Merit America

I absolutely made a big fat mistake by choosing Merit America to use my Amazon benefits. Their instructors, stuff, support team has been ignoring my emails since I had made serious effort to unenroll from their program when I saw their nonsense syllabus. 
Can someone explain to me what IT support specialist has to do with ChatGPT ?? But their first week lecture were fully reserved for ChatGPT. I had worked as an IT technician in the overseas government hospital for number of years and I assure yo, you'll not learn anything useful to become an IT Support specialist. It's absolutely ridiculous, and they rob you with no gun. So look elsewhere.

I will give you the short of the long. The graduation rate is 30 to 50% NOT 80%. I am actively keeping up with my cohort and very VERY few have found jobs. Including top preforming students. If you are a parent or have a 40+ hour job, this program will leave you sleepless. The schedule is not flexible. You are required to attend 3 to 6 meetings a week and do collaborative work where you have to meet with other students. They are disorganized. This is NOT a full-stack Java course. The teachers and staff are great but after everything is said and done things get sketchy. They don't have the connections they claim to have, you have to find your own job and you won't have a certificate to do so. You will have a very poorly worded and unprofessional letter that is sub 70 words with no proper accolades. 

FLAWS OF THE CURRICULUM
The school doesn't focus on the technical work as much. It crams resume learning, linkedin networking, and other unnecessary things at you while you try to soak the knowledge and learn the technical work. ANYTHING OTHER THAN TECHNICAL WORK SHOULD BE EITHER OPTIONAL OR AT THE END OF THE TECHNICAL WORK. Because not everyone needs to build their resumes or network. Some I have interacted with on the course, said they don't need this resume and networking stuff because they already have good resumes and networks with people. Learning about resume and networking SHOULD be optional. Most of us are here to learn a new skill, so most of us want to focus on the technical work without having resumes, and networking looming behind us. The point is, we all feel our time is being wasted when we don't need these things. Oh not only that but they demand weekly squad meetings, 2 1 on 1 coach meetings, and bi weekly small group meetings. Again, a lot of us don't need all of these. Its just a time suck. These meetings are only there for discussing resumes, and networking. Which most do not need.

ADVICE FOR APPLICANTS
Now that this school has revealed it's colors, I will give advice to anyone wanting to join. If you want just the skills to get into an IT job yourself without any unnecessary things holding you down, DON'T JOIN THIS SCHOOL. JUST PURCHASE THE COURSERA COURSE ON YOUR OWN, ITS CHEAPER THAT WAY. And then from there, you can learn more about IT and go deeper into it, like if you want to study IT networking more, go and take the courses for that, like CCNA.

But if you WANT to learn how to network with people, and learn how to build resumes, AND do technical work; go ahead and try this course out, it might be for you. Oh and expect to have mandatory meetings in the future. and a lot of them. weekly squad (two hours), bi weekly small groups(1 hour), and 1 on 1 coach (30 min, twice a month).

By the way once your in, and sign the loan agreement, you're paying no matter what, so just think before you go into this course. I sure didn't. So Take my advice and decide if this is really for you.

Conclusion
The Curriculum is just very bad. I hope they take it as constructed criticism to improve their flawed course in the end for the better for everyone. Again to improve, I'd suggest you just make resume and networking learning optional. And lessen mandatory meetings.

Merit America is, without a doubt, the best coding bootcamp I have come across in my search. Most other bootcamps I have heard of charge from 2 to 5 times as much as Merit America (a cost you will likely incur upfront) and offer very little by way of developing your professional skills to help you market your new coding skills and ultimately land a job. Merit America manages to tie all these loose ends together by combining a broad coding curriculum that can teach a non-coder to be industry ready in under half a year with great professional support to teach learners how to succeed in interviews, write good resumes and stand out to employers in a sea of applications. Merit America boasts all of this while charging the learner nothing upfront, instead, upon the learner being hired into the tech industry, the learner then pays back a modest fee over time. What's more is that Merit America partners with powerful companies like JPMC and HCL to provide their learners with the opportunity to show their skills in front of industry professionals and generate job leads. Merit America hands you all the tools you need for success practically on a silver platter, all you need to do is the work.

If your truly looking for a good opportunity to learn and apply your skills then this it is. I love this program and everyone I was able to meet. Everyone is super supportive and always willing to help as long as you’re open as well. It can be hard at times but that’s why you have your peers and the team to help guide you but you have to do the work. I was able to learn so many new things and professional, I am so more open and skilled. I was able to break through my shell and go to networking events and mock interviews. I didn’t land that big developer job but I was able to get my foot in and now I work at Apple. You will go through a lot of interviews and you will receive more no’s then yes. But never give up, they always got your back. You got this other learners, keep that mind young.

Life Changing Experience

I didn’t even know I could be good at programming until I encountered Merit America. The constant coaching  ( not only with coding but in the professional sphere too) and  peer meetings made the learning process a lot easier.  My LinkedIn profile stands out so well that, I am constantly getting noticed by recruiters. I am gaining more knowledge and delving deeper into programming; something I wouldn’t have ventured into if not for Merit America. 
Do not miss this life changing opportunity ! 
Go for it! 

Merrit America can be a great program for individuals who already have a decent amount of knowledge in whatever subject they’re choosing to participate in. But if you’re someone with zero experience or knowledge, It’s extremely challenging to keep up with the pace of learning that’s expected of you. The material you study is on Coursera, which is divided into weekly modules but at Merit America, you’re expected to complete like three of those weekly models in only one week. For me personally that was too much too fast. They were not willing to let me learn at a slower pace so I dropped out of the program. Not to mention the fact that you’re paying nearly $6000 to participate in this program when you can get the IT certificate for $300 if you do it on your own. So essentially you’re paying $5700 for the “ guidance” of course instructor. And I use the word guidance very lightly because there was not much of it. So really, I don’t see the point in paying that much money for someone to help me who doesn’t even really have the time to help me. The whole time I participated in the course I was basically learning everything on my own, so it made absolutely no sense to pay $5000 for something that I could pay $300 for instead.