LEARN Academy

I had a great experience at Learn! The 3 months of full time class and 1 month internship where challenging but so fun! I learned Ruby, Rails, Javascript, HTML and CSS. I am very grateful to now be a part of the supportive and engaging Learn community too. I ended up getting hired from my internship and have been employed there as a Ruby on Rails Software Developer for over a year now and couldn't be happier! Thank you Learn for everything you've done to change my life. Keep up the good work!

At LEARN you's actually learn: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, TDD/BDD(testing), AJAX, JSON, REST API's, PostgresSQL, SQL, Git, Github, PAIR PROGRAMMING!!!, group projects, guest speakers, field trips, internship, interview practice, SEO education, Resume help, and networking. Each class gets better and better! The thing about Learn is that they realize there's a burnout point and once that is reached you can't learn anymore at that moment. That's why their course in M-F 9-5. It gives you a weekend, and free time to recoup, and work on your own things. The other part to LEARN is that they teach you how to learn, and how to get unstuck. I loved LEARN. The people are great, and once school was over it's not like they go away. We still talk, have great friendships, and are actually working on an alumni project together. 

Bootcamps are not intended or the faint of heart. I went to Learn because I know some of the Ruby developpers in San Diego and I really like the inclusive and friendly ethos (MINASWAN!). Learn offers soiid full-stack immersion and it will surely kick your ass to cover material this fast but the team is flexible and fully involved in getting you through. The instructors and administrators really care about the individual students in the class and how where they are going after the end of the course. 

Attending Learn Bootcamp was one of the best things I could have done for myself. The adminstrators, teachers and fellow students were great to work with. I was able to learn a tremendous amount in a short period of time from people who are knowledgeable and passionate about coding. Learn not only provided the education, but also the motivation and support to get us all through this type of intense learning. They are very open to feedback and work very hard on our behalf to get us placed in the most ideal internships. I will always look back on my time at Learn fondly. I plan to stay in touch and continue to be a part of the Learn community.

If you're looking for a challenge and you want your career to be a creative outlet, this bootcamp is a good jumpstart into the inventive world of computer programming. LEARN will introduce you to the popular technologies used by many companies (Git, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Bootstrap, SQL, RSpec, Ruby, and Rails) and give you the space to create webpages and web applications with motivated peers. A big plus with LEARN is that they're well connected in the programming industry so you're exposed to meeting a lot of developers from around the world. Also, you're given real world coding experience by being placing into an internship at the end of the program. 

I was apart of LEARN's third cohort.  As many of my classmates and instructors would say, we looked forward to (almost) every day :) 

Pros: Nice location, instructors are nice.  1. The only saving grace for this program is that you get to intern for a company and get real work experience. A lot of the people I met had great internships (myself included) where I learned more than in 3~ weeks than I did in the 3 months I spent at LEARN. You can build great connections with your internship boss and use that to branch out and find work.    Cons:  1. Instructors are all alumni from this program. All 3 instructors graduated less than 2 years ago and now they are in charge of teaching the new cohorts how to code. When I asked Hillary (the person who "interviews" you before you officially start the program) who the instructors would be she responded, "The instructor is someone who has 15+ years of experience in this field and is very knowledgeable" only later to find out that he retired and taught us maybe 1 course out of the entire class.  The "lead" instructor was this guy who looked high all the time and had no idea what he was talking about. And about 90% of all lectures were done by the Associate Instructors (again alumni who graduated with less than 2 years of actual developer experience. Some of then never actually got a job and just got hired back so LEARN could inflate their hired numbers) When asking questions, instructors often times would say "Let me get back to you" and never really get back to you with a coherent answer. Often times during lectures, there were students who would correct the "instructors" because they were making errors or doing something incorrectly.    2. Job Hire.  In my initial interview with Hillary, I asked what the success rate was for students. She told me that the percentage of all alumni was around 84%~. I asked specifically about the previous cohorts and still got that same number. Fast-forward to "Professional Development Week", the career coach person throws out the same exact number despite maybe 2 months going by. Then fast-forward again, I have completed my internship, I reach out to ask about employment numbers and get the exact same number. There are no specifics, no real data, no concrete evidence ever presented. Just a random statistic that never changes. So in about a 4-5 month span, the success rate has stayed exactly the same? Yea I don't buy it and neither should you.    3. Cohort Group  There is no pre-screening or assessment done before you do this program. Looking back, that should have been a huge red flag that LEARN just wants your money. People in my cohort ranged from being geniuses and having comp-sci backgrounds to people who could barely type. As someone who was middle of the road and understood the concepts after putting in extra work, it was difficult to learn because LEARN operates using paired-programming. Some days I would get steamrolled by the students who already had tech backgrounds and they just wanted to finish the assignment. Other days it was like pulling teeth trying to explain a topic to a student who didn't know the difference between JavaScript and Ruby.  Overall, it was difficult to learn topics consistently and would require HOURS of extra work outside of class to try and understand it. (Also in part because the instructors couldn't/wouldn't help us --> it was part of the learning process )   4. Outdated Technology LEARN would always try and flex and say things like "We are constantly evolving and teaching things that meet the demand of the marketplace" in regards to their curriculum. However, they have been teaching the same React/Ruby on Rails curriculum for the last 2 years at least. Newbies reading this should know that Ruby and Ruby on Rails is not big anymore and definitely not big in San Diego, Orange County, or LA (where I am assuming most people attending this program would be from). Rails is popular in San Francisco and New York and even then, you find other programming back-end languages like Java, Python, and Go WAY more in job postings than Ruby on Rails. Is Ruby/RoR a good skill to have? Sure. It's easy to learn but when you’re applying for that Junior position that requires Java or Python, they're not going to choose you. Also, half-way through the program, the instructors decided to stop checking in on student progress. Students had lots of questions and nothing every got answered and we just moved on, wasting about 2 weeks’ worth of projects that got no real answer. Overall, if you're paying this much money for a boot camp, you should be learning the latest and greatest not something that was popular 10 years ago.    5. Professional Development Week You have a whole week break during the cohort where you update your professional appearance on LinkedIn and build a portfolio. You get lecture after lecture on topics ranging on elevator pitches, updating your resume, and updating your LinkedIn. If you want to save yourself the time and energy doing this, just find a portfolio on YouTube and spruce it up and make it your own. Go on LEARN Academy on linked in and just search any alumni (literally any of them that have it) and you can see the paragraph that every single alum has in relation to what they did at LEARN. Also, you get a professional headshot done for all your professional online presence. The Elevator Pitch is just a YouTube video, the portfolio template they give you, and again, you're going to have the exact same blurb as anyone who has ever attended LEARN on your LinkedIn. At the end of the week, you send your resume to Bryan who is the career coach person for feedback. The feedback is honestly not even remotely useful because after independently testing that resume against job postings and resume critics from real developers, my resume would have been instantly scrapped and ghosted.    Conclusion: Would I do LEARN Academy again? Absolutely not. There's mediocre student support wrapped in "we are a family" mentality which means their niceness covers up the fact that they are in fact, pretty useless.  From teaching yourself, working against other cohort students to try and figure out issues when pair programming, and doing the bare minimum when it comes to updating your social presence, it’s obvious that LEARN is not in it to truly help students succeed and just want your money. Nobody, from the CEO down to the instructors, really has a solid tech/developer background and it shows. I would highly encourage you to consider doing another program that is actually student-focused, has actual instructors that have experience in the industry, and a large reliable network. You are paying 14-20k for this and it should be worth that. But in reality, you are paying 14-20k for a 1-month internship with a local tech company which really makes no sense. 
 

I joined LEARN in 2019 to pursue a career as a web developer and was told by them that 85% of their graduates have jobs within six months. I have since found out about 8 months after graduating that, that number is completely made up and it is much harder to get a job then advertised. They make it seem as if it is so easy to break into the tech industry. In reality, you need much more experince then they can offer. They also preach that you don't need prior experience, but that is also a lie. They do give you a good environment to be around and help you start to understand what you are doing, but this is not worth 15k. I strongly advise someone who is looking to joing a coding bootcamp to find one that actually invests in you finding a job. The staff at LEARN are very nice, but I would be too if you paid me 15k to hang out for three months. I'm not saying not to join, but don't expect to get hired afterwards. 

I understand that this program seems to have been a success for a handful of individuals . The technique of teaching they provide may work for some, but not all. Everyone has a different learning style and Learn only supports one way, which is peer programming. I understand this is great within a working environment, but not everyone is able to solidify information in that manner when learning something new. When I am spending  8 hrs. a day, plus $14,500,  I should feel I have used my time wisely, rather when I going home frustrated. Expressing my concerns, which they don't like you to complain about anything, just constructive criticism, I was pretty much told maybe this program was not right for me. Which it was not and I withdrew. But that kind of attitude towards some one interested in learning a new skill is undiscerning. They should be more understanding and accommodating to each person's learning style.

Learn promotes that their camp is for beginners, which it is not. It is more geared towards people with some kind of background in programming, not just an interest. I feel their screening process should be more thorough, with a technical part before officially being accepted into the program. The curriculum was disorganized and hard to follow at times. There are reputable sights to learn Web Development, build a portfolio, provide you skills for interviewing and finding a job. These sights do not cost much or are for free. Not sure what Learn feels they are providing for $14,500, other than  lining their pockets with money. Please consider other options before throwing your money away or going into debt. 

Pros: 
- Excellent career services 
- Internship included, and some were paid 
- Curriculum reflected current trends/job opportunities 
- Flexible with daily lessons based on student needs 
- LEARN is very involved in the local tech community, so there are a lot of connections to be made 
- Good work/life balance 
- School is understanding and respectful of students' external commitments 
- The people who work at LEARN are wonderful 

Cons: 
- Learning material on website sometimes unclear or had mistakes, and continued uncorrected despite student feedback 
- Few opportunities taken to assess students' knowledge, no code reviews 
- Morning lessons frequently ended with "So does that make sense to everybody? *silence* Great!" 
- Instructors always willing to help, but not always experienced enough to be able to help 
- Pair programming required, but can be more inhibiting than helpful depending on individual learning style 

Bottomline: 
- Glad I did LEARN, certainly a good way to change careers and get your foot in the door with the internship. At the end of the day I'm confident I'll get a job and I'm excited to start a new career, but it was a windy road at times 

Advice to LEARN: 
- designating a scrum master would help with continuous improvement 
- if resources allow, code reviews would be very beneficial to students

This Ruby on Rails bootcamp has a solid curriculum. It starts with the basics, HTML, CSS and moves on to JavaScript, JQuery and Ruby on Rails. Their instructors are patient and help you with problems without giving you the answer. They are invested in their students and really want you to succeed. They push the importance of getting out in your community with volunteering, meet-ups etc. Overall, I would say Learn was a good experience and helped me to level up in my coding career.