coding heavy program, the technical assessment should have been more centered on Statistics, Calculus, and Python instead of just SQL which is very simple to pick up in a short amount of time.
I would not reccommend this program to someone who doesn't have either a very high quantitative acumen or a very solid understanding of computer science. The reality of the program is, you aren't going to become a data scientist in three short months, unless your field of study was in close proximity to data science or you were already in the work force for several years and working with data.
For how much the program costs, I'd reccomend either courses from edX, Udacity, or Coursera. There are several online resources like DataCamp or DataQuest that can teach the fundamentals of coding. If you aren't comfortable with very high level mathematics, you will not get your money's worth from this course. The instructors did not do a good job of teaching, rather just display how but they don't explain why. The pre-work required for the course claims to put everyone on an equal level of knowledge, but that is simply not the case. If you are from an engineering background or have extensively worked with data in some capacity, you will be much more prepared and equipped to succeed. If the course were better structured, organized, and promoted as to what it actually is, I could reccommend it. But in it's current state, unless you are someone with experience or education related to data science, you will not become a data scientist in three months and instead be burdened with at least 15k in loans.
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Anonymous
Digital Marketing and UX
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I've taken General Assembly courses online and offline. They're commitment to quality is obvious and consistent no matter the format or topic of the course. In every class, you're working with professionals in the field. This means you're learning applicable tools, understanding how things really work (not theroteically but realistically), and hearing the language as it's used in the industry. You get a real feel for what working in that space is like. Teachers make themselves available for extra help and 1:1 help. They're excited to work with students and hear about why you're taking these courses, what your goals are, and how you've been able to apply what you're learning in class day to day. The content is thoughtfully delivered in an constantly-optimized fashion (they're always collecting student feedback and updating content for the students and needs of the particular class). Everyone is so helpful and the skills taught are immediately applicable. I'm a huge fan of this institution.
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Anonymous
General Assembly Part Time Data Analytics
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Instructors: I am so lucky to have a knowledgable instructor along with two other awesome TAs in my cohort. they are really awesome. They are really passionate about teaching and wanting students to succeed. They do know how to teach. I would suggest you to find out who the instructor is before taking this course because instructor is the key here.
Recommandation: I wouldn't suggest you just go in there and only spend your time in the classroom. Utilizing your resources, TAs, instructor and ask questions. You are there to learn, and not just to get that certificate(the paper to me is just a piece of paper). What matter the most is what goes into your brain and know that you will become very confident after this program if you put in the work. There wouldn't be any assessment tests.
ClassSize: We originally had around 20 students, but only 12 students remained. What I would say is that GA didn't do a good job in recruiting their students and so some people left the program because they didn't know what would be expecting in the later part of the course-(SQL, which is the part that i evaulated the most, they thought excel was too easy so they left). What other students drop out was because they never used excel before. I can always always can get help from teachers/TA. Think about it:12 to 3 instructos ratio. This was the best class size I have taken in my life because of the accidental drop out students(or maybe GA should just limit the class size to 12 already) and I got a lot out of the program. I believe the best ratio is 4-1 or 3-1.
Thought: I would say I improved a lot whether in SQL, presentation but also met a lot of awesome people who all worked in different field and it felt pretty awesome just to be a part of this group since those who still remained in the program are the ones who really want to learn and not afriad of struggles. I would say everyone in my cohort are all very nice and knowledage.
I would give the instructors and TAs 5 starts: They would always answer your questions through slack. I had one TA answered my question during his time at work. I felt so thanksful for him. They really care about your success.
I would give the GA curriculum a 3 since not all the materials in the courses I found it to be useful.
Instructors are the key, find out who will be teaching- if they love what they do( teaching, helping, and want their students to succeed). I was lucky to be in a awesome cohort.
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Anonymous
Wouldn't recommend
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After completing General Assembly’s full-time, 12-week WDI (Web Development Immersive) Bootcamp in San Francisco, I highly recommend choosing another bootcamp. There are far better bootcamps out there than GA that will get you where you want to be; hired as a Web Developer/Android Developer/UX..
What General Assembly is really good at is creating a supportive and encouraging community of students and teachers that support each other and don’t pressure you beyond what you’re physically capable of. They have free coffee all day long which is pretty cool. Their outcomes team is incredible. They have great career coaches that walk you through every step of the job hunting process. You have a workshop with the career coaches once a week and they continue workshops after the program with feedback on resumes, interview tips, cover letters, informational interviews, every piece of job advice you’d want/need. Also, we did a ton of pair programming which is great experience. We pair programmed almost every single day.
As for the bad, and why I wouldn’t recommend General Assembly, here’s what I have to say. I came to General Assembly with basically zero coding experience. I spent about 40–50 hours on Codecademy. The pace is extremely fast and I put in 12–15 hour days as well as an hour and a half commute each way. That’s expected. It’s bootcamp. What was unexpected was the student to teacher ratio which they claim is 3–4 students to 1. Not the case. Usually, the ratio was about 18 to 1-2. There’s not a lot of help available. They also promised one on one feedback and code reviews. Not true. I received feedback twice the entire time I was at GA. And it was never code reviews. Most of the feedback was behavioral, which isn’t what I was there for, I was there to learn to code.
They also said you can go to bootcamp with no experience and be successful. Also not true. Out of our group and the group before us, 2 people are hired 2 months out. In past groups, 4–5 months out, about half of them are hired. I have no idea where they get their 99% hiring rate from, but it’s not accurate. In my class, every single person had previous experience, years of experience in some cases in the field. Only me and 5 other students were coming in as true beginners and 2 of those students dropped within three weeks. The worst part about General Assembly and the primary reason I wouldn’t recommend it is wasted time in class and mistakes during the lectures. Almost every single lecture, the teachers were obviously not familiar with the material and made huge mistakes in the code that at times set us back 8 hours of work. That is totally unacceptable when we’re paying close to 14,000$ for a 12–week bootcamp. There were so many mistakes that students actually stated they didn’t even come to class/did other stuff during class because they knew they’d have to reteach themselves later.
General Assembly is a middle ground where the more experienced students aren’t challenged enough and the less experienced students don’t stand a chance. GA is spending all their money expanding and not enough money fixing what they have. If they keep up the bad experience my group and I had, GA will not be around much longer. There’s way too many bootcamps that can actually fulfill what they promise, and do it for cheaper.
Sidenote: GA is constantly asking for feedback and I did communicate all of this to them in feedback surveys. I know they try to incorporate feedback so I hope they fix their program because I’m not the only student feeling extremely disappointed in my outlay of time and money.
Not to say it wasn’t a good experience because it was and I learned so, so much. It’s been a great launchpad and I feel excited about learning much more on my own/online programs such as Udacity. But, I don’t think it’s a comprehensive jumpstart to actually begin a career as it would be at Hack Reactor/Galvanize.
If you have any questions at all about details of the course, or you want any more information about my experience, feel free to reach out. I’m happy to talk.
Contact: geckogirl312@yahoo.com
**Used my less frequent email as to remain anonymous
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Anonymous
A roller coaster 10 weeks
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Like all study's there are ups (fun class great insturctor and assistant) and downs (jam packed with fast moving topics to cover and semi difficult assignments to complete while working)
Nick ( the instructor) and Vito (assistant) were well rounded, very pro in all topics , there is never an "I don't know moment".
Fun classes and assignments, great encouragement and enthusiasm.
Fast pace for beginners that will come out at the end proud to have developed working web apps and better understanding of the lingo and being able to manipulate code, fixing bugs, start writing own scripts from scratch, and explore libraries.
People with experience in coding or a bit of JavaScript will gain knowledge in most recent trends , frameworks, and will enjoy the subject as much as newbies, as The instructor had reworked the course to make it very relevant to what the industry is currently using, and what would be most relevant.
My work is confident in GA, therefore very confident to let me use the skills I have just recently learnt, at work.
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Anonymous
Mixed instruction. Need more interaction with data scientists
Mixed bag of instructors. Materials had a some errors. Admin staff was unresponsive at times. Not enough data scientists brought in for teaching and career insight. This could change going forward as feedback was given and the instructors for the next cohort sound potentially better. I was still able to learn machine learning, but the process could have been much smoother.
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Anonymous
Best Investment
I attended web development immersive course at GA and it's undoubtedly the best investment of my time and money. I came from a programming background but still I have learnt so many new things and improved my coding skills. It helped me make a career change and landed me in the job I love to do.
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Anonymous
Front End Web Dev
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Build a fully responsive, interactive website that stands apart from the usual templates.
Understand how a skillful mix of programming and layout powers the web we see – and how teams collaborate to create it.
Use HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, jQuery, GitHub, and Sublime in concert.
I was so excited to be in this course and it was marketed as a Beginner course that anyone could take!
I felt overwhelmed from day one, utilized the tutors but could not catch up. I asked my teacher for help understanding topics and he could not explain them in a way that I could understand.
I had just come off a semester of Straight A's from a nearby college studying various Computer Science topics. I felt very discouraged with the teacher's inability to teach me and the misrespresentation that anyone could follow a long with the program with no prior experience.
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Anonymous
Data Analysis (Online)
I personally thought it was a great program that was really what you made of it. It had a vast array of resources to define one's skills, but at the same time was not too time consuming and demanding.
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Anonymous
Problems with the DC data science program
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We're in week 10 of the 12-week data science immersive program, and I really regret choosing GA. Last week, after almost 2 months of ignoring student concerns, the administration parted ways with our lead instructor, gave us a 20% discount, and decided to extend the program by a week. You can imagine what the program has been like for these things to happen.
There ARE some wonderful people working at GA. However there isn't quality control (on anything), and the administration has handled the situation in our class quite poorly. I'd recommend choosing a better and better-established program, even if you plan to work in DC.
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Anonymous
Seattle Job Market is Difficult
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The instructors are hit or miss; we had one amazing instructor, but the other instructor was often unprepared to teach. The curriculum gives a good introduction to the basics as well as cutting edge technologies for web development and the projects provide good hands on experience. There is very little job assistance following graduation. GA advertises a reverse job fair where employers come to see your work, but for ours only 5 recruiters showed up and they were looking for people with previous tech experience. GA does not have relationships with companies to place students for internships or jobs. Especially in Seattle, if you do not have previous experience in the tech industry or a large network of friends in tech, you will struggle to find a job. 5 months after graduation, only 4 people in our cohort are working in tech.
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Anonymous
Web Development Immersive NYC
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Overall, an incredible opportunity that you can and will see the rewards from if you are willing to put the time and effort in. Having absolutely no technical background 6 months prior to application/acceptance of the web dev bootcamp, I am now a full time web developer. It is one of the most difficult and time consuming thing I have ever done. It is 12 weeks of non stop work, realistically somewhere between 60-80/hrs of work per week. Very fast paced, and a TON of information, much of which you aren't even sure your actually learning until you've moved on from it and are applying the concepts in actual work.
Very relevant course work and curriculum, they definitely make an effort to stay ahead of industry trends to put you in the best position possible after graduation.
You leave the course with the skills you need to be productive in an entry level position, which I guess is really all you can ask for from a school.
Job Assistance is kind of a joke, keeping in contact with your post graduation career coach is a hassel, they speak to you like a parent making sure their kid did their chores for the week. Many areas of improvement here, the class science fair should be a demo day for potential employers not the students in other cohorts, interview prep was minimal, and the job "leads" they give you are just jobs youd see searching on your own.
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Anonymous
UXD-Melbourne
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A terrific course that covered off a lot of ground. The entire UX journey is part of the curriculum and in the most part was very interesting and enjoyable.
As this course was the part time version of UXD unfortunately there is not much emphasis given to assistance transitioning into a UX career, although in saying that I am now confident to conduct my own case studies and apply UX thinking to them.
The delivery of the course was by 3 people from the industry who ranged in the experience levels. George the main course facilitator was excellent, he was approachable, calm, insightlful and delivered the content in a really pleasent manner.
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Anonymous
Front End Web Dev -- Part-Time -- SF
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I came to GA with no programming background and I'm 47 y.o. I started the 10 week course with one instructor. I lasted two classes (of 20) before dropping. The instructor was nice, but he had never taught before and it showed. No preparation -- just winging the lectures. He knew the concepts but not communicate them. No go.
I re-enrolled in the next 10 week course and it was awesome. Sarah Holden in the star in SF. In every class she had 30 to 80 slides, a cheat sheet, little exercises, and lots of support. Her lectures are superb -- night v day from the other class. If you take the part time front end web design class in SF, take Sarah's class or don't enroll -- that's my advice.
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Anonymous
N/A
he cGreat coding school. A lot depends on the instructors. Classes can feel crowded. The curriculum was relevant then but less so now (may have changed).
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Anonymous
A Great Opportunity
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Enrolling in the full-time Web Development Immersive (WDI) at General Assembly was one of the best decisions of my life. The people and instructors I met there were incredible; we have fantastic relationships to this day, and as a freelancer, my network has been utterly invaluable in building my own self-sustained business. I highly recommend the school and the course; do your homework, do all of the pre-work, and make sure this is what you want to do. Then, spend all of your time learning, experimenting, and making apps that truly interest you. Break code. Fix code. Learn code. Google everything. This course taught me how to ask the right questions, much like a new developer does on the job. The skills I learned here were absolutely transferable to a real-life job situation. The instructors not only introduced us to code, but the entire coding community. Our guest speakers were movers and shakers in the tech industry, and they never hesitated to teach us what was relevant in the world, even if that meant minor additions to the curriculum. We were tight-knit and eager to learn; our instructors saw our genuine interest and potential, and our class has remained incredibly close two years later. It wasn't my intention, but I made friends for life at General Assembly and learned life-changing career skills.
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Anonymous
Front End Web Development
Part-time class in SF learning the fundamentals of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The class focused largely on JavaScript and culminated in individual projects.
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Anonymous
Sr. QA
Great mix of professionals and students -
Anonymous
Good Experience
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The intensity of coursework seemed appropriate and I came out of the Immersive with what I feel is a strong foundation in web development. They may want to consider expanding the length of the course to better prepare people for the job market with further skills, as it seems getting in at the entry level requires more experience than the Immersive provides. Stronger internship placement would be a boon as well. The instructors were very good, dealt well with the varying skill levels in the class, and I would recommend the experience overall.