General Assembly

I studied at General Assembly from September 2017 through December of the same year. Education aside for a brief moment, I want to talk first of all about the class experience. The way the course is structured allows you to make friends very early on. As it continues you're shuffled around to get to know as many people in as great a depth as possible. It's a really welcomed consideration to the course itself.

The learning is done in the format of both lectures and practical work. After a lesson in Card Sorting (for example) you'll go away and prepare and work on an actual card sort with users for a piece of work that ends up in your portfolio. This type of learning, I find extremely beneficial as it lays the foundation in the theory and solidifies your knowledge by practicing it. In the environment of learning alongside your peers that you're forming relationships with, you're all able to learn at your own pace as well as help and be helped.

On a personal level, I experienced some problems outside of GA during my second week. They made it extremely clear to me that everything would be ok and they would do everything they could to support me through what was a difficult period during the course. This is something I'll always be eternally grateful for with them.

In January 2018 I was lucky enough to become the Teacher's Assistant for the latest set of students to enter the programme. To be given the chance to pass my knowledge on to a new group of individuals was something I was incredibly excited for. Having just gone through the program myself and knowing GA had acknowledged me as someone they felt could do the job, I honestly felt so proud I can't put it into words. The cheesiness of the sentiment really has no words.

For the 8 months, I was with GA (3 months education, 3 months working, 1-month interim, 1-month job support) I've developed such a great sense of achievement, unlike anything I've experienced before in other forms of education that rely on a graded system. GA provides something far more meaningful than a letter on a piece of paper. I've left their system of education with a portfolio to be proud of. Skills to find work and succeed in interviews. Ongoing support throughout my career. Encouragement to stay involved and iterate me to become as great a UX Designer as I want to be.

3 weeks after I'd finished my employment with General Assembly I was approached by a company to become the latest addition to their team. The staff has consistently checked in on me to see how things are going all the while remembering just where I am and the point I was at when we last spoke. This level of personal attention I find staggering.

In short, I can only thank General Assembly for everything they've helped me to achieve over this past year. It really has been the greatest year of my life to date.

I honestly did learn a lot at GA, and I felt like without it, I would not have made as much progress as quickly as on my own. My instructors were great, and everything went relatively smoothly. However, 12 weeks is not enough time to learn everything, even things they teach you in class you will have to probably go over on your own afterwards in more depth. But they definitely do a good job at getting you exposed and learning to write fullstack apps. My main gripe with GA is the career services/outcomes team. There isn't much help from them in getting a job. They just kind of go over your resume and cover letter over and over and over. There is a showcase after you graduate where you can show off to employers, but no one from my cohort got hired (we had some very bright/talented people too) so I don't know how effective it is. Not too many employers showed up as well. So you are pretty much on your own for the job hunt, and it sucks because the NYC tech market is hyper competitive (the most competitive after San Francisco) making it very hard to land that first job. TLDR: GA is a good program to get you started on your journey to becoming a developer, but definitely expect to keep improving and learning (and relearning) after the course is over, and don't expect much help from them with getting a job besides resume/cover letter tailoring.

As a UI designer with certain experience in the industry, I needed to keep up to date with the evolution of the profession, so I wanted to learn UX. I've tried several online-courses, that were just about learning theory. It didn't work for, I needed to find a course with a more practical approach.

After studying different options (even in different cities through Europe) I've decided to go to GA. It was more expensive but way more impressive in terms of curriculum. Honestly, that was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Why?

• 4 UX projects during 2,5 months (amazing practical experience!).
   
• Career support - a crazy amount of helpful tips&tricks for a job search.
   
• More and more companies are amazed by GA alumni and come back to GA to hire cool guys while they are still juniors.
   
• GA is not just another school, GA is a family. They support their grads no matter how long ago they've graduated. Moving to another city with GA campus? Come and say hi! And get a career support in your new city. 
   
• Great, interesting and highly motivated people. This a place where I met my friends.

So now I'm in love with UX and I'm in love with GA. Highly recommend!

I studied Art History at UCL and spent my 20s working my way through roles in arts organisations to become a Individual Giving Fundraiser at institutions including the Tate and the ICA. However, the came a point (when I turned 30 in fact!) where I realised I wanted to be much more hands on in my work ('build things') and explore other interests. I didn't think career change was a legitimate option until I was made aware of the existence of coding bootcamps! 

After researching my options in London (who knew there were so many!) I decided to go with General Assembly(GA) as I felt welcome and supported from the moment I enquired about the course. I committed to the GA Web Development Immersive and studied harder than I ever have for three months. The tutors were excellent and made themselves available after class to review any problem topics or to help fix bugs! My classmates were brilliant and were great at keeping each other motivated in the face of any challenges or moments of exhaustion!

The curriculum was huge and in three months we covered HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery as well as Angular.js, React, Node.js and Express in conjunction with MongoDB and a variety of npm packages. We completed four different projects, each with a different stack. The only thing missing for me in hindsight, would be that I wish I had spent more time practicing and reviewing fundamental JavaScript and programming concepts. It is one thing to know how to set up a React app but not much use if you haven't got your head around the basic JavaScript concepts and functions which make the framework so powerful. 

After graduating, thanks to the support of my classmates, tutors and the GA Outcomes Team, I was able to find a role as a Full Stack Developer at a start-up called JamieAi. I work on all our apps across the stack and continue to learn from brilliant colleagues and peers every day. 

I had a very positive experience as a student of General Assembly's Web Development Immersive. I came from no computer science background, and am doing a career transition out of the military in my mid-20s. I am in a unique position as I am using this course as a springboard into business school, and not full time employment. I still think I can offer some valuable feedback to the course. 

Pros:

• Cohort was about 15 students. Strong collaborative culture. As students, we ate lunch together just about every day and enjoyed good conversation outside of the hard work we were doing.
• We had two excellent instructors who struck a good balance between us learning how to solve our own problems without wasting our time banging our heads against intractable problems. 
• The technology stacks we focused on (HTML / CSS / Javascript / Mongo / Express / React / Node / Python / Postgres / Django / etc.) were all tremendously relevant and we got to apply them in our own projects. I learned the most through the projects and through through collaborating with fellow students. 

Cons:

If I had to pick a con, I would say that some of the career outcomes work (called Outcomes) had some issues with organization and communication at times. Utilizing Github there was sometimes a disconnect between the request and submission of documents for review, like a resume or cover letter. The fact that I mention this small thing should be an indication of how well run the program is overall.

General Assembly gives you everything you need - you have to drive the car at the end of the day. I could not be more satisfied with my experience and hope to leverage what I have learned to pursue software technology entrepreneurship.

I completed my web development immersive course with General Assembly. Mornings at GA were always interactive following up with daily stand ups which involved challenges faced by each individual during projects or homework. This Web development immersive course was set in Agile environment followed by the interactive lessons throughout the course to overcome any issues and kept up-to-date with the latest technologies and current demand in market. The course is quite challenging and fast-paced as I had to build all projects in one week time-frame which developed my personality in ways I did not imagine. I am now ready more than ever to accept whatever challenges come in my way. The instructor and teacher are very helpful. I definitely recommend taking up the course with General assembly. 

I was extremely nervous to make a career change in my late-30s, but GA's User Experience Design Immersive program was exactly what I needed to help position myself in my new career in UX. 

The coursework is voluminous, tough, and thorough. And my instructor was top-notch. He was clear with his delivery of the material, thoughtful in his dealings with the students, and provided guidance after the program finished.

GA's staff was genearlly friendly and did their best to make the students happy throughout the course. The Outcomes program (basically career counseling) was instrumental in my process of finding a job once I graduated. Lots of valuable information and availability to one-on-one conversations with the Outcomes team members. 

I would absolutely recommend GA and its UXDI course to anyone considering making the jump into UX.

Definitely not a horrible course, in fact if you are willing to work real hard afterwards then you can really get a lot out of it.

Pros: broad content, smooth delivery through Zoom, Github, and slack

Cons: lacks depth, no feedback on final project, no post-program career advice/job support

A note on the cons: I'm sure that if (when) I ask for feedback and career advice I'll receive some, but I don't think that having to ask for these things is the standard that should be set at these private tech schools. There should be a standard, systematic way for each student to receive feedback and career advice. 

I made the decision to attend General Assembly's UX Design immersive program because I was moving to Boston for personal reasons, and I wanted to take advantage of the transition to do a career 180 degree change. As a former social science academic with a ton of customer service experience, I felt that UX design would be a good fit and that I had a lot of potentially transferable skills, but no training in design, nor any exposure to working in a corporate setting.

General Assembly really helped me make a successful transition into UX design, and the proof is in the pudding: after a 5-month job search, I found a job in UX that I absolutely love, full time with great benefits. My instructor gave her all, and I learned a TON. I have to also give a special shout-out the front lines staff at our campus, who go the extra mile every single day to make our GA experience enjoyable, fun, and full of pleasant surprises.  

While the instructor was excellent and the curriculum took me where I needed to go in terms of a foundation in design thinking and methods, in my mind the real $$$ value of the program is in the Outcomes Support you get after you've finished the coursework. I think that it is more valuable for some than for others, but I was definitely one of the people who benefited immensely from it. The amount of support, advice, and even hand-holding at times that I received from my Outcomes officers was extraordinary, and almost certainly the reason I was able to get the job that I got.  

To be fair, the GA immersive experience is not for everyone, and it requires A TON of work on your part to be successful, both during and after the actual program. It's also pretty expensive, so I recognize that I was extremely priviledged to be there in the first place. But I know that I wouldn't be where I am right now if I hadn't done GA, and I also have a wonderful network of friends and colleagues from the experience, plus a life-long professional community of alums to tap into in the future. 

My advice to anyone considering GA is this: try to talk to a couple of people who have done the program you're interested in *with the instructor you would have.* So much of the success or failure here depends on whether you can jibe with the instructor, with whom you'll spend 9-10+ hours a day for 10-ish weeks. Make sure that the instructor is fully dedicated to helping their students succeed.    

Overall, a poor experience.

The pre-work was useful in getting across the basics, but the none of the actual course work was related to any of the compulsory pre-work.

Much of the interactive practical coding exercises were skipped over as the instructor focused heavily on mathematical theory. While understanding this is important,  it was not tied into the actual coding as well as it could have been, if at all, leaving me confused most of the time.

We were asked to complete mid-course feedback, which was overall not very positive. General Assembly appeared to have delivered this feedback to the instructors immediately before the next class, resulting in a somewhat awkward atmosphere for the remainder of that lesson, which ended an hour early.

There were a few occasions where GA would deliver beers and wine for students... which the instructors also participated in, leading to let's say a very relaxed atmosphere where not much learning took place. There were also issues with course producers leaving GA mid way through the course. This was not communicated very well. I was trying to get in touch with someone to find out about homework, and no one replied to any of my emails, or messages left on the course's slack channel (of which the course producers and instructors were participants). That not even the instructors would respond to a request for information did not sit well with me. 

This course was good for teaching me how to use Stack Overflow and Code Academey - most of my learning took place there as the course provided code in Github was often full of errors that sometimes even the instructors did not know how to fix. In addition to this, the instructor would sometimes not know how to demonstrate code in practice (maybe why they spent so much time on mathematical theory?) so they reverted to teaching us how to do things in R - which was not what we signed up for.

By the end of it, we were unable to submit the final assessments by the course end date, presumably because not enough people had managed to grasp the content due to its delivery. They added an extra two weeks for people to submit their final assessments via google hangout. The rubric for this was updated on the day the course was meant to finish, indicating the goal-posts were constantly changing for students right until the end.

Feedback for assessments was not delivered at all throughout the course. I met with the course producer after the mid way feedback, and was told I should have been getting feedback, but then nothing came of this until after the course ended where I was told I would be getting everything after the final assessment was submitted. Not a good experience.

Another comment about the calibre of training staff... There were two separate instances where I told the instructor I did not understand (so required help). In one instance, the instructor came to try and help me, but walked off without a offering a solution after he was unable to sort out the error message in the practice code. On a second occasion, he just walked away after I indicated I did not understand what we needed to do. (We had spent so much time on theory, I did not know how to code).

I did meet with the course producer after submitting my mid course feedback, and felt my issues had been listened to and addressed, but by the end of it, things just reverted back to how they were beforehand, which was greatly dissapointing. They did offer to call me to talk through my end of course feedback, but I felt this would be a waste of time given how things reverted back to their old ways after the mid course feedback.

Long story short, I would definitely NOT recommend this course to anyone who is looking to learn Python. You are best to do this on a website that offers this course for free, because that is what I ended up having to do anyway. 

GA put together an intensive Data Analytics course that went through Excel, SQL, and Tableau in depth, as well as constructing effective presentations based on insights from data. The projects are hands on and give you a good understanding of each data tool. I personally have a background in Excel, so that portion of the class was a little slow for me, but the rest of the course really made it worth my time. There is no requirement to have any knowledge of Excel walking into the course, which could be a good thing for some. I think Excel is easy to pick up from tutorials on the internet, so I wish we had spent a little less time learning the fundamentals in Excel and more time on Tableau. Besides that, the teaching was great and they give you whatever help you need. There are a lot of times where the technology is faulty and it disrupts class because the display disconnects, etc. but the teaching in general is very effective. I got a lot out of the course!

Denver General Assembly is a smaller, newish GA campus. I believe they're also one of the highest performing in the country. The learning experience was phenomenal, but the culture and networking was above and beyond what I expected. I made lifelong friends and careerlong contacts during this course. Our instructors were outstanding – genuinely great people who had decades of industry experience and also great teaching skills. We still stay in touch.

Our curriculum was cutting edge, incorporating the latest technology and centuries old, tried and true design theories. Industry professionals were woven into our days for panels and talks. We also spent time building our portfolios, working with real clients, and preparing for the job hunt. I know we learned the latest and greatest because I wowed potential employers at all of my interviews with my portfolio.

I felt like I was really well prepared for my job search. While most of my cohort found jobs within a month, I took a little longer but fell within my estimate of around 3 months. Career coaching was a priority at GA, and our coach was there to provide support above and beyond, introducing us to channels, people, events, reviewing countless resumé updates, and keeping us in line!

HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS COURSE!