General Assembly

GA scaled too quickly.. it seems to me that instructors are overworked.. use poorly designed courses, in many cases the code challenge had some bugs in it.. and wasn't the most useful.. the videos weren't the best at explaining things.. 

I only learned something mostly in the live lectures where you could ask quesitons.. doing it through email was difficult to get a response I could understand. 

expensive for what you get..

 

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I didn't have a great experience.  I was really pressured to sign up and was assured multiple times that I did not need Adobe CC experience - which for this class was just not the case.  I think if I had some level of comfort with Photoshop and Illustrator, I would have enjoyed the class more. 

I thought the business strategy was basic - and my instructor was pretty terrible.  He has lots of skill and experience, but those two things combined do not always make a good teacher. 

Overall, a massive waste of my time and money.  

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I took a one day course to get a review, which wasn't that great. A few students left before the class ended with hours to spare. I think the guy was very knowledgeable about Analytics but couldn't teach worth a dime. 

I looked into their digi marketing program and was considering that but declinced to move forward after speaking to a couple of reps. The first was very wishy-washy in her statements and contradictory. I spoke to another rep upon request. She was better, but I could tell a lot of her answers seemed made up on the spot. I'm comparing this program to other programs and continuing to look. Here are some things that should be readily available for prospective students: 

-feedback from random graduates who can be emailed.

-success rate of students who intended to find work afterwards and actually got placed, inclusive of data on part timers, contract, and full-time.

After checking out the digital marketing teacher and not being very impressed (no website and almost zilch on social media presence), I realized that it was initially supposed to be a female teacher. Now it's been switched to a male teacher who was probably brought in the last minute, which would explain why he didn't have much of an online presence. Not very appealing when the subject to be taught includes social media. FYI, I've read quite a bit on these start-up bootcamps (very low barrier to entry) and the digital marketing programs seemed to be treated as an afterthought, including the amount of teaching practice, or lack thereof, that these instructors have. Not to mention that the founders have no background in education as a past interest or career.  It seems I'll have to patchwork the coursework I need from different places. I'm looking at Stanford, Duke, Berkeley, and MarketMotive next. Here's something to read on: http://www.fastcompany.com/3023456/become-an-ios-developer-in-8-weeks-the-truth-about-hack-schools

Regarding bootcamps for coders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-U5D4RSHRI&feature=youtu.be

 

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Maybe it was the particular representative who forgot to attend charm school, but this place really rubbed me the wrong way.

Here I was, all set to attend an informational session and ready to shell out big bucks for continuing education.  And then, prior to the informational session, I get a phone call from the head of admissions demanding to *screen* me and know about my profession before letting me attend the informational session, even though this information should have been clear from my LinkedIn profile and company URL!!!!

I should mention a couple of things about my "profession" and "background": I'm CEO of a software company with a graduate degree in computer science.  And my name is obviously foreign-sounding.

I do believe these people discriminate based on some factors that are not clear.

 

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It's definitely a difficult path...but rewarding if you put in the time and effort. General Assembly fosters a community that thrives off of on another and also pushes young programmers towards a job that they will treasure. I had literally the best group of instructors in the school's history, not to mention being put amognst a brilliant crop of students. The 9-5 12 week schedule is rough, but there are some days off in between. We learn Ruby, SQL with Postgres, Testing with Rspec, Cucumber and Jasmine, Sinatra, Rails, HTML, CSS, Javascript, jQuery, Underscore and Backbone. They do a lot also with the Job Search Standup to try and get you jobs, but you should be prepared to do a considerable amount of work on your own as well. I would recommend the WDI program to everyone.

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I think back fondly of my time at GA and my classmates and instructors altho I found the experience stressful and physically taxing at the time.  I would say peoples experiance during the course varies very widly depending on the insturctors, you really don't know what you are going to get coming in.  Some of them are better with code, some of them are better with teaching, some of them are better with dealing with people.  Different groups of students have different needs.  I will say that they do take feedback seriously and pivot fast to meet needs of group.   

When it comes to results the sales people said 99 - 95 percent get jobs.  So far this has shown to be almost true, I would say 6 months later maybe 70 - 80% are working either in internship or job.  They have a phenominal support program in place but it is still on you to get yourself hired, and it difficult to break into this industry.  Those who obtain employment work very hard at getting it, employers do not generally trust someone without real paid programming experiance.  When the course is over you will be exhuasted but still have a lot of work to do. Its also important to mention that where you were in life before taking the course does still have bearing on your employability.  This is not direct ticket to a career, you have to find a way to differentiate yourself, these bootcamps are pumping people out onto the job market at an excellerated rate.

I definatly feel more part of the tech industry.  They did give me many skills and knowledge necessary to access it in a short timeframe, I dont think I could have learned so fast any other way.

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For validty and Gravitas I need to mention that I have a background in teaching the STEM sciences. That being said, the experience at General Assembly was far below SUB STANDARD and HERE is why:
     1. The course producers had/have no experience in teaching, curriculum design, or coding....Let me reiterate....the people designing the courses have no prior experience, education, or training.  My original course producer I saw only once in 3 months.  Another course producer quit without notice, leaving our class without this support for a month.  A handfull of students would regularly meet with the staff to provide viable simple solutions to recuring problems, these solutions were ignored, yet they would ask us to take time out of our day to complete feedback forms to help them shape future classes.  Students who continued to voice thier opinions were asked to leave the program.

     2.  The instructors, although good coders, were awful teachers.  Examples: teachers yelling at students, teachers walking away from students during instruction, teachers not available during critical project weeks (by unavailable I mean holding meetings in another room for several hours unapproachable and unresponsive to student needs),  Teachers frequently going off topic at length.  Teachers leaving for vacation without replacement staff.  The coup de grâce was that after 2/3rds of the course was finished half of the students could not make a simple Ruby on Rails App !!!  The material was retaught at the expense of learning any remaining curriculum.

     3. The Job Assistance staff and Outcomes Staff changed multiple times.  The lead outcomes producer would spout the same speech each time she met with us.  This should have been provided in note form or Powerpoint presentation and critical information addressed. The information she provided was topical and cursory, it was plainly obvious that she was a good meet-n-greet person, but lacked the skills at actually instructing how to land a job.  The remainder of the staff was primarily recruiters with no real incentive to assist in job placement.  They claim to have a mentorship/internship program, to this day I know of no one in ANY of the graduating classes that took part in any such program.  GA claims that they have 90% placement within 3 months after graduation.  This was not even close.  In fact while they gave us this speech 50% of the previous class was unemployed 4 months after graduation.  50% of my class is also without placement.

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I just finished the January cohort of General Assembly's Web Development Immersive in New York last week, and am pleased to share that the quality of my instructors, the curriculum, and my classmates all exceeded my expectations! We started with a strong foundation in Ruby and then built upon that foundation by learning SQL, PostgreSQL, Rails, and basic HTML. We combined all of those tools to build our first independent projects (basic CRUD application utilizing an API with user authorization & authentication). Next, we transitioned to a deeper dive into HTML5 & CSS before shifting our core focus to JavaScript in the back half of the course. After being introduced to the basics of JavaScript and jQuery we started working in small teams on group projects modeling the agile development process. Finally, we learned Backbone.js before embarking on our final independent projects for the course – a capstone of everything we'd learned and an opportunity to utilize the process we'd learned to work with new frameworks and technologies. Beyond the full-stack of languages we learned, our course placed a huge emphasis on the principles and process of good software design. We always utilized Test-Driven Development and mastered RSpec, Jasmine, and Capybara as tools for unit and acceptance testing. We also always modeled the full agile, behavior-driven development cycle from collecting user stories, to daily SCRUMs, to full retrospectives after every sprint. I'm incredibly pleased with everything we learned and feel empowered with the process and tools to design excellent web applications. I'm also really confident in my ability to continue learning more on my own! The first part of the course placed a strong emphasis on traditional pedagogy – our instructors were largely teaching us the ins and outs of Ruby, but as we started to gain momentum in our technical grasp of our first programming language the pedagogical model shifted slightly to more of a "teach us how to fish" style of learning. We learned the techniques and process to approach new languages and technologies, and it's exciting to know that I can continue to grow and learn on my own! Read less

Enrolling in General Assembly Singapore’s UX Design Immersive Bootcamp was a transformative step in my career journey. Coming from an architecture background, the programme gave me a solid, hands-on foundation in human-centred design, digital product thinking, and collaborative problem-solving.

The curriculum was intense but well-structured, covering everything from design thinking and user research to prototyping and usability testing. We worked on real-world projects in cross-functional teams, including a live client brief, which challenged us to apply theory in practical, fast-paced scenarios. Tools like Figma, Miro, and service blueprints became second nature.

What stood out most was the support from our instructors and career coach (Priscilla Pang)—a strong culture of feedback, iteration, and continuous learning. The bootcamp not only taught me UX skills, but also helped me reframe how I approach complex problems and deliver meaningful, user-focused solutions.

I would highly recommend GA’s UX Bootcamp to anyone looking to transition into the field with confidence and practical capabilities. Read less

The curriculum is good for those with no background in the field, and well-designed to help beginners take a serious step towards a data science career (e.g. as a prep course before taking up a masters program). The quality of the instructors may vary, and is pretty much what you would expect for the price of the course. I do feel that, as with other similar data science short courses, the chances of landing a data scientist role after completing this course has been oversold. It's a great start, but you do need to invest a lot more time and effort to get there. Read less

I attended General Assembly in 2018 for the design intensive bootcamp. This experience catapulted my career in UX. I successfully transitioned from the mental health field to full time UX roles. The foundational design skills and the chance to collaborate on real design projects gave me the keys to understanding how to work in this  environment in the real world. The instructors were top notch, and the career coaching after the program was invaluable. Worth every penny.  Read less

The course has a wide-ranging syllabus, covering use of key tools of the trade (i.e., working with Python, SQL), well-established data science techniques (e.g., regression analysis, k-means clustering), as well as relatively more recent developments (e.g., neural networks). The vast syllabus, as well as individual assignments and group projects, provide a broad understanding the field and valuable hands-on experience. Nonetheless, do note that the course moves quickly over the span of three months - and having prior exposure to Python and/or an elementary understanding of data science techniques might be tremendously helpful for keeping pace as the course moves along. 

Our instructor (Waseem Sheriff) and Instructional Associate (Rustam Shariq) played a key role in helping us along our journey - with their clarity of teaching, dedication towards helping us overcome our difficulties, and fostering of a team sprit that helped each of us navigate our own challenges with the help of others. Career counselling (by Priscilla Pang) was also helpful - ranging from the provision of personalised advice on preparing job applications, overcoming interviews, and highlighting relevant job opportunities. 
 
In summary - an intense course facilitated by a fantastic teaching and career guidance team. :) Read less

The Data Science Immersive at General Assembly was a transformative journey that pushed me beyond my limits. The curriculum was intense but rewarding, covering essential skills like Python, SQL, machine learning, and deep learning. The hands-on projects were the most impactful part, allowing me to apply theoretical concepts to real-world scenarios. I appreciated the collaborative environment and support from instructors and peers, especially when tackling difficult topics like neural networks and unsupervised learning. While the 3-month pace was fast, it taught me perseverance and adaptability.However, I felt there could be stronger post-bootcamp support for job placement. While the career coaches provided resume reviews and interview tips, more personalized guidance or access to exclusive job opportunities would have been valuable. Given the competitive job market, more targeted support in bridging the gap between education and employment would significantly enhance the overall experience. Despite this, the bootcamp laid a solid foundation for my successful career transition into data science. Read less

GA has helped me gain a better understanding of UX Design in general.  However, there were aspects that we were not taught (properly) and those are a little regretful for me. Overall, the instructors were useful and the opportunity to work with a real client was most significant for me.   Read less

I loved my time at GA, being a student again whilst I worked on switching careers was such a fun experience. The course material was interesting and equipped me well for my first job as a software engineer. It was hard work but enjoyable and I made a lot of good friends along the way. 5 years out I am incredibly happy I made the switch and loving my new career.  Read less

I graduated from a three-month Data Science Bootcamp at General Assembly, and I have no regrets. The instructors and the team at GA were genuinely committed to helping me learn and build the necessary foundations for success in the field, as well as securing a job. However, one criticism I have is that, while I understand this is the usual bootcamp format, the sheer volume of content taught, combined with the multiple projects, made it challenging to absorb all the information. Read less

This course was a great learning experience! I work in a job where I already had exposure to front end web development but I wanted to learn the basics in a formal setting. This course gave me just that! I already find myself using what I learned in the class, in my job now. I learned html and css, and strengthen my existing javascript skills. The class was great for beginners and the instructor was a great teacher, I learned a lot. 

The only negative feedback I have is that I wish that there was more homework, the assignments is where I learned the most because it put what I learned in class to the test. It was the time I could try and figure it out on my own without the instructor. I also wish that we had less "review" classes, which were really just classes to work on your final project, and instead use that time to learn more topics. 

Despite this, I really enjoyed the hands on experience that this course provided. There were labs, homework and a final project that enabled me to practice the skills that we learned during class. I really appreciated that the instructor was always willing to help! Overall, I would recommend this course to anyone who is looking to get started in web development!  Read less

I graduated from the Data Science immersive course at General Assembly in 2017. Before the course, I only knew basic SQL and less than 10 hours of Python. At the time, the course was taught in person, which was my preferred method of learning. I was able to ask questions, get individual help, and learn from experienced instructors. I was able to learn from the basics of Python and software engineer (Git, Jupyter notebook, etc.) to trying my hand out on convolutional neural networks. This course was the reason why I was able to get a software engineering role at a Fortune 500. Read less