General Assembly

Understand that this program is only 10 weeks. A lot is crammed into the curriculum, and a lot is left out of it as well. Understand that you need to put in 100% to get out 100%, inside and outside of the program. If you're not ready for that, you will... Read More struggle.

If you're ready, read on.

My background is in visual design and management. Those skills flow very nicely into UX. If you have a similar background, you will have an advantage. If you don't, you just have to work a little harder. I loved the program. It is structured so that you learn to apply the whole UX process of research, synthesis, wireframing, prototyping and usability testing to 5 projects. The first 4 projects prepares you for the 5th, your capstone. I the program prepared me very well for a career in UX, but I recognize that if you don't have a design background, then YMMV.

The most important part of this curriculum, is actually what you do outside of class. It's easy to show up and follow instructions everyday. You have to network (they teach you, it's easy). You have to read, listen to podcasts, talk to other designers. You have to learn new software. You have to put yourself out there. That is how you will be successful in this program. (GA will teach you how to do all of this, and very well)

The Outcomes team (career coaches) are fantastic. They give you all the resources, tools, advice, and time with them as you need to help you find a job. They do not find one for you. Same advice goes as above. You have to put in a lot of work, supplemented by the Outcomes team.

GA has great alumni resources who stay in the community, participate in GA events, and give great advice. A lot has given their time to me to help me, and I will undoubtedly pay if forward.

Extra things I'd recommend if you enroll in this program:
1) Learn how to write/tell a good story. GA teaches you how to write a case study, but it's only effective if it tells an interesting story people want to hear.
2) Learn how to work with engineers. The program does not involve any coding or working with engineers. Seek out opportunities where you can learn how the dynamics work.
3) Understand what UX means in relations to the business/company you want to work for. This is how you speak the language of decision makers.

Understand that this program is only 10 weeks. A lot is crammed into the curriculum, and a lot is left out of it as well. Understand that you need to put in 100% to get out 100%, inside and outside of the program. If you're not ready for that, you will... Read More struggle. If you're ready, read on. My background is in visual design and management. Those skills flow very nicely into UX. If you have a similar background, you will have an advantage. If you don't, you just have to work a little harder. I loved the program. It is structured so that you learn to apply the whole UX process of research, synthesis, wireframing, prototyping and usability testing to 5 projects. The first 4 projects prepares you for the 5th, your capstone. I the program prepared me very well for a career in UX, but I recognize that if you don't have a design background, then YMMV. The most important part of this curriculum, is actually what you do outside of class. It's easy to show up and follow instructions everyday. You have to network (they teach you, it's easy). You have to read, listen to podcasts, talk to other designers. You have to learn new software. You have to put yourself out there. That is how you will be successful in this program. (GA will teach you how to do all of this, and very well) The Outcomes team (career coaches) are fantastic. They give you all the resources, tools, advice, and time with them as you need to help you find a job. They do not find one for you. Same advice goes as above. You have to put in a lot of work, supplemented by the Outcomes team. GA has great alumni resources who stay in the community, participate in GA events, and give great advice. A lot has given their time to me to help me, and I will undoubtedly pay if forward. Extra things I'd recommend if you enroll in this program: 1) Learn how to write/tell a good story. GA teaches you how to write a case study, but it's only effective if it tells an interesting story people want to hear. 2) Learn how to work with engineers. The program does not involve any coding or working with engineers. Seek out opportunities where you can learn how the dynamics work. 3) Understand what UX means in relations to the business/company you want to work for. This is how you speak the language of decision makers.

I found the GA UX Research & Design PT Course very enjoyable. I learned a lot and I feel that the curriculum gave me a solid understanding of the UX Research & Design process from end to end. Marcella was a great teacher and made all of the concepts understandable... Read More and applicable to where we all were in our professional careers. She was always available for extra help and advice which I really appreciated. It was a lot of work and in my opinion required more of a time commitment than the course syllabus suggested. Because it is a PT class it moved very quickly which caused me to get behind a few times throughout the course. I also found the curriculum to be a bit disjointed and unorganized. This is primarily because the online pre and home work did not seem to match up with the 2 day a week in class schedule. There were a few times I had to go back and review because sections were out of order. Overall, it is a good course that would definitely be 5 stars with some fine tuning.

The 1-week course on Product Management was an excellent opportunity to learn new skills and exchange experiences with senior people who are already on this field. The learning flow and dynamics, combining theory and practice, was really helpful to absorb... Read More and retain knowledge.

I took the Part Time Data Science course in DC from 6:30 to 9:30 on Mondays and Wednesdays. I had very little data science background prior to this course and was extremely pleased with how it turned out. I was exposed to a wide breadth of core data science... Read More topics and now have a solid base from which I can pursue further learning. I'm by no means an expert but that's not the point of the course. I came in looking to improve my Python skills and learn the basics of machine learning, and that's exactly what I did. I highly recommend this course to anyone wanting to get a solid baseline in Data Science.

I made the switch to product design after contemplating the career move for a couple years. I was nervous about making a change, and put it off until I exhausted all other options. I completed the full-time UX design immersive course because I wanted... Read More to get more formal training and experience in the field, in a short time frame.

Pros: GA stood out to me because of the timeframe (only 10 weeks!) and career coaching (which is amazing). Having an in-person experience was important to me because UX design is so collaborative, you're working with tons of people and different teams, so an added bonus was the diversity of our class and learning how to work with a lot of different people. I think the class was super practical and hands-on, we started doing real UX work day 2. The main instructor was amazing, I don't think I would have had as much success if she wasn't the instructor.

Cons: I would have liked more focus on the engineering collaboration with design, since handing off and working with engineers is such a huge component of a UX or Product Designer's day-to-day. I think we did a pretty good job covering the basics and most important methods and tools, but in the short time frame we didn't get to develop a super large toolbox.

I actually found GA through this website earlier this year while deciding which bootcamp to attend. My background is from the networking side of tech (3 fortune 500 companies & 2 silicon valley e-com companies) and I've dabbled in software development... Read More (php) for a couple years. I went through the reviews and after contacting about 6 other schools (UC Berkeley, Wynncode, LeWagon, Hack Reactor, Boise Code Works, and Skill Distillery) I picked General Assembly.

My honest review is the instructors are passionate about coding and can teach anyone the fundamentals of Full Stack Development. People in my class ranged from college students to the restaurant industry. Everyone was dedicated to learning and put in the hours to learn various languages and frameworks over 12 weeks. Like anything else in life, you'll get out what you put into it. I came during class hours, after class hours, and on the weekends as well. I knew literally nothing about Javascript 3 months ago and now I can write full CRUD applications in React, Express, and vanilla JS. There were always instructors available to help and many of them stayed to help students when they were "off the clock".

Overall, if you're looking for a coding bootcamp you will not be disappointed with GA.

Through my experience at General Assembly (note, when I started, it was still Bitmaker, but in effect, the content was General Assembly approved), I was able to land my first data science role. While the industry is hiring Sr. Data Scientist engineers,... Read More and Sr. Data Scientists, breaking in is difficult for more entry-level Data Analyst/Scientists. However, I do like how there are Data Scientists who come from a variety of backgrounds, from social sciences, cognitive sciences, to mathematics. On this journey, I’ve had a lot of support from my General Assembly instructor (Max is one of smartest, and also most effective teachers), career coaches and classmates. Note, your mileage may vary based on your instructor, or peers (to drive discussion and helping each other). I was lucky to have one of the best. Our instructor worked at two local start-ups before joining General Assembly, so he had real experience. Additionally, he often presented at conferences like Pycon and abroad. This is the by far the reason why I am rating General Assembly so high, it’s because you gain access to an instructor who can teach the material better than online materials. Anyone can find a Jupyter notebook on Random Forests, or youtube video on Neural Networks, but to get insights from an Engineer who has written production code, and has advice about ‘flex’ topics like why Docker, cloud computing, and a better way of approaching a problem is invaluable. Choose your boot camp based on your instructor. That’s the differentiating piece. Go to an info session, and ask him/her questions. Coming from the software industry previously, the inclusiveness and culture were great, but not a differentiator for me. I’d imagine Brainstation being similar. But those guys were way too sales-y while recruiting, which is why Brainstation turned me off. The syllabus was a bit less relevant too. To close I’d like to highlight two areas of improvement. - It’s a jam-packed 12 weeks, but if there was a way to embed more data engineering, software engineering by removing some of the less relevant algorithms, I think that would be better time spent. - Career support is great, but let’s raise the bar for those who have already worked in the industry. The general advice is table stakes (geared towards interns and university students), so it would be more valuable to have real data scientists, and data engineers provide advice on how they recruit, and perform whiteboard interviews. The network of alumni is growing, but the corporate partnerships engagement is weak as far as student employment is concerned. The career coach is working hard on early conversations with Telus Digital or MaRS, but at this point, there’s no real pipeline to feed students into those programs. Bet on yourself to find jobs rather than rely on employers knocking on your door on demo day. Set your expectations appropriately.