General Assembly
General Assembly Reviews and Complete Guide
General Assembly is a coding bootcamp for people seeking careers in web development, data science, UX/UI design, digital marketing, and more. The school offers many courses that appeal to prospective programmers from a variety of different backgrounds.
In this General Assembly review, we’ll take a closer look at everything the tech training school has to offer.
What Do You Need to Know About General Assembly?
General Assembly is an online and on-campus bootcamp for people looking to start a career in tech, as well as professionals who want to learn new skills. With a wide range of modalities and courses, and an established global presence, this bootcamp offers students many opportunities through its network of partners and alumni.
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However, due to COVID-19, all courses are currently being conducted online.
| Locations | Online, Various Locations |
| Tuition | $300 – $2,750 |
| Course Length | 12 Hours – 3 Months |
| Program Types | Online, Full-Time, Part-Time, Self-Paced |
| Programs | Project Management (10 Options), Quality Management (7 Options), IT Service Management (1 Option), Data Science and AI (2 Options), Cyber Security (4 Options), Cloud Computing (2 Options), Programming (3 Options) |
Where Are General Assembly’s Campuses Located?
General Assembly has more than 30 campuses in six countries worldwide. This is one of the biggest schools in the industry. Below are some of its most significant US locations.
- Los Angeles
- Nashville
- New York City
- Salt Lake City
- San Diego
- Washington, DC
Other locations include Singapore in Asia; Edinburgh, London, Manchester, and Paris in Europe; and Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney in Australia.
How Much Is Tuition at General Assembly?
General Assembly’s tuition fees range from $750 to $15,950. If they pay upfront, students will receive a discount of $250 or $450 for part-time or full-time programs, respectively.
How Can You Pay General Assembly Tuition?
General Assembly has made a few financing options available to its students. Those who cannot afford to pay their tuition upfront may qualify for a scholarship or can choose to apply for a loan.
General Assembly Scholarships
General Assembly offers several scholarships for its students. Women, adults with low income, and members of communities that are underrepresented in tech may qualify.
The Skills Checkpoint Contribution Matching Program provides a $1,500 tuition discount for Australian workers who are over 45 years of age.
For women, General Assembly offers the See Her Excel scholarship in several countries. This award provides a $1,500 tuition discount for students enrolling in a full-time software engineering or data science course.
General Assembly also accepts third-party scholarships, and employer sponsorships, in which the tuition fee of an employee is covered by their company. To find out if you qualify for any of these awards, you should take some time to look through the best coding bootcamp scholarships out there.
ISAs
The Catalyst Program is General Assembly’s version of an income share agreement, but it’s only available for full-time students in the US. This option still requires a $250 deposit and graduates must pay back one-and-a-half times their tuition fee by paying 10 percent of their monthly income once they are employed.
Loan Financing
Students can apply for loans if they have enrolled in a part-time course at a US or Australian campus. This plan still includes a $250 deposit, which students can request to be exempt from. The rest of the loan must be paid back after the student has graduated.
General Assembly has loan partnerships with Climb Credit and Meritize in the US; zipMoney and Study Loans in Australia; and Future Finance in the UK. There are no loan options for the school’s Singapore and London campuses.
Installments
General Assembly offers a zero percent interest monthly financing option for many of its US courses at a US campus. Students must still pay a $250 deposit, plus $206 per month for 18 months.
The institution also has a deferred payment plan that requires a $500 upfront deposit. Then three months after the student graduates, they will begin to pay monthly installments for a year until they settle their balance.
Can You Use the GI Bill at General Assembly?
US students applying to full-time courses can use the GI Bill.
What Courses Does General Assembly Offer?
General Assembly offers nearly 20 courses either on a part-time or full-time immersive basis, plus a few weeklong classes and on-demand programs. The topics covered include a wide range of tech specializations, including data science, software engineering, and web design. Below is a selection of the most popular programs at General Assembly.
Software Engineering Immersive – In-Person | Online
One of General Assembly’s best courses, the Software Engineering Immersive offers an in-depth lesson on essential programming languages, front end and backend frameworks, and APIs. You can take this course either on a full-time or part-time basis online.
Data Science Immersive – In-Person | Online
If you’re looking for a course that focuses on coding fundamentals, analysis, and modeling, then this Data Science Immersive is a great choice. The course covers topics including machine learning, trends, and statistics.
User Experience Design Immersive – In-Person | Online
This is one of the most underrated fundamental web development skills that beginner programmers often take for granted. Figuring out how to arrange a website in an intuitive way is crucial for web designers and software engineers. This User Experience Design course offers students hands-on experience with wireframing, prototyping, and usability testing.
Digital Marketing Immersive – In-Person | Online
For those of you who are half interested in programming and half interested in business, learning marketing might be a good choice. In this General Assembly course, students will be learning about social media marketing, Google Analytics, and other strategies that will help them get their website on the first page of Google.
Data Analytics – In-Person | Online
This part-time Data Analytics course covers everything from SQL to Excel and Tableau. Being a computer programmer is more than just writing code. Sometimes it’s about learning how to use code to interpret information. In this General Assembly course, students will learn how to transform raw data into statistics that can help drive decision-making.
Python Programming – In-Person | Online
Python has arguably been the fastest-growing programming language for almost a decade. This part-time Python Programming course guides students through real-world projects in web design, object-oriented programming, and software development.
JavaScript Development – In-Person | Online
Python may be the fastest-growing programming language, but JavaScript is still the most popular. There are 1.6 billion websites in the world and JavaScript is used in 95 percent of them. General Assembly’s part-time JavaScript course covers a plethora of content that will help you learn how to create interactive websites using jQuery, DOM, and third-party APIs.
Front-End Web Development – In-Person | Online
Having an efficient website is nothing if you don’t also have an interface that’s visually appealing and easy to browse. The Front-End Web Development course teaches students how to create dynamic, interactive, and responsive front end designs.
React Development – In-Person | Online
The next step after you have learned JavaScript and begun to understand frameworks is to learn React. This is the basis for websites like Airbnb and apps like Instagram. This course covers the components and props of multi-page apps, and other items you can make with React Router and third-party APIs.
How to Get Accepted Into General Assembly
General Assembly classes are limited in size to make sure students get enough individual attention and resources. An admissions rep will ensure that applicants who meet basic admissions requirements in terms of their experience and goals will get accepted.
General Assembly Acceptance Rate
General Assembly has an acceptance rate of 15 percent.
General Assembly Application Process
Aspiring students can fill out their application on the General Assembly website by providing their contact information and course choice. The entire application process for an immersive course usually takes about three to four weeks.
- After filling out the form online, applicants should get in touch with the admissions counselor at their chosen school to ask for a prep work syllabus.
- For each immersive course, you will have to pass a coding challenge, which takes three to five days to complete. After the technical assessment, students will have to pass an interview focused on their soft skills.
- The admissions team will then review the applicant’s overall performance. If accepted, students will have to put down a deposit to secure their spot in the course.
General Assembly Interview Questions
The coding challenges will assess whether a student has properly prepared for their course. While the exact questions on this portion are not made public, you can expect to encounter some basic coding bootcamp interview questions like the ones listed below.
- If you’re applying to the immersive software engineering course, you will be asked about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
- For the data science immersive course, applicants must analyze and make suggestions on the data provided.
- To qualify for the UX design immersive course, applicants will need to redesign an application.
How Can You Prepare for General Assembly?
To get into General Assembly, you must complete pre-work regardless of your experience. This levels the field for the entire class and allows instructors to keep everyone in line with the curriculum.
Is General Assembly Worth It?
General Assembly is worth it if you live in any of the four continents where its schools are located. This school offers part-time and self-paced courses so that people who work full-time can also attend.
General Assembly Job Placement
According to General Assembly, 99.7 percent of students who graduated from a full-time course between January 2018 and March 2019 and took advantage of career services found a job soon after graduating. Among the companies that have hired General Assembly graduates are Amazon, Dell, Google, Home Depot, and IBM.
Does General Assembly Offer a Job Guarantee?
General Assembly does not provide a job guarantee for its students.
Should You Apply to General Assembly?
Whether you are a working professional who wants to change careers or are a recent high school grad wanting to learn tech skills, General Assembly has something for everyone. It offers 17 courses on a range of topics from data science to digital marketing.
This school has a relatively high acceptance rate compared to many other bootcamps, but you will still have to be meticulous in preparing your application. This also means you should apply for the course that most closely matches your goals and skill set.
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8 Reviews
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Anonymous
The program was a great experience. Coming from a quantitative averse background, I was delighted by how much I learned. The tools are current and the instructors take great care in making sure you understand the lessons. My only pushback is the end certification you receive should be designed a little more thoughtfully to look like an actual certificate instead of a letter of completion.
June 5, 2019
Anonymous
It has been an amazing 10 weeks.
I strongly recommend to consider this as an option to change career if you are thinking about it.
The daily support and coaching through the course is great, as much as the constant feedback received.
June 9, 2019
Anonymous
Pros:
– focus on applicability
– experienced instructor
– friendly campus
– kind staff
Cons:
– N/A
July 2, 2019
Anonymous
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 (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.
July 3, 2019
Anonymous
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 and retain knowledge.
July 9, 2019
Anonymous
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 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.
July 13, 2019
Anonymous
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 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.
July 17, 2019
BootcampRankings
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 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.
November 13, 2019