General Assembly

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. 

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!

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. 

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.

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).

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

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