General Assembly

General Assembly helped me transition from a career in Behavior Therapy to a true UX Designer. I was lucky enough to complete the program in person, but I graduated in March 2020 (right at the start of the pandemic). I did all of my job search and career... Read More coaching remotely. My career coach, Lupe, was STELLAR. Lupe and the rest of General Assembly adapted quickly to the remote lifestyle and supported me in the months of job searching through the pandemic. I couldn't be more happy with my experience and the support that Lupe offered. It took me 7 months to find a job in the height of all the uncertainty that COVID brand, and Lupe supported me all the way to negotiations of my offer. Pros - Knowledgeable instructors, challenging curriculum, outstanding career coach. I really felt like I mattered, was guided, and challenged from the beginning of my program to the signing of my job offer. Cons - Group projects with individuals who are not as dedicated is inevitable, expectations on salary and how flooded the job market could have been managed better.

GA's Software Engineering Immersive is the reason I have a job. The skills you learn there (and the friends you make) are absolutely invaluable. Our classes focused on JavaScript, React, HTML, CSS, & Ruby on Rails. We also worked with things like Node,... Read More MongoDB, Express, and AirTable to name a few others. With these technical skills in your pocket, you instantly become desirable to companies. One of the best things about this program is that you come out of it with four completely fleshed out projects. From planning to coding, fixing bugs, and writing the documentation, these projects not only improve your skills, but look amazing in your portfolio. The person who hired me at my current company told me that these projects were the deciding factor that put me above the other candidates. One of the projects lets you work in a team of four devs, working with four UX designers. This is real-world experience about what it's like to work in a development team environment and gives you a huge leg up on those applying to a job who would have to acquire that knowledge later on. However, perhaps best of all is the Outcomes Team. They act as career coaches, taking your technical skills and teaching you how to apply what hiring managers are looking for in order to market yourself and network in today's top job markets. They are the worth the price of the course alone. As with everything in life, there are always things I would have tweaked. I wish, for example, that we would have touched on Python, and perhaps Java. I also wish that we had an extra unit on Technical Interview Prep - concentrating on popular interview questions and practicing whiteboarding in front of other people (which can be very nerve-wracking). However, GA is constantly surveying their students and altering their curriculum based on feedback, as well as keeping their finger on the pulse of the industry, so they are constantly improving and adapting over time. Overall, I would Definitely recommend GA. It is a concentrated time of learning that not only turns you into a formidable developer, but inspires you to keep going, growing, and learning no matter where the next step takes you. But, boiling it down, if I could only use two words to describe GA, I think the two most apt would be "Challenging" and "Fun"!

Before I go into detail, I want to make it clear that this is a 12-week course. You can't learn everything in 12 weeks. You should go into this knowing that you're going to pull all-nighters, cry, and become frustrated—but you have tons of support and... Read More resources available to you, so take advantage of it! I enjoyed GA's course. I feel like we learned all of the things that we'd want to learn from an instructor and not on our own. This is an incredibly fast-paced class. I was in the remote program due to COVID, and my course was M-F, 9-5. The work doesn't stop at 5. Expect your 40-hour week to actually be 80+. PROS: You'll be exposed to in-demand technologies, languages, and frameworks such as JavaScript, React, and Python. My class had 2 instructors and 2 instructor associates. We also had 2 TAs who spent their evenings with us for help 7 days a week. Everyone is incredibly supportive and knowledgeable. I never felt intimidated asking for help. You'll also have career support after the program ends. We had 4 projects to help build out our portfolio. One project was a group project, so I was able to work on a team and get that experience which is obviously useful in the real world unless you're working for yourself. You'll come out of the program as a full-stack engineer, and don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. CONS: This is a 12-week course, so you're not going to be job-ready at the end. You're going to learn just enough to be able to continue learning the rest on your own. You've got to make extra time to practice, and you're going to get burnt out. This is a BOOTCAMP. I felt that the curriculum could've been structured a bit better. We hardly spent any time learning data structures and algorithms, which is the main thing that you need to ace during a technical interview. We only spent 1 week learning React, which is unfortunate since it's the most in-demand library in the industry. We also never went over hooks, functional components, or Redux. We only spent ~1 week learning Python—again very unfortunate since that's in-demand as well. I don't feel comfortable having Python as a language on my resume at this point. You'll want to blame the instructors, but please don't—they're doing what GA is telling them what to do. We also only had one mock technical interview—it would've been great to have more since that's very intimidating for new engineers. There wasn't really any focus on CSS frameworks, so you'll need to learn those on your own. GA reuses their course notes, which is expected... but many times they weren't updated. Generally speaking, it wasn't a huge deal until we got to PostgreSQL. You're encouraged to code along during lecture (muscle memory works!!), however, it's very fast-paced, so you're going to fall behind at some point, but that's what the notes are for. It was very frustrating when we were learning PostgreSQL, because our notes referenced SQLite. This was crammed into the week that we learned Python, so it was an absolute nightmare. The instructors even told us not to refer to the notes for PostgreSQL since the notes were wrong. It can't be that difficult to update the notes, right? When you graduate from this course, you'll be ready to apply for an internship, apprenticeship, or junior-level role. If you're in this because you think you're gonna make bank after 12-weeks, you should get on Glassdoor and check the salaries in your area for junior-level engineers. This isn't necessarily a con because you have to start somewhere, but just know that going into it. I wanted to review their Outcomes program separately. Outcomes is GA's career support, and you'll be paired with a career coach. It was frustrating to attend the Outcomes class during the week—and especially during project weeks. I wish the program would've been voluntary up until you graduate. The program is awesome and super beneficial to folks who have little to no job experience. You'll learn how to craft a resume and build out your brand, and you'll learn best practices for using LinkedIn and networking. However, if you've been working professionally for some time, you'll find this frustrating because you've likely been doing that already. That being said, once you graduate, the Outcomes program is so super incredibly helpful. You've got to meet certain criteria to remain in the program. Expect to spend around 20 hours a week applying for jobs. You'll also be expected to attend networking events. This is all up to you. You're not going to get handed anything, but you'll be coached and given the tools you need to be successful. You'll also have access to GA's direct job recommendation process. Essentially, they've got a Partnerships team that literally acts as a Sales Team to find open roles for GA grads. If you meet the criteria for one, you can actually get a written recommendation for it. I know that I listed a ton of cons, but overall, it was a really great experience. I'd definitely recommend GA to anyone looking to make a career change. You can't do this by yourself. Just know that you have to continue doing the work after class ends. You've got to make time to practice during the week, and you can forget about self-care! But, you're going to have an amazing and supportive group of folks including the instructors, TAs, career coaches, and your entire cohort. You reap what you sow. To answer the burning question that you likely have—it took me 23 days to find a job as a full-stack web developer at a great company. I applied for 38 jobs, had 3 interviews, and had one offer. The offer that I accepted had a great starting salary for where I live (NYC)—it was more than what I expected and an awesome benefits package. I was very strategic about my job search, and for this particular job, I actually met all of the requirements because I had engineering experience prior to GA. For some folks, it might take a year to find a role, and that depends on tons of factors that GA may not even have control over such as your location and specific career goals. I'm very happy to have chosen GA, and I think that it's 100% worth the $15,000 price tag.

I attended General Assembly's Software Engineering Immersive remote program in January of 2021. Overall, it was a very positive experience for me! Even though it was remote, my cohort was "New York-based" so we operated on Eastern Time and most of the... Read More instructors were from the East coast. I was told that the New York cohorts are unique because they use a different instructor for each of the 4 units. Other cohorts apparently usually have 2 co-instructors that switch off and each teaches 2 units. This was both a pro and a con sometimes for me because the program is 12 weeks long and the units are only 3 weeks each. Just when you get comfortable with the instructor's teaching style, you are whisked away into the next unit with a new instructor. This can be a positive if you don't really like a particular instructor or are struggling with the teaching style, but it can also be negative since it can be jarring to switch up so quickly. Overall, the program is intense! I'm sure you've read many other reviews that say this because it's true! It can definitely get overwhelming, especially if you have little-to-no experience with coding/programming before entering the program. You can easily bet on having 10+ hour days at least 5 days/week. What's nice is that you usually get a little bit of a break during the weekend because Friday's homework USUALLY isn't due until Sunday of that week, so you can take a weekend day off if you need/want. Ultimately, you get what you put into the program. I mentioned before that it can be very overwhelming to learn new languages in general, but especially if you don't have any background coding experience/exposure. That being said, there were quite a few of my classmates that had very little prior experience with coding that did extremely well. If you're hungry to learn and truly invest yourself in this bootcamp, I believe you will have a positive experience. This is definitely not an easy program, you will have to put in the work, but if you do, it will be worth it! About job support: each cohort has a dedicated career coach which you meet with (as a group) multiple times throughout the program. Your career coach creates interactive presentations on various topics regarding the job search such as: building your personal brand, tips for your portfolio website, etc. If you qualify for Outcomes (which is GA's program for job-seekers), you are given additional support such as more meetings/workshops with your career coach and additional slack channels for job seekers where jobs are posted multiple times per day, often from companies who have hired GA grads before. I had a very positive experience with GA's Software Engineering Immersive program and truly believe that anyone from any background can be successful if you work hard, stay positive, and keep a growth mindset.

I have always been interested in working with computers and after being surrounded by some amazing software engineering friends, I decided I wanted to delve deeply into coding projects and problem-solve just like them. Fast forward to my General Assembly... Read More experience, I graduated from the Software Engineering Immersive program where I developed skills in JavaScript, React, Ruby on Rails, and other technical languages that allowed me to build four projects over the course of the twelve-week full-time program. The amount of support provided during the program was absolutely amazing and next to none. I really felt cared for during the class with the instructors, teaching assistants, and classmates. GA is a wonderfully collaborative community.  After graduating, my career coach Anna stuck by my side for an entire year until I got a job in tech (at General Motors as a Software Developer!). It took a little longer to find work due to the pandemic, but Anna and the entire GA community are extremely dedicated to seeing you succeed. I am very excited about my new job and will continue to grow and learn within the field of technology long after my experience with GA!

Overall, I had a great experience during my time at GA's UXDI bootcamp. Not only did I make great friends in my program and come out with a working portfolio, but ultimately gained a great foundation in UX principles and methodologies to prepare me for... Read More my job search/career transition. There were some parts of the curriculum I wish we could have gone deeper into (sometimes certain lectures felt more like a high-level overview), but my instructors were always there to answer any questions and encouraged us to dig deeper in the material. The program takes a lot of self-motivation, hard work, and being okay with navigating the abstract and I do strongly feel though the program is what you make of it. UX is a competitive field to get your foot in and it takes more than just going through a 3-month bootcamp to make that jump. But I feel GA gave me a solid jumping off point and allowed me to be in a safe space to ask questions, learn, make connections, and gain confidence in my process as I transitioned into the job search. Even in my UX job now I find myself looking back at old lecture decks to inform some of the work I do! I would recommend the course to those serious about making the career transition but also keep in mind that finding a job post-course requires the same amount of hard work and self-motivation to successfully to do.

There were both pros and cons to attending GA. The biggest benefit was being a part of a group who were all on the same mission and had relatively similar levels of experience. Having labs, homework, and projects to work on together gave us each a chance... Read More to help each other out and solidify concepts by teaching them to each other. Bouncing ideas off each other and being resources to each other was a critical driver in our individual success. The next biggest benefit was having a career coach. The counseling was invaluable, especially since that level of support would be hard to find elsewhere. However, the program is not for the faint of heart or people who are not fully committed to grinding and putting in the time to grow. In terms of material, I believe that the course did not dive deeply enough into fundamentals, and in each unit, barely scratched the surface of what we were studying. I felt that I was able to teach myself everything we learned in class, on my own and in a fraction of the time, for free through the right resources like javascript.info, Reactjs.org, css-tricks.com, freecodecamp.com, etc. The whole point of the internet is that the knowledge is out there, and can usually be found for free. For the price that we paid, I felt that the course could have been more challenging -- but it only demanded as much as could be demanded from the slowest students in the class, so as to not leave a student behind. The problem is that there were students who had no business being in the course. I think the program should have a slightly higher bar for acceptance, but their "admission" policy is for show, and I wouldn't be surprised if over 95% of "applicants" are accepted. Of course, bootcamps are a business, and the main goal of any business is always profit. Overall, I don't think it's exactly as advertised. People don't always graduate from GA and go straight to a top tech firm or similarly high paying role -- that is definitely the exception, and demonstrates a level of effort behind the scenes on the students' own time that does not indicate anything about GA. But the average bootcamp graduate is certainly capable of being hired into the majority of the companies out there. I just think instructors should be more candid about what it takes to truly excel in this field, instead of pretending that the coursework is sufficient. However, GA did offer me the environment in which to grow and challenge myself, a guideline for becoming a software engineer, the career counseling -- which is extremely insightful to those who are coming from other industries, and the certificate that I can have on my resume to show I'm dedicated to the career -- which is especially helpful for a college dropout whose previous experience has only been in restaurants. There are pros and cons, and they will differ for each person. It's a hard decision to enroll in a bootcamp, and I believe everyone has to consider their own circumstances to make the decision.

I didn't have any experience in Data Science and Machine learning, but also no coding prior knowledge. At the end of the course I was able to complete project, scrap data from internet and build decent machine learning models. Congrats to the teachers... Read More and GA

So happy I decided to attend General Assembly's User Experience Design Immersive program! The classes were very hands-on and a nice balance of learning something new, and quickly apply it. I was surprised with how much I gained from just 12-weeks. Some... Read More people say you can learn UX design on your own--and you can, but GA offers way more. Access to a career coach during the program as well as during and after your job search; connections to other GA alumni; compassionate staff who really cares about your success.

General Assembly was instrumental in allowing me to switch careers into a field that is challenging, engaging, and always growing. During the program I gained highly applicable skills, and learned what it's like to work in software development. This new... Read More knowledge was directly responsible for helping me to land a full-time gig as a software engineer.