General Assembly

After much research and consideration I joined the GA WDI course in London in Spring 2014.  The course was incredibly intense - but we had a great set of teachers, an in class teaching assistant and past students who came by in the evenings to help out with homework. There was a huge amount to cover and it was intellectually and emotionally challenging - but there was always someone there to offer feedback or hear my and other students thoughts on the course. The work itself was interesting and there were different levels so that you could always push yourself to the limit.  The classes were a mixture of lectures, follow along coding sessions and free coding in groups of students.  Every day and weekend was finished off with homework which helped cement the days knowledge. The course did a great job of covering the skills necessary to get a job.

I had a great three months and still catch up with other students.  Since the course my career has gone very well. GA helped provide connections and meeting with companies hiring as well as tips on how to write a cv, perform in an interview and negotiate salary. These all helped getting the first job.  Even better was that there was help and advice on hand at any point.  Even after graduating they were around to offer tips and help students change jobs if they needed. I’m on my second job and am continuing to progress.

The course changed my career and life and to pay back I go back regularly to talk to past students and to help out where I can.  I can highly recommend GA WDI in terms of the people, the instructors and the overall quality.

While I did the course I wrote a blog and have followed that up with regular posts about my career and where I have got to which might be interesting for future students: http://mikemjharris.tumblr.com/

Before attending General Assembly, I had applied to, interviewed with, and got accepted to several other bootcamps. They had distinct approaches to what they taught, how they taught it, and how they helped grads once the course was over. In the end, I chose to attend General Assembly because they were by far the most passionate about their mission of not only educating students and helping them find a job afterwards but also building a community that one can become a part of. The tech industry can sometimes be a lonely place, especially if one is coming from another career or is of a certain age. These obstacles are tackled by General Assembly, as they have the most diverse community of any school I researched. Everyone who works for the school is friendly, outgoing, and always available. They also do a fantastic job of making sure that those who attend their classes, workshops, and events will be open-minded and open-armed members of the community. I could not recommend General Assembly more highly and have sent many people I have met their way, whether it be for their short or immersive courses.

I currently work for a very prestigious software consultancy and I wouldn't be where I am now without the WDI course GA offers.

Bootcamp has been the best thing I have done for myself, it was tough, at times I didn't think I was cut out for it, but I enjoyed immensely every bit of it. In hindsight wouldn't change anything other than ensuring that I completed the whole of pre-work prior to the course. I had to have a lot of help from the instructors to make up for some gaps which wouldn't have been there otherwise.

At the end of the course, we showcased our final projects to potential employers at a dedicated event, where students were positively out-numbered. As a result of that, I had quite a few interviews and 3 job offers! I got to choose where to start my web development career. From what I understand the curriculum has evolved with heavier focus on JavaScript, which means that current grads are even better equipped for the jobs in the industry.

I have had a great start to my career and couldn't have done it without GA.

I am writing this review as a past student at GA, as well as a current instructor. I took a part-time front end development class at GA several years ago. I am a UX designer, and though I could hack together some code, I lacked a foundation of knowledge. The most valuable aspect of my time in this course was one-on-one time with the instructor - even if it was for a few minutes, I learned so many things that would be difficult to figure out from my own self-taught methods. That is the value that GA brings above all else- instructors who are day-to-day practicioners and can relay the most current and relevant information to their students.

As an instructor for the UX Design course, I have tried to apply this as much as possible. The curriculum sets a strong foundation to take skills into the world, but I can really see the magic happen with students when I show examples of my own work, or give them a tip that will instantly add tangible, practical skill to their toolset.

At GA, you get out what you put in. Those looking for a foundational knowledge of the topic will get it, and leave with a strong understanding of concepts, terminology, and processes. Students who want to take it a step further for a career change will have to put in more time, but will have the very best resources at their disposal to make it happen.

Having deciced to leave my previous job in Commodities Trading, it is fair to say I didn't fully know what to expect from my time as a WDI student. As it turned out it was initially tough, then much harder and finally, after a lot of hard work, incredibly rewarding! Without doubt, the best career decision I have ever made.

The course is called 'Immersive' for a good reason - you are thrown straight in at the deep end, smashing out code from day one and whilst it is initially quite overwealming, you find yourself week on week amazing yourself with how much you learn in such a short space of time. There is a heavy emphasis on 'job skills' over theory and abstract computer science which as a career changer, was exactly what I was hoping for.  

The standard of teaching is excellent - smart, confident industry professionals who know what life is like at the coal face of software development. I certainly wasn't 'top of the class' on the course, but there was always willing and friendly support on hand pretty much 24/7 to keep me on track. 

One of the best things about GA is the after course experience - you aren't just dumped in the job market and left to your own devices, rather there is dedicated team helping you along the way with interviews, CVs and setting up meetings with eager employers. My final project was impressive enough to get me my first front-end job with Penguin Books at a GA hiring event and since have worked for agencies, a fin-tech startup and today at a FTSE100 retailer, building complex webapps, handling literally millions of hits a day.

Coming up to three years on from graduation, I still stay in touch with a lot of my coursemates, tutors and the wider GA gang - I would, and have, wholeheartly recommend the WDI course to anyone wanting to fasttrack themselves into the world of web development!

I took the Web Development Immersive course in April 2014 and I can honestly say it completely changed my career and propsects for the better.

I came into the course with minimal coding knowledge (but did complete all of the pre-work assignments leading up to the course) and within 8 days of finishing WDI had found a job as a full-time web developer. Nearly two years on I'm still working as a Frontend Developer and have never been so excited about my future.

The course itself is intense to say the least, but you get out what you put in. If you want a surface level course that will go a an easy pace, this is not the one for you. But if you want to challenge yourself, learn true programming concepts that span multiple languages and are serious about becoming a web developer General Assembly's WDI course is a must.

General Assembly as a company are great too. They work hard to keep the community together and host parties every month for alumni, instructors, employees and prospective students. This means that you're not just thrown out into the big bad world after you finish the course. You've always got a strong community to integrate with.

Overall I can't speak highly enough of General Assembly. They've completely altered my career trajectory in a hugely positive way. I can now build experiences that anyone with an internet connection can use and all I need to do it is my laptop.

Ok, so like you I have read everything this site has posted about coding boot camps.  First of all take it with a grain of salt, like a movie review not everyone has the same opinions and thoughts as you do.  With that said my review from WDI here in Washington D.C.  I separted from the Navy to attend this specific coding boot camp, I was also awarded the Oppurtunity Fund that pays for the course.  The 12 week program is seriously no joke in keeping a pace.  Everyday you learn something different from the concept of implementing API's to connecting front end languages with back end languages.  Each day seems more daunting and does not seem to be enough time in the day to ask questions and get the work done.  But that is the thing, you are not expected to complete all assignments, however with that said you are expecting to time box everything.  Work on something, get stuck, take a break, come back and own it.  Do not dwell on one problem for to long, there will be time to ask quesitons why something was not working.  My only, I would not say pet peeve, annoyance was that Javascript was not covered as much as some of us thought it would be.  Your prework was the gamit of what you learn.  So in order to be a total bad ass and rock out, do as much Code Academy, Free Code Camp an any other free online training.  Yes it sucks I know however it will seriously only help you, that you can trust me on.  Come into the program hungry to learn to program not thirsty to get that big paycheck.  On the finding a job note, yes GA, at least in DC, will do everything they can to help you find an awesome position.  However you need to bring your A game and do your part.  I had some people in my class complain that the Outcomes team was either not doing enough or was not doing what they needed.  Well you come to a coding boot camp to learn programming PLUS what employers are looking for, the Outcomes team can not and will not hold your hand.  My experiance with them was different and everything worked out after I stopped and just focused on my skills.  I work part time right now, however I work in Cyber Security which is where I wanted to be.  The company that brought me on said they wanted to bring me on because of my programming experiance but did not have a position open so they asked if I was interested in part time and I jumped on it.  Find a programming stack you enjoy and look for a position alinged with that, do not pick a job with the highest paycheck.  You need to learn first trust me.  I literally go to work excited, armed with the skills I learned in the Military and at General Assembly.  You just have to want this.  On another note to any veterans interested in General Assembly or any other coding boot camp in Washington D.C. I have only this, do not expect these companies to hire you because you are a veteran they do not care.  They want only veterans with degrees no matter your skill level.  Be prepared to hear that a lot, however with that said if you stay out of the government spot light and go private sector you will do fine trust me.

I took the 7th WDI course in NYC at GA and it was a life changing experience. It was extremely difficult, not just mentally and physically but emotionally.

I put in about 18 hr days often including the weekends and gave it everything I had. I got what I put in. My instructors were phenomenal and taught me from basically no programming experience and all the essentials of programming mentality, data structures, how the internet works, HTTP, RESTful API, hitting external API's on the backend, scraping, AJAX, responsive design, HTML/CSS, ruby, rails, javascript, jQuery, etc.

We learned JavaScript in 2 weeks and by the 3rd week I was able to create a JS side scrolling action game using a game engine library they had never taught. 

To this day I still share a bond with many of my classmates as we forged through the experience together.

A year after graduating, I had gotten a job as a junior developer (on an entire tech stack I had never once learned) and eventually got promoted to run the entire engineering team of 10. We successfully scaled out our flagship product tripling daily revenue, hitting +100k DAU's and eventually GA called me back to teach as a lead instructor.

It's been a wild ride but I owe so much not just to the program, but the people. My instructors were quite simply amazing. 

I graduated from GA’s Digital Marketing course in 2013 and their Intro to SQL in 2014 and can honestly say that GA’s courses are great.

The content is robust, the teachers are of a high quality and the timings make sense for the full time employed, but what really makes GA stand out is their after care and the community they’ve built. It’s one thing to go and learn a new skill, it’s completely another to try to get a job afterwards. But not with GA. There’s a ton of networking opportunities and meet and greets with hungry startups waiting to snap up fresh talent.

I’ve gone on to hire GA graduates, who’ve then gone on to start startups, who’ve then gone on to hire GA graduates :)

I’m still in touch with many of my classmates and the community at large is always willing to help out – that is priceless. 

I took WDI in London in 2013 as the second course they ever ran. I had no prior coding experience other than the pre-course work they assigned me, as I was working as a historian for English Heritage at the time. Going in, I was super nervous, but quickly found that everyone in the course was more or less in the same position. We were all there to learn from scratch, and that's exactly what we did.

Those 3 months were some of the most intense months of my life and some of the best. We worked insanely hard, all day every day, often worked (and partied) late into the night. It was really tough, sometimes confusing, always challenging, but by the end of it we all could call ourselves developers. My course curriculum was very different to what the current course is today, and by all accounts I hear it is vastly improved (we learned very little javascript back then, which would have been a huge asset to me now). But the foundations I learned in Ruby on Rails completely set me up for my career as a developer.

I got multiple job offers straight out of the course, and now 3 years later I'm working for an incredible creative agency as a Front End Developer making movie websites. I even got to help build the official Star Wars website last year for The Force Awakens!

General Assembly isn't just a course, it's about taking control of your skillset and your career and going into an industry where you can solve puzzles every day and get paid to do it. With GA you get the opportunity to learn some truly awesome, relevant skills, meet a new family of people, be mentored by passionate and brilliant instructors, and get access to an international community of developers, designers, marketers, product managers and data scientists for the rest of your life. It's a fantastic course, an amazing network, and if you are serious about changing the course of your career, I highly recommend GA as your first step towards success.

General Assembly's Web Design Circuit is amazing! It was my first real deep dive into the world of programming and I was delighted to learn with some of the most inspiring, creative, and entrepreneurial minded people. GA's staff is incredibly thoughtful and patient (thank goodness because I was so new to all the concepts!). Our teachers presented the modules in a logical and fun manner that built upon each week's lesson. Learn should be fun, right?!  Every online classrroom experience of the Circuits course unllocked another creative possiblilty that I could tangibly create in my multiple lines of code. I couldn't be happier with my experience or what I created as a result of going through the Circuits course. Thanks, GA! 

Great instructors, couldn't have asked for better people to learn from.

I signed up for the Web Development Immersive course with no prior development experience.

The admissions process checked for basic qualities. Can you think logically? How serious are you about doing this?

We were given small projects to complete at home. Make sure to do these, otherwise you will likely struggle when the course starts.

You can expect to work 12hrs a day, Monday-Saturday. It's tough, but there's a strong support network. Instructors, alumna, and your peers have your back 24-7. Each class defines their own culture and values - my cohort had a fantastic camaraderie.

This course is 3 months long, however you should manage your expectations. This is the beginning of your journey. Yes - you can come out with the competency of a junior developer - but the learning doesn't stop.

It's been 2 years since I completed my WDI course.  General Assembly is still providing value to me now with it's global alumni network and followup events. I went on to code for a few startups, and subcontract for the likes of Google and Skype as a Technical PM. I've now founded a company called Fromigo - a marketplace of tours and activities by local people.

I enrolled in the Web Development Immersive at General Assembly in summer 2014. Given my Industrial Engineering background  + work in consulting I was a bit skeptical of the program's promise to truly bring you up to speed in 12 weeks on being able to get a full time job. My headline for review is: WDI is incredibly valuable, there is 0 minutes wasted on useless topics, everything is practical and a necessary block needed in progression towards becoming a junior developer. 

Faculty: The highlight for me was the dedicated faculty (2 instructors per class + 1/2 TAs) who would come to class extremely prepared, run each session as a working session (vs. lecturing at you) and be prepared to stay through the evening as you are going through the daily exercises. The faculty really lives and breathes your success and holds that as a KPI. This is something I could never say about many of my undergraduate professors. They were also extremely good at their job and very up-to-date on what is being used and most relevant in the industry today.

Classmates: It is a very fun and engaging environment. The class sizes are much smaller than normal university which means you get to really know the people you are studying with. There's a lot to be learnt from your classmates throughout the 12 weeks but also during project weeks. 

Relevance: The WDI team constantly updates the curriculum to make sure students are equipt with the latest talent requirements in the industry. Don't be surprised if the curriculum you will take is a bid different than years before -- it is all changes made to student's benefits with the aim of getting us junior developer jobs. 

Outcome: Almost everyone in my class was able to find junior dev jobs 1-3 months post graduation. Others who were interested in becoming a more technical PM, also found WDI useful in giving them credibility needed to deal with engineering teams. I have since had 3 close friends enroll in the program and all happily found great jobs after. 

I have been looking for one of the courses that I can study during my visit to US and my firends who live in Boston told me that Generalassambley is a good option. I did not have a chance to apply to full courses because of my current studies and I have tried applying for part time. I have filled first document from their website and they replied me that one of their representetives will get in touch with me.This person send me an email to mark a day and an hour that both of us are available. I did exactly what they asked me for and I got an email that my apointment is confirmed. Hence, when the day arrived no body called my and I have decided to number that exist in the mail. When I called her I told that I have an appointment and gave my name but she told me that she already made an appointment with somebody else , however she can call me back half an hour later. I have waited one hour but she didn't call me. I called the other numbers that exists on their web side and I call same person also but nobody asnwered. Next day she send me an email that she didnt understand my name but she was waiting for me... It was a compelete lie because she got my number. if she wanted to call me she could.

  Finally, I tought that it might be a bussy day for them and I made another appoitment with same person another day at 2:30pm but samething happened one moretime. This responsible person called me at 6pm. I dont even remember wether it was the same day or the next day. In these two days I have already apllied for another school and same day called me and I applied for the school. 

 It is very unfortunate for companies that most of the people are fighting really hard to do something good and everyting goes wrong just beacause of one person. 

I walked away from the General Assembly course with a vague but imcomplete understanding of what data science could do. Many important subject were not covered, and those covered were taught poorly.

The instructor was often unfamiliar with the material and couldn't answer many of the students' questions. He would show up to class unprepared to explain his slides.

The General Assembly staff members took weeks and multiple follow-ups to reply to my emails - including about how to give them the money to reserve a place in the class!

Overall, I was disappointed and frustrated.

For me, General Assembly was an experience about which I have mixed feelings. Doing an immersive course with little experience and sitting next to people with vast amounts of experience with code was a nightmare. The curriculum cannot adapt to such a disparity of knowledge, and for the amount of money you pay this is not good enough.

The instructors were great, encouraging those with little knowledge to keep trying, but it quickly became overwhelming. The atmosphere was mostly convival with drinks and snacks to end the week, but - and this is probably indicative of the tech industry as a whole - GA seemed to be obssessed with youth. From their marketing to success stories, the age of those graduates was always heavily underscored.

My advice? Have HTML/CSS/Javascript down to an intermediate level. The pre course materials won't prepare you enough for how quickly and deeply you dive in once you begin studying. Alternatively, do a part-time course instead and build your knowledge over a longer period, this will allow more time to process and practice the skills you learn.

I do not recomend anyone to take any immersive bootcamp with no knowleadge. Honestly, this kind of knowleadge requires a lot of repetition and practice. My advise is do as follows:

1) learn Fast Typing. If you don't know how to type fast, a good free website is www.Typingclub.com It is veeeery important to keep your attention on the screen when coding, rateher that shifting your attention to the keyboard.

2)Finish ALL of the folowing free websites certifications: 

    a)All of the certificates of www.freecodecamp.com.

    b)After finished with freecodecamp, then start from scratch and do all of the tutorials at www.codeschool.com . Yes, do the same thing you did on the previous website, AGAIN; take the Javascript course as if it was the first time you have ever seen Javascript; be patient, it may seem repetitive and tedious at first, but it is worth it, it is practice. Remember the baseball players have to practice easy throws for many hours beforfe being able to perform good in a MLB game. Finish all free courses in the following order: HTML/CSS, Javascript, JQuery, comand line, RubyOnRails, learnGIT.

    c) My recomendation is to even take all the free courses on  www.codecademy.com as well; Yes, all of the from scratch. why? at that point you should be ablke to just fly through all the excescises and lessons and finish thye entire body of lessons in a matter of a week. On every website you will find a new piece of information that was not covered by the others. 

* it would be even a good ide if you are spending over $10,000 in a bootcamp to pay for a $20 membership at one of those site to get opremium access to other lessons that will prepare you even better. Trust me, payin extra $20 for a couple of months will make you take a really good advantage when you start you $10k bootcamp.

3)  Then, and ONLY THEN, enroll in a 3-month on-site intensive immersive bootcamp. 

4) Most likely, the school will require for you to work on a pre-course project to get you up to speed by the time the actual bootcamp starts. you should be able to finish the pre-course assigments in half the time of the other students. Normally that is a 40-hours period you must dedicate to finish the pre-requisite before starting class. If there is a waiting list and you can;t start right away,  keep practicing on sites such as www.codewars.com. Also learn how to work with the developers tools such as the inspector from google and mozila; codeschool.com has a really good tutorial on their website for that. 

Now let me warn you: what you learn in all the self teaching tutorials form those websites, is JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG. By no means are you prepared to apply for any jobs. It requires A LOT of practice. While in school, make sure to prepare really good portfolio quality projects, that's why it is important you come already knowing the basics of coding on each topic by finishing those tutorials. It is hard, it is not easy, but if you come prepared to the bootcamp by finishing all the free online tutorial from those websites, it will be a very pleasurable and rewarding experience, otherwise it will be very VERY frustrating.  

So, plan yourself for 3 months preparing for the 3-4 months long bootcamp to really be able to learn what you need to learn to start a carreer as a developer.

I took a part-time General Assembly class, just 2 nights per week (for 12 weeks), and learned to confidently construct pixel perfect front-end websites. Having time between the courses left me with the freedom to thoroughly explore each lesson's contents while practicing my own implementations. 

The teachers (and teacher's assistants) were top notch! Soon after completing the course, I became 100% confident in CSS & HTML challenges, and I'm a bit less intimidated by the challenge of Javascript. In fact, I plan to take another General Assembly course dedicated to JS this coming summer.

All in all, the courses may seem a bit pricey, but they are well worth every penny.

Thanks GA!

Alex

I took the Digital Marketing Circuit online and the course fell way below expectations. As background, I came into the course with very little marketing experience or knowledge (I'm looking to pivot away from my existing, non-marketing profession), however, I am very familiar with the online learning landscape and have taken a variety of online courses through my undergraduate and graduate careers, as well as through MOOCs like Coursera and Lynda. Here's a list of my pros and cons:

Pros:

• Digital marketing, as a topic, is definitely a useful thing to have in one's tool kit
• Content was digestable
• Can be done online, from anywhere

Cons:

• Minimal downloadable course content. For $750 I expect more than a slim "review" sheet that reads more like a list of definitions with some pretty images, and the assignment worksheets.
• The course is trying to target too many audiences at once and, in doing so, is a very poor fit for most potential students. As a newbie, I found some of the assignments to assume I knew or had access to certain information that was outside the scope of the class (for example, market data). Yet, if I were a seasoned marketing professional, much of the content would have been useless for me. For example, spending an entire unit on KPIs and metrics, including explaining the virtues of using a bar graph versus a pie chart to capture certain data, seems really remedial for most people with any marketing background. In other words, it is at once too unrealistic and too basic given the wide swath of audience they say the course is appropriate for. 
• The PDF files for assignments are clunky. Moreover, they come across as schoolgirl worksheets. While useful for establishing ways to think about an issue and plan strategies, they DO NOT equate to a portfolio that can be presented to potential employers or hosted in an online portfolio as a substitue for work product.  Also, for ~$15/month you can have access to Lynda courses and download any worksheet like materials (and you can cancel your membership any time). Since this is the primary thing you can download from the course, they simply do not cut muster. 
• General Assembly makes a big deal about the 1:1 mentoring sessions. Here's the thing: it's the only interaction you'll get, and the content is entirely dependent on you. Therefore, each week you have one, thirty minute opportunity to ask questions related to marketing in general, get feedback on your work, and ask questions about the upcoming material. This strikes me as really odd, particularly for a $750 class. Feedback should be asynchronous. Follow up questions for feedback can be asked during mentoring sessions, but it is a waste of time to utilize scant instructional sessions in this way. I would also point out that the live versions of the GA courses have TAs present at the sessions in addition to office hours. 
• For a digital marketing course, it surprised me that new digital platforms weren't mentioned, such as Vine and Snapchat.  
• All of the assignments required a business and audience for you to work from (you use the same business throughout). You can ask the course produce to give you a model business if you don't have one you want to, or can, use. That's what I did. Funny thing is, the business wasn't well aligned to the assignments. Further, I was given no options or alternative selections. 
• There are only 4 educational units. The 5th is purely the "final project" which amounts to putting all your other assignments together in a brand new worksheet. Of course, you are encouraged to improve upon your work, or start over from scratch (!), but, essentially, the 5th unit is a bit misleading. Again, this "final project" cannot support portfolio use.  
• There's no in-course engagement. Participants are busy, so I don't blame them/us. But, neither the mentors nor the course produce facilitate conversation, comment on posts, etc.  
• Unit content and unit quizzes don't always align.  
• As an interesting side note, the number of enrollees who continued posting completed assignments decreased markedly from week to week. In fact, there was nearly a 50% decrease each week. This is significant for two reasons: first, the entire course started with 34 people, of which only 30 posted the first assignment. Second, you can't view course content for future units until you have posted the current unit assignment. For example, if I'm working through unit 2, I can't see the course content for 3, 4, or 5 until I post my unit 2 assignment. Until then, everything is locked. 
• There was something very grating about receiving email surveys requesting a brief review/evaluation of each unit after submitting an assignment when no similar feedback was provided for students (apart from students asking specific questions in mentoring sessions hosted via Zoom). I don't know, it seems like if I'm paying you, I should be guaranteed a few feedback touchpoints. If I'm paying you, and you're asking me for feedback on an assignment I've already completed, that strikes me as out of balance. This sounds awful, I know, but they would have been better off incentivizing me in some way if they were truly interested in my opinion (hey, I did learn something after all). 

Overall, I felt like this was a beta version of a course packaged as a high-gloss, cutting edge but tested program that would provide participants not only with immediately portable skills and knowledge but also true portfolio material. In many ways, it feels like a cheap money maker. I was told by a mentor that the course was put online recently. Having a bit of background in online education I know that you cannot simply translate existing material for live courses into online settings and expect the same functionality. Truly, though, my impression upon completing the course was that this was a low-cost way for General Assembly to expand their base of customers. Very little thought seems to been given to what online students would walk away with. The actual value proposition is low. You basically work independently, receive minimal feedback (which is entirely dependent upon the questions you ask), walk away with no reference materials apart from the notes you take, and have a pretty useless "portfolio" project that looks like worksheets from high school (sure, it may help you think through things but it is not going to impress anyone). In essence, you can acquire nearly as much, if not exactly as much, from Lynda. For $750, the return on investment is low. I really wanted to like this program. Sadly, I cannot recommend that anyone else enroll.