Pursuit

Three months after graduating from Pursuit, I was able to successfully triple my original income. After almost 2 years, I've successfully quadrupled my salary when compared to what I made prior to joining Pursuit! It will be a lot of work (especially... Read More on nights and weekends while working a day job), but you will learn a lot, and be prepared for your first job in tech. Totally worth it!

Pros: loaned laptop, trips to tech companies.

Cons:
There are better options. Don't even consider it if you're looking to do the night and weekends program. It's a difference of 25 vs. 40 hours per week, and you're expected to keep up with curriculum that's... Read More intended for the 40 hour week. The night and weekend cohorts get 400+ less hours of instruction (about 35% less instruction) and they are still expected to pay the same amount back. This utterly doesn't make any sense, considering that the resources and attention that the daytime students get is clearly superior.

Previous reviews mention this. Without scratching the surface, the concept of Pay It Forward seems like a great idea. But when you read the fine print, it's just deferred tuition and they avoid talking about it as such. Ethically, to target people from marginalized groups who seek a financial stable life in such a way is not following to the mission statement. If things go accordingly for fellows (a $60,000+ job shortly after graduation), this ends up being an incredibly expensive program, when other programs offer more affordable options. They need to put a tuition cap, and restructure the system, because their present agreement has a maximum $36,000 a year tuition (if the student makes at least $300,000...no one is going to make that). It seems like they are milking students for what they got just to fulfill requirements of a hefty loan.

Pros:
- If you don't have a laptop, they will loan you one.
- Field trips to tech companies.
- Deferred tuition. You only pay when you get a job that pays a certain amount of income.

Cons:

The amount of cons can fill a book. Long story short, there was a lot... Read More of abuse and mind games going on. I will list the most jarring.

- Nights and Weekends students are extremely disadvantaged when it comes to learning time and available resources.
- They literally expected the nights and weekends students to do everything expected of daytime. Nights and weekends students are the ones most likely to have families and unable to quit their jobs for a fulltime program. Staff seemed to forge that.
- Resources were promised, but then not delivered. For example, they would cancel office hours (aka tutoring) if not enough people signed up. Staff were afraid of no-shows by students. This happened a lot. The real kicker is office hours were held by volunteers from the tech community and staff touted this as a networking opportunity. It's not ok to deny help to students.
- They humiliated students at graduation. They said students on track to graduate could still attend the ceremony and walk the stage while being allowed to finish over the summer. They did not say these students were being handed blank certificates. Students had families in attendance. Imagine having to explain this to your loved ones.
- They were not upfront about how to complete graduation requirements. There was a mad crunch at the end to finish.
- I saw a lot of staff members leave before the end of the cycle. They hadn't been there even one year. that's how abused the staff were.
- The higher ups routinely speak rudely to students and assume they are in the right and students are in the wrong.
- No matter how badly students behave, the school will keep them on in the hopes the students will finish, get jobs, and pay back tuition. It's a breeding ground for bad behavior.
- They would interrupt learning schedules at the last minute. I once arrived to class expecting to have all day to work independently, but they tried to force me to practice whiteboarding problems instead because most of the class failed the whiteboarding certification. Mind you, students didn't even receive grades back for this yet. Another time, they had students sit through an hour-long lecture by people applying for teaching jobs at the school. They wanted us to "have a voice" in how the organization was run. Again, this was time I should have been working on independent projects for my portfolio. This happened three times.

The only draw of this program is the tuition plan. You don't pay if you don't get a job. In reality, the people who get jobs within a reasonable amount of time (3 months post grad), are those who came into the program with coding knowledge already. There's little support for job searching. You're better off setting up Google alerts than relying on career services to get you an inside scoop.