General Assembly

Product Managment Certification (Part-Time)

I found the program solid and helpful. I’ve been in product management for about seven years now. This program is much for new professionals or those seeking to enter the profession. However, I went in with the objective of defragmenting my knowledge from years of various PM roles is very different kinds of companies and products. The program did its job, I was able to:

• Defragment my experience into core best practices.
• Understand what kind of product manager I am vs. what kind of product manager I want to be.
• Have confidence in customer centricity and testing assumptions and hypotheses using scientific method. (…and fighting for that in the organizations I work for where needed.)

I would recommend this part-time course to anyone interested in product management and is NOT YET a product person or within their first three years.

Where this program did not serve me as a senior level product manager:

(But I didn’t expect it to…)

• We didn’t spend much time on
• Product Strategy and strategic thinking
• Steering a product with metric data or refining KPIs and metrics as a result.
• Product finance
  • Pricing
  • Profit and loss

This class was a complete waste of time. The teacher sped through all of the crucial aspects of basic Photoshop, but spent an exorbitant amount of time going over the simplest tasks (like opening a new file). I expected to come out of the class having at learned at least the basics of inserting an image onto a different background. The teacher was obviously very skilled with the program, but was not good at slowing down to repeat herself and show how she made her changes. The teacher also didn't handle individual questions well - she told several students she didn't know the answers to their questions and was visibly irritated when the class didn't catch what she said and asked her to repeat. I was VERY disappointed in this class and learned nothing new from it. If you want to learn Photoshop I'd suggest saving your money, repeating free online classes, and if you want one on one help, spend the $60 on an hour of tutoring. You'll learn more that's actually useful. 

Part-time course taken on campus in Austin, Texas. Designed to give students an all-encompassing and actionable understanding of digital marketing best practices. Upon enrolling in the course I had about 8 months marketing experience/learning and was employed full-time in a marketing position (note: by a company that knew as much about marketing as Jon Snow knows about anything) and pursuing my own venture on the side. This course was great for filling in the knowledge gaps for me and giving me the chance to ask questions of an experienced marketing professional (instructor). Prior to the course I did not in any way know how to build a marketing strategy from scratch- now I do and the class was worth every penny and minute in that regard. 

I took the User Experience Design Immersive course that ended in May 2016.  Overall, I had a great experience.  I feel like I gained a really solid foundation for understanding what UX is, and also some great practical skills for moving forward.  I think the fact that the GA course is structured around 5 projects allowed me to gain invaluable experience in working on teams, and design presentation/storytelling that will be very useful for me as I move forward in my career.  I found my classmates to be interesting to talk to, and generally very nice people, and they definitely helped push my thinking and understanding forward.  My instructors pushed me just the right amount, while also being available for support as needed.  The curriculum does a great job of hitting on the fundamentals.

All that said, it's important to point out that my experience is that this course is planned pretty much as well as a 10-week course on UX design could be planned.  But that 10 weeks by itself won't be enough.  In order to find your first job, you should expect to have to do some networking during the course, and also more networking after the course, as well as additional work on your portfolio after the course.  All that said, like anything else, UX is an ongoing learning process, and I felt like my 10 weeks prepared me well to move forward in the field.  Overall, I recommend the GA class highly for anyone is motivated to enter the field of UX design.

I am deeply disturbed by this program and its lack of professionalism, and it makes me really sad since I had great expectations.

The curriculum is poorly managed and developed. A lot of it is borrowed from, or exactly the same as, free online resources like code school and codeacademy. Yet for this program, you pay 13,500.

The grading and supervision is all over the map. I've gotten perfect marks on assignments where multiple other students hit the criteria better than me, just because of the luck of the draw on the instructor you get grading you.

In my class, 1/4 of the near 15 students failed out after the second unit. Another half of the class was 'held back' because the instruction was so spotty, and missed out on an entire unit that we paid to be taught. 

The assignments that you do on your own are very misleading. A lot of this work needs to be structured into your weekend, which is fine -- however frequently assignments will say that it is expected to take four hours when reality it is more like 12. It causes a lot of confusion and makes it impossible to plan your schedule. 

The outcomes, or career support, is nonsensical. Anyone with half a brain will know most of the content anyway, as it pertains to developing a resume and your professional brand. 

The projects, which are supposed to be building your portfolio, are often really just excuses for the professors to regroup or plan lessons. You get no support while you are trying to do these projects, and for that reason usually half the class's projects are unfit to use on any portfolio worth a recruiter's time.

The lesson plans in particular, are atrocious. Often half the class is eaten up by troubleshooting because the lessons haven't been updated for the latest version of a given technology, or because half the professors are on an older version of that technology. One half of our class was taught a language that is eminently expiring, so they will have to relearn that entire unit. Just poor, poor planning. 

When you bring concerns to the staff, they have a very typical bubbly young startup reaction, which is to try to compliment you and be jocular to get you to buy in to the premise again. In reality this is just a terribly, terribly run program, and a terribly, terribly poor product.

I wish I would have done more research, or gone with any other school. They are all roughly the same insofar as pricing, and I can only imagine they would be a vast improvement. Steer clear. 

 

GA's Front-End Web Development (FEWD) course was a fantastic way to kickstart my career and make a long-awaited transition from journalism into tech. 

I came across the FEWD course shortly after GA moved to London and after meeting Devin Hunt (the lead instructor) and the GA support team I was excited to enrol in the program.

I had no prior programming experience going into the course and I must admit I was a little nervous but the instructors adapted to the pace of the class well throughout and I now have a great website which utilises HTML5, CSS3, JQuery.

I not only learned alot on the UX design immersive course, I grew and developed into a UX practitioner, honing and developing my craft as I work on more projects.

Without GA I would not have been able to change my career and make so many wonderful friends along the way. I think the course has changed my life and it has helped me do what I always wanted to do, make a small contribution and impact, improving lives, products and services incrementally a little bit day by day.

My hat and thanks go out to my instructors and our course producer Laura who made it such a memorable experience.

 

I studied IT at university and frankly didn't really learn enough to start building a fully responsive website. I recently started my own business offering guided tours around the British Countryside and wanted to create my own website from scratch. 

I stumbled upon General Assembly's Front End Web Development (FEWD) course in London after a conversation with a friend who had taken one of their workshops. 

After speaking with one of their friendly Admissions team I was still a little nervous about spending so much money, so requested a call with the instructor. I was connected a few days later with Antonio Lulic, who was set to teach the next cohort. Antonio was fantastic and ran me through exactly what the course would cover and what I could expect to do upon graduation. 

I placed my deposit and never looked back. I now have an awesome website which utilises, HTML5, CSS3, JQuery and have the confidence to continuously update it. I learned coding really doesn't stand still and you need the right mindset to learn on the fly and copy code from other sources. My site is also mobile responsive!

This course was brilliant. I made friends, and GA's support network is second to none. Highly recommeded for anyone wanting to learn web development.

I have to admit I was initially skeptical of leaving my current job and committing to the User Experience Design Immersive, looking back, I am so glad I did. It's a big deal to decide to leave what is familiar, have little to no financial support, and be open to something that you don't know will work out, that's why the staff at GA is wholly committed to help you "do what you love". It's a mantra that we've all heard before, but in my experience at the Atlanta campus, it truly underlies every facet of the program. The friendships, skills, and networks that I have created through General Assembly are invaluable, and continue to be a part of my ongoing sucess, even after the completion of the program. GA does a spectacular job of creating the right kind of opportunities for young professionals, career changers, or those just looking for something else. Not only do they expose you to the latest trends, software, and skills that are in demand, but they provide you with an additional support group to ensure that you are a part of that. Both students and staff are incredibly passionate, and driven.

I went to GA and took the Web Development Immersive course because I was ready to change my career. I wasn't just signing up for classes online in the evening; I was ready to fully take my future into my own hands and DO something about it. GA did that for me, and so much more.

WDI is an extremely challenging course and not just mentally and physically but emotionally too. I probably spent nearly 100 hours a week learning and practicing the fundamentals of web development from scratch. Every minute I put into that process though paid off for me when I got a job almost a week after returning home from the course. GA gave me the confidence I needed to prove that I was capable of learning, and learning fast in a rapidly changing industry, as well as the toolbelt to succeed in the work place.

I loved how the course was structured with flexibility based on the instructors. It is taught by real professionals in the industry so you are getting first hand content and tips based on their experience in the field. The course changes based on the market you're taking it in and what interests the class holds. It really became a personalized course because of how much the instructors cared about our experience as students. They wanted to see us succeed and be passionate about our work. They were there to teach us, provide feedback, and encourage us throughout the 12 week course.

On top of everything else, it was probably one of the best 3 months of my life. Thank you, GA!

If you have a background or degree in tech, great if not good luck. I compare this course to learning Chinese, inside of a Chinese classroom, with a Chinese instructor, who only speaks Chinese and you've never heard a word of Chinese in your life. Some people were able to catch on but the majority of them had degrees or a background in Tech. If you're just a regular person such as myself, I definitely would not recommend General Assembly to you. This course is not designed for every day people who want to change their lives. Immersive doesn't even describe how fast the course moves. We spent literally one day on HTML two or three days on CSS and that was it. After that you get a couple weeks of Ruby, a few of Javascript and more advanced JavaScript later on. You don't have time to even begin to grasp one concept before you're given another and expected to be able to perform it. Two of the most common sayings I heard while at General Assembly were, "Google it" because the teachers usually didn't want to even answer your questions and "Well in the interest of time" and then the instructor would proceed on to the next thing and encouraged us to try to figure out whatever we were wondering in our spare time. The staff at General Assembly offers little support aside from advising you to stay after class where you can speak with the teacher for 15 minute intervals and work with other lost students -even then I didn't find the instructors to be very helpful. They never seemed to be able to grasp the concept of "I don't understand". The class projects are basically given to you before you have to do them. The teacher does a whole app with the class (code-a-long) that's just like the one you will have to do and then you just go along and redo the teacher's and just change a few things to make it your own. I built applications for project assigments without remotely knowing how to actually do it on my own. The prework and admissions assignment are child's play compared to the course. Overall I would say if you have a background in web development, if you played around with it at home for a while this course might be great for you but if you're just a regular person with no experience in web development I definitely would not recommend General Assembly.