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General Assembly is a technical education provider that teaches students the skills, career advice and networking opportunities needed to make a career change into a tech role, in as little as three months. General Assembly offers part-time and full-time bootcamps and short courses in web and mobile development, product management, data science, and more. The bootcamp experience is led by instructors who are expert practitioners in their field. Students should expect to build a solid portfolio of real-life projects. Since 2011, General Assembly has graduated more than 40,000 students worldwide from the full time and part time bootcamp.
To enroll at General Assembly, applicants should submit an online application to connect with a GA Admissions team member who will work with them to decide if a tech bootcamps is the right fit. The GA Admissions staff are also prepared to speak with applicants about the best tech role for them, learning styles at GA, expected outcomes after the bootcamp, options to finance the bootcamp, career services offered by GA, and more.
To help students land their first job in a tech role, General Assembly students are supported by career coaches from day one. The program is enhanced by a career services team that is constantly in talks with employers about their tech hiring needs.
This course costs $13,500 as of this writing, and lasts roughly three months. That makes it roughly comparable to one semester at a state-run university. That’s in terms of both cost and time span. (Though regarding the time span, General Assembly is very honest when they say the course will consume your life for the duration. To continue to compare it to a traditional college, imagine a semester where every week was finals week.)
This course costs $13,500 as of this writing, and lasts roughly three months. That makes it roughly comparable to one semester at a state-run university. That’s in terms of both cost and time span. (Though regarding the time span, General Assembly is very honest when they say the course will consume your life for the duration. To continue to compare it to a traditional college, imagine a semester where every week was finals week.)
So, this isn’t like spending a few hundred dollars on an “Introduction to Web Development” course at your local community college. It’s a major commitment of time and money. Is it worth it? Here’s my analysis.
When it comes to the course content, let’s be honest: you can get the same content free, or so cheap by comparison it might as well be free, from several web sites. GA is really offering “value added” material to the content. What are they adding?
To get a trivial one out of the way, they’re providing a physical classroom. It’s in a reasonably nice area of DC. The spaces are very “utilitarian”, nothing fancy. The classrooms are serviceable; maybe a little “cozy” if the class is full, but not too bad. They can have noise issues occasionally, if an adjacent room is boisterous, or the construction across the street is intense. The floors, annoyingly, are bare concrete. They need carpet. I mention that since I experienced the heart-stopping experience of watching my laptop drop off a desk onto the hard floor. It didn’t break, but a little carpet would have lowered my panic level.
More directly related to the course, they’re providing instructors. I found them all good to very good. I did find one to have an style that was overly laid back, but that’s a matter of taste; someone else might find him more approachable. I’m very grateful to one who was incredibly patient with me when I got behind in the class due to some health issues.
To my knowledge, they’re all self-taught, more-or-less, with some professional experience. They are not academic college professors, they’re teaching real-life programming. That’s not criticism; that’s exactly the point of the class, to teach students enough to get intro-level development jobs. If you’re looking for a deep dive into the merits of various sorting algorithms, this isn’t the place
I never found the instructors lacking in knowledge. They know their material. I’m one who likes to ask probing questions in class, and they were happy to discuss them, even if they asked me to save it till after class. The class does reflect their knowledge; we only got a brief introduction to PHP, and they were honest that they all disliked it.
I do take issue with some of the course content’s structure. Pretty much all of the content is on-line, in the form of a class calendar with links to the day’s material. The problem is that’s the only way to access it. I repeatedly asked for a master index, and was told it was in the works, but never got one.
GA also gives you the ability to say “I completed this program”, which I assume would carry more weight with an employer than just completing a free on-line program. On the other hand, no matter how you learned web development, your own portfolio will speak the loudest.
But speaking of finding a job after class… another thing GA provides is “Outcomes” support, what might be called Job Placement Services at a typical college. This is where I have serious issues with GA.
I will admit that I became contemptuous of the Outcomes process, and I let it show, much more than I should have. I’m going to try to keep this focused on systemic flaws with Outcomes, not my personal issues.
Roughly a half day of each week is devoted to Outcomes. What they do varies from week to week. The best in my opinion were the guest speakers, people who work in the industry. We also got two weeks where we did site visits to companies that hire web developers. They were both to companies that might have been good places to work, but at least one has not been hiring web developers since the class ended! It’s still an interesting tour, but I think it would be more worthwhile to tour places that can say, “we expect to be hiring when your class finishes”! The Outcomes team was also somewhat arrogant in their scheduling. One site visit was scheduled for the day a major project was due. I pointed that out, and one of the Outcomes team informed me that I should schedule my time better. Pardon me, but no -- with what I’m paying for the class, they need to schedule better.
The rest of the Outcomes sessions were run by the Outcomes team themselves. There was lots of resume work, appropriately, but I feel it included an inordinate focus on a “vision statement” to put at the top of a resume. They never offered anything more than resume tweaks, students conducting mock interviews with each other, and other such things. They were also fond of surveys that were often repetitive and included questions I found silly. They’d occasionally add a little variety in the forms of “games” that would be good subjects for parodies in satires of corporate life like Dilbert or The Office. The sessions increasingly felt like a waste of time to me, and I considered “opting out” of the Outcomes process even before the end of the course.
The after course material was what led me to finally leave the Outcomes process behind. They have several requirements to continue to receive support from the Outcomes team, but I’ll just mention two. The first is to require to apply for ten jobs a week. That’s a little on the high side, in my opinion, but they also suggest the graduates be selective in where they submit resumes. No matter how much they insist otherwise, being selective and submitting ten resumes a week is contradictory.
They also initially requires graduates to come back to General Assembly once a week for Outcomes sessions, which consisted of a classroom portion, then a “small groups” session with one of the Outcomes team.. (They have dropped that requirement -- the classroom presentations are still held at GA, but are optional. Small groups can be conducted on-line, but are mandatory.)
The after-class sessions were complete wastes of time. We had two guest speakers that I can remember,. Unlike the speakers during the course, these were not worthwhile. The first was a woman who worked in recruiting for, I believe, a construction company in one of the western states, and ran a career coaching business on the side. She was a nice, pleasant speaker, but how much could she offer when the knew neither the technology industry nor the DC area? The second was a younger man with experience in junior level web development. All I remember about him was that he seemed very smug and arrogant.
The rest of the post-course sessions were more resume tweaking, mock interviews and pep talks, all of which I found a waste of time.
GA also promotes their network of employers. It is nowhere near as impressive as they claim. It seems to be limited almost entirely to employers located in DC. That ignores two major high tech areas nearby -- the high tech corridor along the Dulles Toll Road in Northern Virginia, and the biotech corridor along the 270 spur in Maryland. (Despite being biotech focused, they have plenty of software work.)
They also have almost no network in the Federal sphere, either with the government agencies directly or the Federal contractor companies. I realize that many of GA’s students and alumni might view Federal work as something they’d never want to do, but ignoring Federal work in DC cuts out an extraordinary selection of jobs. It would be like ignoring the financial industry in New York City.
Ultimately, I feel GA was a waste of my time and money. The content of the course proper is worthwhile, but can be found much cheaper. The “Outcomes” support is of no use.
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Full Time, In-Field Employee | N/A |
Full-time apprenticeship, internship or contract position | N/A |
Short-term contract, part-time position, freelance | N/A |
Employed out-of-field | N/A |
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How much does General Assembly cost?
General Assembly costs around $16,450. On the lower end, some General Assembly courses like Visual Design (Short Course) cost $3,500.
What courses does General Assembly teach?
General Assembly offers courses like 1. Data Science Bootcamp (Full Time), 2. Software Engineering Bootcamp (Full Time), 2. Software Engineering Bootcamp (Part Time), 3. User Experience Design Bootcamp (Full Time) and 13 more.
Where does General Assembly have campuses?
General Assembly has in-person campuses in London, New York City, Paris, Singapore, and Sydney. General Assembly also has a remote classroom so students can learn online.
Is General Assembly worth it?
The data says yes! General Assembly reports a 84% graduation rate, and 95% of General Assembly alumni are employed. The data says yes! In 2021, General Assembly reported a 82% graduation rate, a median salary of , and N/A of General Assembly alumni are employed.
Is General Assembly legit?
We let alumni answer that question. 680 General Assembly alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed General Assembly and rate their overall experience a 4.29 out of 5.
Does General Assembly offer scholarships or accept the GI Bill?
Yes, Course Report is excited to offer an exclusive diversity discount for $1500 off tuition at General Assembly! To be eligible to receive $1,500 USD* toward your tuition for a full-time immersive course by General Assembly, you must meet the following criteria: You’re 18 or older. You self-identify as a woman, transgender person, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, or nonbinary person. Your current income is less than $40,000 USD (£28,000 GBP, 30,000€ EUR, $40,000 AUD, $40,000 SGD, or $40,000 CAD) per year. You’ve been admitted to one of the following courses: Software Engineering Immersive, Data Analytics Immersive, Data Science Immersive or UX Design Immersive. Ineligible for NY residents. Tuition discount can not be used in conjunction with any other General Assembly tuition discount or offer. *$1,500 USD, £1,500 GBP, 1,500€ EUR, $1,500 AUD, $1,500 SGD, or $1,500 CAD Course Report is excited to offer an exclusive military discount for $1595 off tuition at General Assembly! To be eligible to receive $1,595 USD* toward your tuition of a full-time immersive course by General Assembly, you must meet the following criteria: You’re 18 or older. You’ve been admitted to one of the following courses: Software Engineering Immersive, Data Analytics Immersive, Data Science Immersive or UX Design Immersive You are an active military member or veteran, or partner of a military member or partner of a veteran. Ineligible for NY residents. Tuition discount can not be used in conjunction with any other tuition discount. *$1,595 USD, £1,500 GBP, 1,500€ EUR, $1,500 AUD or $1,500 CAD Course Report is excited to offer an exclusive merit discount for $1000 off tuition at General Assembly! To be eligible to receive up to $1,000 USD toward your tuition of a full-time immersive course by General Assembly, you must meet the following criteria: You’re 18 or older. You’ve been admitted to one of the following courses: Software Engineering Immersive, Data Analytics Immersive, UX Design Immersive or Data Science Immersive. You have completed a course on coding or data analytics or data science or ux design in the recent 12 months. These courses can be GA workshops. Your course start date is between August 1, 2023 and November 15, 2023 Ineligible for NY residents. Tuition discount can not be used in conjunction with any other tuition discount. *$1,000 USD, £1,000 GBP, 1,000€ EUR, $1,000 AUD, $1,000 SGD, or $1,000 CAD General Assembly accepts the GI Bill!
Can I read General Assembly reviews?
You can read 680 reviews of General Assembly on Course Report! General Assembly alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed General Assembly and rate their overall experience a 4.29 out of 5.
Is General Assembly accredited?
All of General Assembly's regulatory information can be found here: https://generalassemb.ly/regulatory-information
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