| | Zackery Finn | I will admit freely that I was skeptical of coding boot camps before attending Grand Circus. I did not believe their claims, that not only could you get a software development job after completing a boot camp but that job would be a good paying, career position. But after the small business I helped run shuttered its doors and I struggled to re-enter the professional world as an older worker, I was willing to consider all options, including boot camps. To that end I reached out to Grand Circus in order to get more information about their programs, and was invited to come down for a one-on-one chat with Ian, one of the school administrators. I expected an aggressive hard-sell of the school, but instead had a really enjoyable and frank discussion about if this was the right choice for me, what I could expect from the program, and truths about prospects after school. Ian did not sugar-coat the difficult road that lay ahead if I elected to apply for a boot camp, and did not promise me the moon. He did promise that if I put in the work, both with learning the course material and following through on the job search tasks, the school would work just as hard by my side to help me realize my goals. To this end he and Grand Circus did not disappoint.
As I stated the work was hard, and there was a lot of it. I took the after-hours C#.NET boot camp, and was working full-time during this process. Life was pretty difficult during this time, with long days and weekends dedicate to homework (and sometimes even longer nights). This made things challenging, but class was always super enjoyable -- I had a great group of classmates and a highly-skilled and experienced instructor that together always made things super enjoyable and very informative. And thanks to Grand Circus I received a job offer right before graduation and am now employed as a back-end C# developer for a metro-Detroit base company, making a good salary and have a very promising road ahead of me.
All in all, in my case the cost of the boot camp pales in comparison to my current and future earnings potential. If you are thinking about attending a boot camp at Grand Circus, I definitely recommend reaching out to them to arrange a tour and to speak with a representative in person. And if you do decide to enroll, practice as much as you can. Fingers to keyboard is the best way to learn the material, and there are many free resources out there with which you can supplement your lessons, such as Hackerrank. You instructors and the school will have many more recommendations. Also, do not blow off the soft skill portions of the course! I at first thought this classes a distraction from learning the technology, but when it comes to actually finding a job after graduation the information they present there is invaluable.
In short, if you have some facility with computers, are genuinely interested in technology, and willing do some hard work for a few months, Grand Circus will change your life for the better. |
| | Anonymous | If you're thinking about joining a coding bootcamp, it's important to be realistic about what this investment looks like for your time, wallet and career opportunities. No coding bootcamp is going to give you an easy path into tech. What Grand Circus will do, though, is provide significant support, education, insight and networking to make that career a real possibility. Some of the technical education shared in this program could be found online, but I knew that wasn't going to be a path that effectively supported my transition into the industry. I had always coded as a hobby and fiddled with friends' computers, but I had a real lack of understanding on how to go from where I was to where I wanted to be. I could take all the online lessons I wanted, explore every local meetup and try to do employer outreach and I still don't think I would have found the same level of success that I did with the support of GC. I considered going with their after-hours bootcamp, and think it's great that they have that option for people that can't quit their job, but I wanted to get into tech as quickly as possible and I knew to do that I was really going to have to dedicate myself to the entire process. Grand Circus puts their students first. Even staff members that aren't in the classroom work to help students. They are always asking for feedback on how they can improve (maybe too much. We had a ton of required surveys to provide this feedback but I get it.) Everything builds up to a demo day. This is where students get to share what they've learned and built. There's a decent amount of coaching going into demo day to understand how to present yourself to visiting employers, which was really helpful. I like that Grand Circus does both the technical education piece and also the job hunt recommendations. The package deal is really what sold me on the program. Students have to take this seriously, though. Some of my classmates started to fall behind early on their labs, assessments quickly followed. Once you're behind on the technical stuff, it becomes really hard to catch up or focus on the job hunt piece. I wouldn't recommend anyone come in without any experience with coding. You should spend time experimenting with resources to get familiar. Talk to alumni about expectations. Attend workshops. I hadn't been in school for nearly a decade, so it was a bit of a shock how fast everything flies at you. Overall, I highly recommend Grand Circus. I went from a retail background to a career in tech within two months of graduating. It was some of the craziest months of my life, but I'm excited to be working in this industry now and consider my classmates friends to this day. |
| | Anonymous | If you're thinking about joining a coding bootcamp, it's important to be realistic about what this investment looks like for your time, wallet and career opportunities. No coding bootcamp is going to give you an easy path into tech. What Grand Circus will do, though, is provide significant support, education, insight and networking to make that career a real possibility. Some of the technical education shared in this program could be found online, but I knew that wasn't going to be a path that effectively supported my transition into the industry. I had always coded as a hobby and fiddled with friends' computers, but I had a real lack of understanding on how to go from where I was to where I wanted to be. I could take all the online lessons I wanted, explore every local meetup and try to do employer outreach and I still don't think I would have found the same level of success that I did with the support of GC. I considered going with their after-hours bootcamp, and think it's great that they have that option for people that can't quit their job, but I wanted to get into tech as quickly as possible and I knew to do that I was really going to have to dedicate myself to the entire process.
Grand Circus puts their students first. Even staff members that aren't in the classroom work to help students. They are always asking for feedback on how they can improve (maybe too much. We had a ton of required surveys to provide this feedback but I get it.) Everything builds up to a demo day. This is where students get to share what they've learned and built. There's a decent amount of coaching going into demo day to understand how to present yourself to visiting employers, which was really helpful. I like that Grand Circus does both the technical education piece and also the job hunt recommendations. The package deal is really what sold me on the program.
Students have to take this seriously, though. Some of my classmates started to fall behind early on their labs, assessments quickly followed. Once you're behind on the technical stuff, it becomes really hard to catch up or focus on the job hunt piece. I wouldn't recommend anyone come in without any experience with coding. You should spend time experimenting with resources to get familiar. Talk to alumni about expectations. Attend workshops. I hadn't been in school for nearly a decade, so it was a bit of a shock how fast everything flies at you.
Overall, I highly recommend Grand Circus. I went from a retail background to a career in tech within two months of graduating. It was some of the craziest months of my life, but I'm excited to be working in this industry now and consider my classmates friends to this day. |
