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Galvanize is an education company that offers software engineering bootcamps under its Hack Reactor by Galvanize brand name. Galvanize offers programs for rapid career transformation, designed so that anyone with motivation can succeed, regardless of education, experience, or background. Please visit the Hack Reactor page on Course Report here to learn more about these bootcamps.
Galvanize also offers Enterprise training designed to rapidly upskill and reskill employees at any level, helping companies develop internal tech capabilities, broadening workforce representation, and empowering the workforce of the future.
Galvanize has long been committed to upskilling and reskilling the U.S. military. They equip active duty service members and Veterans with in-demand technical skills, empowering them to succeed in competitive, high-paying civilian careers in software development, data analytics, and cybersecurity.
Poor experience with staff. Many of them are not helpful and cater towards keeping their numbers high. If you fall behind, you're on your own. If you're near the top of the class, you'll get all the attention in the world.
First off, I'll start this review by telling you all that I didn't end up graduating from the SF Galvanize bootcamp (the only one out of 13. I'll also state that I graduated UCSC with honors, so it's not like I'm completely dumb). Despite my own personal situation (more on this later), I share many similar sentiments with the rest of the cohort about the school.
Secondly, I'm trying to leave a fair review despite not graduating; however, this review is subjective and, of course, ...
First off, I'll start this review by telling you all that I didn't end up graduating from the SF Galvanize bootcamp (the only one out of 13. I'll also state that I graduated UCSC with honors, so it's not like I'm completely dumb). Despite my own personal situation (more on this later), I share many similar sentiments with the rest of the cohort about the school.
Secondly, I'm trying to leave a fair review despite not graduating; however, this review is subjective and, of course, is based off my personal experiences at Galvanize.
A typical day unfolded like this:
9-10: warm-up algorithm
11-12: Reviewing the algorithm's answer, and then lecture.
Lunch from 12-1
1-2: Another 1-2 hour lecture.
3-Rest of day/evening: More work to be done; projects, homework review, etc (typically with other classmates, with some instructor assistance - in other words a lot of pair programming. In fact, if you're anything like most of us, you won't get by without working with other people.)
There are 4 quarters at G:
1) Front end (HTML/JS - lots of working with dom manipulation)
2) Server side stuff/back end (our stack was Node, Express, and Postgresql)
3) Computer science stuff (algorithms, data structures, trees, linked lists, etc)
4) Learning a few front end frameworks (React and Angular - more on this later), as well as "self exploration"
Each quarter had its own project:
1) A front end app that requires an api call
2) Connecting an app to a server and database
3) Something computer-sciency
4) A final capstone project in culmination of the cohort, bringing together most of the ideas throughout the school. Must be full stack, and requires a new technology not taught in the cohort (a different database, for example, like mongo db).
I guess I'll start with the pros of Galvanize:
1) Our personal cohort had an student:instructor ratio of about 13:3 (more on this later), which is a very good ratio as far as bootcamps go (from what I've heard). Also, the instructors stayed from about 9-6, so we had them for almost a full 8 hours.
2) The instructors and staff were all enthusiastic and supported us. They truly did care about our success (which I've heard differently about other bootcamps).
3) The campus itself was pretty cool. Kinda like a tech hub, with a whole bunch of tech companies in the building, as well as Galvanize data science cohorts.
4) We also had a lot career support. A few times a month, our homework would instead consist of networking, resume building, targeting companies, how to present yourself, stuff like that. We even had our own personal good docs of all the career things we were supposed to keep on top of (which was a lot - a lot).
5) Lots of events on campus - tech companies coming in to present there stuff, networking events, and companies (like IBM) coming in to give presentations and talk to potential future employees (us, hopefully).
6) At those events - there was a lot of free food. Lots of pizza, booze. A lot of delicious, fancy food as well. Most of the events are open to students - as long as you sign up on Eventbrite (sign up for as many as you can to network and eat awesome food). If you go to them, even if it's for the free food, at least pretend to care about the event, and give people time to do their spiels.
7) Getting to know everyone for 6 months was a pretty fun experience - we were from all walks of life (more on this later), and had a lot of different experiences. A lot of us became pretty close throughout the cohort.
8) The cohort was 6 months; most other bootcamps are much less than this (more on this later).
9) They preached a growth mindset. Look it up if you're not familiar. Quite necessary, however more on this in a bit.
10) I ended up receiving two scholarships, for a total of 4k off the admissions price (bringing it to 17k from 21). However, I'm not sure if they're still offering these scholarships.
11) The staff is pretty receptive to our suggestions and complaints. So they may be working on some of the things I'm about to list below.
Ok, a lot of good stuff, but there was definitely a lot that could be improved upon (the bad):
1) Of the three instructors, one was really not fit to be an instructor at all. His lecturing skills were bad, and we're all convinced he actually didn't know anything he was talking about. However, it sounds like he's changed his ways since we left, as we did quite a bit of complaining about it.
2) The next cohort turned out to be much bigger than ours (20-something students), and right in the middle of their cohort (somewhere near the end of quarter two I think), Galvanize ended up firing two of their better instructors, meaning for about 30-something people, we had 4 instructors or so trying to help us finish up our capstone while helping the new cohort. Since then, they've hired two instructors more, and might bring back one of the fired ones. The newer cohort was pissed about this situation, and did a lot of complaining (as did we).
3) Some of the students felt as though the career services came too early; the lectures and homework weren't really relevant early on in the cohort while we were trying to bust our butts coding and really had no prospects or thoughts of getting a job. I, personally, didn't mind a break from the extensive coding.
4) The school (and even some teachers) claimed we'd only be working 40hrs a week due to the fact that the school was 6 months long. This was entirely untrue. Don't expect to be working under 50 per week. 60 is more like it (for 6 months don't forget). It's LONG. There isn't time for a part time job, relationships, partying, etc. A lot of normal life things will be pushed to the side. Keep that in mind.
5) This school will kill you if you don't get good rest and have mental stability. I, personally, was going through a lot of stressful situations throughout the cohort, and was averaging around 5 hours per sleep, with 10 hour days for the entire 6 months. It's entirely possible that, had my mental state and life circumstances been better, I would have faired much better in school, and would have an entirely different outlook coming out of G.
6) A lot of the homework didn't sync up with lectures, which made things confusing. A lot of times, there wasn't time to do the readings either, as there was just too much homework. In addition, a lot of the tests in the homework were simply wrong; we'd spend hours trying to fix our code when it was right in the first place. Hours lost over this stuff.
7) Galvanize dropped the ball entirely in quarter 4. We were supposed to learn at least one new front end framework (we voted for React). It turned out we had only one one-hour lecture on it, and many of us were hoping to create our capstone with it. This is possibly the reason I didn't graduate, as I tried to use React and didn't quite understand it. The instructors also pushed me to use it, despite me being very uncomfortable with it. This is what I'm most pissed about. Also know that you will be cut off from campus resources (career support and instructor help) if you don't graduate. I'm now basically alone in my job hunt, minus some help from fellow students.
8) Ok, this is a big one: it seems the ONLY people that did really well were people with prior experience in some way. Someone with years of database experience, an MA in engineering, a grad from another bootcamp with a couple years of experience, and two with prior coding experience in some way. For those of us from different walks of life (this includes me), this class was ten times the struggle - and it showed. Everything came slower. Some of use still can't center divs correctly on a page. Our projects looked ten times worse than everyone else's.
9) Speaking of centering divs, our time with CSS was pretty rushed. A lot of us don't have good foundations with it, and there weren't many lectures on it. We were basically given some links to check out to get a better understanding of it.
10) At some point throughout the cohort, we found out our area's market (SF) only wanted senior devs, and we were told it'd probably be a good idea to look out of state. Yikes.
11) I was accepted to the bootcamp even though I didn't pass the entrance algorithm. Had I not been accepted (and rightly so), I would not have taken out a $20,000 loan with no prospects of getting a job. Were they just trying to fill seats? It's possible, as I did hear rumors of this floating around at some point.
12) The reason they fired two instructors possibly due to the hiring of a new CTO, who possibly wasn't a good fit. Whoever it was made cuts in the wrong spots, and some of this landed on us. This made me remember that G, along with all bootcamps, are still a business (non-accredited btw) at the end of the day, and saving/making money is what it's all about.
13) Multiple people (outsiders watching) I had talked to claimed the students didn't get enough support. They felt as though we needed a few more tutors/mentors. I suppose this is the nature of the bootcamp however.
14) Many of these negative sentiments are shared not only by me, but also by the previous and proceeding cohorts. In this case - the bad points may not just be a manifestation of my personal situation, but are a true reflection of the school. The upside is that Galvanize is aware of many of these sentiments, and is trying to correct at least some of them. Again, I'd like to remind you that much of the staff does truly care about student success. Many of them even made themselves available to me personally even though I had not graduated.
15) In regards to instructor situations, the current cohort just had their best instructor randomly get placed as a student in a data science class. This doesn't really make any sense, especially since the current cohort was so upset over the previous instructors getting fired. To be clear, this particular instructor was already promoted to another position, but that was still a teaching related position I believe. Now, the current cohort is completely without his help. In regards to all this instructor movement/loss, I've heard this about more than 2 other bootcamps, so it's not necessarily just a Galvanize thing.
16) One final point, which is definitely a big one as well, which I hadn't thought of at the time for some reason... Why are we paying money for a personal exploration quarter? I came to school to be taught, not to learn things on my own. In this case, what am I paying money for? The school might as well have been set in trimesters instead of quarters, with a smaller tuition fee. Remember, for a 21k tuition, that means you're paying $5250 to learn things on your own for a quarter.
Not sure if this is relevant or not, but I'll list it anyways as just something to ponder. The prices people paid to get in were kinda all over the place. Like I said, a few of us got 2-4k off, one person got their entire tuition paid for (I think by some foundation, so that may be irrelevant), and one student got half the tuition off upon threatening to go to another bootcamp. Now, from what I understand, there were no scholarships given for the current cohort.
My personal conclusion:
Galvanize wasn't worth it. Or any other bootcamp for that matter - unless you already have a previous related background and you know your brain is trained to think like a programmer. The market (at least in Silicon Valley) does not want entry level programmers. The risk of not getting a job is too great (unless you plan on moving out of state), especially if you're planning to take out a loan, like I did (and now feel pretty screwed in my situation).
My personal recommendations:
Do your research. I thought I did enough, but now I don't feel as though I did. I'm not talking about research on just bootcamps, but research on the market, what stacks are most wanted, what camps teach these stacks, and which camps will give you the most support. Research tuition prices, potential scholarships and deals, connections the school might have in terms of job placement, etc. Possibly most importantly, talk to previous grads to get their experiences. Was it worth it for them? Pros? Cons?
Finally, do plenty of soul searching before you fork over thousands of dollars. Do you even want to be a programmer, or are you in it for the money? If you're in it for the money, you might not survive. I personally was in it half way for this reason. Yes, I wanted better pay (how else can one afford a living in Ca? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Also I had back surgery, so I lost half my job opportunities right there). However, I also knew that I liked solving problems and making things work (better). I also wanted to upgrade my resume. In this sense, it's possible I might not even end up as a developer, but I may end up utilizing my full stack skills in some other way. Combining them with previous work experience? Possible.
If you don't know if you want to program - take online courses first. Make sure you do enough - not just a few free ones off CodeAcademy. Take full stack courses off Udemy or Udacity, places like that. Even if you spend a couple hundred bucks on online classes, this move can potentially save you thousands of dollars if it turns out you don't wanna program. It's even possible you'll get a job with just online courses if you're that adept.
Finally, trust your gut. I was very hesitant to fork over the 2,000 tuition fee; I should have taken this as a sign. Throught the first quarter, there were many times when my gut was telling me to drop out. I should have trusted my gut again, yet I listened to instructors that told me I should stick with it.
Remember, my experience at G was subjective (as everyone else's). Read more than just my review. Do your research and soul search!
Good luck in your bootcamp prospects!
I have decided to update my review on Galvanize due to having been out of the program for longer at this point. Updated 11/1/2018
I'm a relatively recent graduate of the Galvanize Web-Development immersive program (coming up on six months since graduation) and I will tell you to absolutely stay away from the program right now, at least the Denver campus.
For starters, I would be extremely leery of any data you see from Galvanize on their job placement rates. The last...
I have decided to update my review on Galvanize due to having been out of the program for longer at this point. Updated 11/1/2018
I'm a relatively recent graduate of the Galvanize Web-Development immersive program (coming up on six months since graduation) and I will tell you to absolutely stay away from the program right now, at least the Denver campus.
For starters, I would be extremely leery of any data you see from Galvanize on their job placement rates. The last data the website shows is from 2017, and puts their job placement rate at 83%. This might sound good, but bear in mind their job placement rate for 2015 & 2016 was 87%. Assuming both those years were 87%, that would require a drop off of 12% in their placement rates to now have fallen to 83% average. Even with those not terrible numbers, I would be highly skeptical. As far as I know, from my cohort of 20 graduates, only 6 have solid paying full-time jobs, and of those six, one had the job lined up prior to graduation through a friend, and the other works for Galvanize. Of the remaining four, all came into the course already having very strong coding backgrounds.
Their admissions process is a joke. You solve a logic problem, submit "code" (which can be basically anything), and make a simple animation on a website that is designed for children. The interview portion is hysterically easy. Once the course actually starts it gets even more absurd.
Galvanize's whole idea now is that they aren't a traditional 'school' anymore. They give you a bunch of various drills and projects you have to complete and throw you out there to go do them, with instructor help if need be. There are no tests, no quizzes, no grades, no homework, essentially no real checks to make sure you actually understand anything. While this might be ok for someone who already has a solid foundation in JS and coding, it's basically the equivalent of giving someone an essay written in a foreign language and telling them to go translate it when they don't speak a single word of the language. Without the fundamentals, you may as well be trying to squeeze blood from a turnip.
This wouldn't be so bad if they were staffed well, but they aren't. Instructor turn-over is so frequent it's almost comical. During my time in the course, we lost around 5-6 different instructors, and we lost both the Faculty Director and our Lead Instructor (as far as I know, they were forced out). On top of that, the vast majority of the instructors are people who just graduated from the course, and have never actually worked as Web or Software Devs. So half (or more) of the instruction you receive is from people who only learned this stuff themselves a few months ago. Hilariously, they'll also tell you all about what to expect at your first Dev job when they've never actually had a Dev job.
Because there are no exams or grades, it's pretty much impossible to fail the course (which is hilarious because they act like graduating from the course is some sort of amazing accomplishment). If you can't figure out a coding drill, they'll eventually just walk you through it and then decide that you "understand" it because you've seen it done one time. If you tell them you have no idea what's going on and are falling behind (like I did nearly every day) they'll insist that you're doing fine and keep pushing you through. Since there are no grades or tests or any real way of knowing how well you're doing, you take their word for it. Then suddenly you're graduated and you realize how little you've actually learned. To give just a few examples:
-During our last week, we had people who had not even started on the Back-end portion of the program, so the instructors just came over, hand-held them through the entire thing and basically did the work for them, and then declared them "complete" so they could graduate them on time.
-During my 'final interview', I don't think I answered a single technical question correctly. They acted like it was no big deal and graduated me anyway.
-We would do 'coding challenges' in the morning, which were supposed to simulate Tech interviews. I literally never solved a single one, but they didn't care and kept telling me not to worry about it. Now post-graduation, I've tried example coding challenges, and I can't even do the most absolutely basic ones. Six months of "teaching" by Galvanize, and I can't even get through the basics.
The course organization is atrocious. Ideas start (like remedial training, advisor groups, etc.) and then either get tossed aside or end up getting altered constantly because there's little to no planning by the staff. There's no syllabus and the curriculum seems to change like the wind; it's just sort of chaos. Ideas are also just sort of chucked in at random. We didn't get a "breakout" (a lecture) on the basics of how the internet works until halfway through the course. We didn't even touch basic computer science concepts until about a week prior to graduation.
Finally, they are WAY too crowded. There are 3 classrooms in the basement (the primary area for the Web Dev program), and there are so many people in the course that they've converted what was originally a break area into a classroom. They call it an "open air classroom". Please.
The only real positive I can say is that Career Services is actually very good. They clearly care a lot, work hard, help you improve your resume, LinkedIn, cover letters, etc. The problem is that without strong coding skills to back it up, a good deal of that is just window dressing. Oh, and the coffee, snacks, and beer are good.
Before anyone thinks that I was just lazy and this review is sour grapes for not getting handed a job after graduation, I arrived every day about 2 hours early to work ahead, and stayed late every day to work some more. I worked weekends and break weeks, sought help whenever I needed it, and anyone in the class will tell you how much effort I put in. My reward? We were told that the average Galvanize grad "applies to 55 jobs, gets 4 interviews, and accepts one". I've applied to 150+ jobs, and I've gotten 2 coding challenges (which of course I couldn't make a dent in, since G-school taught me next to nothing), and 0 interviews.
Apparently there will now be some big changes coming to the G-school curriculum following their acquisition of Hack Reactor. Hopefully this fixes their issues, but they have a LOT of work to do if they want to prove they're worth your time and effort. If nothing changes, stay far, far away from this program. You'd be better off spending a few hundred bucks on Udemy courses and teaching yourself.
The heavily advertised (self reported) stats are not reflective of the current course or hiring environment. In 2016, it will take you 3+ months to land a job coming out of the program and a sizeable portion (think 30-50%) of your classmates will not have any job after 6 months.
The program has been myopically focused on generating more revenue (students), and devotes the bare minimum of resources to graduates. The core product of the program (getting someone a job) was never wel...
The heavily advertised (self reported) stats are not reflective of the current course or hiring environment. In 2016, it will take you 3+ months to land a job coming out of the program and a sizeable portion (think 30-50%) of your classmates will not have any job after 6 months.
The program has been myopically focused on generating more revenue (students), and devotes the bare minimum of resources to graduates. The core product of the program (getting someone a job) was never well developed, but because of Macro trends (Hot Tech Market and Data Science Buzz) this went unattended. Now the tide has gone out and this program is swimming naked. Check your expectations … you won’t be hired by a prestigious company, have a strong brand or alumni community.
“Bad outcomes” as they are affectionately known, just don’t write posts like this – they still need the alleged connections and support of the program to get a job! The indifference the school has shown them has been shameful and prospective students deserve to know what they are getting into.
tldr: Galvanize is one of the better programs, it does a good job on the curriculum, but this model of education is still under development. Enroll in any Bootcamp at your own peril.
To management;
There is a lack of Leadership, Vision and Passion in SF, you can tell the CEO works in another state. Stop reading your own press releases about the future of education, and fix your product… Reduce # of students going through the program, & focus on outcomes
My training as an engineer and analyst was good but dated. Galvanize positioned me to contribute for the next 20-25 years. I accepted a job offer as a data scientist within a couple of months after finishing.
I am a current student here in Denver and the product here sucks. We've lost so many instructors to the point we are down to 6 instructors (for the last 15 weeks) for over 110 students. At the worst point, we were down to 4 instructors when 2 of them took vacations. Half of the instructors are resident instructors, which do not have enough experience to walk through coding questions without them asking for help themselves. The queue for asking questions on coding blockers takes over 3 ...
I am a current student here in Denver and the product here sucks. We've lost so many instructors to the point we are down to 6 instructors (for the last 15 weeks) for over 110 students. At the worst point, we were down to 4 instructors when 2 of them took vacations. Half of the instructors are resident instructors, which do not have enough experience to walk through coding questions without them asking for help themselves. The queue for asking questions on coding blockers takes over 3 days to get a response.
The lead instructors stopped requiring us to complete all the course work due to the majority of students falling behind, further robbing us of coding experience in other technologies.
They have decreased our hours of operation because instructors are getting burned out due to being over-worked since there is a lack of instructors. Many of the students across several cohorts are experiencing learning issues b/c there is a lack of teacher/student interaction. When asking for help we are told to figure it out ourselves in order to prepare ourselves for the working environment, even when we have been stuck on a project for almost 2 weeks. It is a disgrace b/c this is supposed to be an educational environment and many of the students have been talking about walking out even when they are just 3 weeks into the course. The overall product here has been slowly deteriorating b/c Galvanize spent all their funding acquiring Hack Reactor, their biggest competitor, and can't afford to hire lead instructors from the development field. Instead of being honest, the lead instructor and program director have lied to us several times about the untimely departure of all the instructors when they tell us they just found out about them leaving just days earlier. Only to be secretly told through innuendos by resident instructors that they would be leaving 5 weeks earlier.
Not only can they not hire qualified instructors in a timely manner, they cannot resolve internal issues with course support programs, ie: advisory groups. They just scrapped it b/c instructors could not communicate effectively with the others. For $21,000, this course has definitely lost its value. It seems that they have become like the majority of colleges around the country where all they care about is the almighty dollar from student tuition and not care about the quality of education and quality of coders graduating from the course.
The only people I truly feel like they are doing their job is the career advisors.
I'm a recent graduate of the Galvanize Web-Development immersive program (<3 months) and I will tell you to absolutely stay away from the program right now, at least the Denver campus.
For starters, I would be extremely leery of any data you see from Galvanize on their job placement rates. The last data the website shows is from 2016. In my cohort of 20 graduates, only 3 have solid paying jobs now three months after graduation (and one of them works for Galvanize, so that bare...
I'm a recent graduate of the Galvanize Web-Development immersive program (<3 months) and I will tell you to absolutely stay away from the program right now, at least the Denver campus.
For starters, I would be extremely leery of any data you see from Galvanize on their job placement rates. The last data the website shows is from 2016. In my cohort of 20 graduates, only 3 have solid paying jobs now three months after graduation (and one of them works for Galvanize, so that barely counts). The only people who have jobs are people who showed up to the course already having strong coding backgrounds.
Their admissions process is a joke. You solve a logic problem, submit "code" (which can be basically anything), and make a simple animation on a website that is designed for children. The interview portion is hysterically easy. Once the course actually starts it gets even more absurd.
Galvanize's whole idea now is that they aren't a traditional 'school' anymore. They give you a bunch of various drills and projects you have to complete and throw you out there to go do them, with instructor help if need be. There are no tests, no quizzes, no grades, no homework, essentially no real checks to make sure you actually understand anything. While this might be ok for someone who already has a solid foundation in JS and coding, it's basically the equivalent of giving someone an essay written in a foreign language and telling them to go translate it when they don't speak a single word of the language. Without the fundamentals, you may as well be trying to squeeze blood from a turnip.
This wouldn't be so bad if they were staffed well, but they aren't. During my time in the course, I think we lost 5-6 different instructors. On top of that, the vast majority of the instructors are people who just graduated from the course, and have never actually worked as Web or Software Devs. They're so understaffed that half the time when you have a problem they tell you to go to other students to teach you. Except I'm not paying those other students $21k for help, I'm paying you.
Because there are no exams or grades, it's pretty much impossible to fail the course. If you can't figure out a coding drill, they'll eventually just walk you through it and then decide that you "understand" it because you've seen it done one time. If you tell them you have no idea what's going on and are falling behind (like I did nearly every day) they'll insist that you're doing fine. Since there are no grades or tests or any real way of knowing how well you're doing, you take their word for it. Then suddenly you're graduated and don't know anything.
The course organization is atrocious. Ideas start (like remedial training, advisor groups, etc.) and then either get tossed aside or end up getting altered constantly because there's little to no planning. There's no syllabus and the curriculum seems to change like the wind; it's just sort of chaos. Ideas are also just sort of chucked in at random. We didn't get a "breakout" (a lecture) on the basics of how the internet works until halfway through the course. We didn't even touch basic computer science concepts until about a week prior to graduation.
The only real positive I can say is that Career Services is actually very good. They clearly care a lot, work hard, help you improve your resume, LinkedIn, cover letters, etc. The problem is that without strong coding skills to back it up, a good deal of that is just window dressing.
I don't think Galvanize is a scam: the people who work there are good people and clearly want you to succeed. But just wanting something is meaningless without results, and right now the course feels disorganized and rudderless. Stay away from G-School (at least the Denver campus) until some serious changes are made.
I went to the 12 week program in 2015. They have a three step interview claiming the bar is high for the program, but these days there is a booming in number of student accepted and graduated, while resources are the same or even worse due to loosing experienced instructors. Students not being in similar level for a 12 week program is serious issue itself, leaving students with lower prior experience in more difficulties to catchup with the curriculum.
The material they teach is ...
I went to the 12 week program in 2015. They have a three step interview claiming the bar is high for the program, but these days there is a booming in number of student accepted and graduated, while resources are the same or even worse due to loosing experienced instructors. Students not being in similar level for a 12 week program is serious issue itself, leaving students with lower prior experience in more difficulties to catchup with the curriculum.
The material they teach is cutting edge with means of the programming machine learning tools, but not the most useful for industry if you are looking for an actual job in data and analytics.
There is no real effective job assistance provided, there are so many graduates that the only person in charge of outcomes will not even get enough time to answer your emails. The most effective interviews that I got were not through Galvanize.
i'm in my late twenties and sit in my class and watch the lead instructors basically single out those that are older and not like them (young, white , male) and hold them out to a different standard than they do me of the rest of us. The lead instructor is someone who should not be lead, there are two other instructors with real world expeirence under their belt and show the ability to patiently explain concepts in a calm way.They are able to explain the why behind the do ,h...
i'm in my late twenties and sit in my class and watch the lead instructors basically single out those that are older and not like them (young, white , male) and hold them out to a different standard than they do me of the rest of us. The lead instructor is someone who should not be lead, there are two other instructors with real world expeirence under their belt and show the ability to patiently explain concepts in a calm way.They are able to explain the why behind the do ,having done it in real time. The lead instructor was a general assembly student, that became an instructor at GA and then came to Galvanzie which caused alot of us pause, since we specifically steered clear of GA for a reason. The lead instructor tends to try to push the pack mentatility and turn things unecessarily competitive and us against them. we were promised pair programming and as of yet, not once has it been done. having become aquainted with some of the previous class, this was not uncommon, and the general concencous was that the lead instructor was not emotionally mature enough to remove self from buisness and played gatekeeper(meaning if you weren't like him, you had no business doing this type of work and he was aimed at making sure you did not meet your goals set down by the school for their money back deal. ) and that does seem to be the case. there are different expectations put forth from talking with my fellow cohort depending on who you are and if the instructor likes you.
The bright spots are: the environment of the school itself. it is a hive of networking and information. its vibrance is definitely inspiring. The opportunities that present themselves for learning outside of the classroom with all the different events that occur on a daily basis. the support staff, take care of the students. they are like our guardians always making sure we get the best of leftovers from the events. making sure we're always included in networking events an dpulling strings to get us into industry events that otherwise would be to cost prohibitive.
Being from a college town, Galvanize was incredibly overhyped. My analytics professors swore this would be better than my current classes and the programming here is "top notch." While the teachers were all great, the people in charge of Galvanize are a hot mess. There were multiple miscommunications about which classes were being offered, it took me two months to be registered in the right class, and the people in charge were downright rude to me the entire time. I really didn't feel like...
Being from a college town, Galvanize was incredibly overhyped. My analytics professors swore this would be better than my current classes and the programming here is "top notch." While the teachers were all great, the people in charge of Galvanize are a hot mess. There were multiple miscommunications about which classes were being offered, it took me two months to be registered in the right class, and the people in charge were downright rude to me the entire time. I really didn't feel like that was warranted since the mistake was on their end. My Hack CU friends were going to take classes here as well, but I will be suggesting they look elsewhere where college students aren't treated like second class citizens. They'll never care if they see this though, they only care about your money! Oh well Galvanize, you fooled me! Lesson learned the hard way. The instructors were good, but everyone in charge at my location needs to be fired. What a mess.
Having been through the program, this is what I can say about it:
1. The material is cursory and enough to get past some interviews, but is not enough to a) get past tough ones b) get a really good job or c) be any good at this job when you get it without prior experience. Prior experience means: PhD in math/stats/physics or MS in stats or 5-10 years software development. It's just not going to happen from the Galvanize material.
Suggestion: don't mislead students abou...
Having been through the program, this is what I can say about it:
1. The material is cursory and enough to get past some interviews, but is not enough to a) get past tough ones b) get a really good job or c) be any good at this job when you get it without prior experience. Prior experience means: PhD in math/stats/physics or MS in stats or 5-10 years software development. It's just not going to happen from the Galvanize material.
Suggestion: don't mislead students about standards and hiring quality. Be open that you have very few students who make it to Unicorns/FB/Google.
2. Like from one, know that the standards at Galvanize are low. Looooooow. Low admission standards, low standards for passing "tests", low standards for projects. This means that there is extreme variance in outcomes - some students end up with 5+ offers making 200K+, some with 1 after six months of searching at 80K. Admittance \neq success.
Suggestion for improvement: have higher standards OR push more folks towards the Masters program - make the immersive more selective.
3. The material is a bit outdated but the sprints are usually fun. Lots of typos.
Suggestion: have someone actually go through this material and fix typos. Make a single unified curriculum.
4. The "DSR" role is really a bit of a joke. They seem to sit on their computers all day. I wish they were trained better.
Suggestion: you don't need to many of these people. And train them better.
5. The job assistance is very strong, but they have 2 (!! ) people for hundreds of students. Sad! They should double or triple the size of this team.
Suggestion: clone Michelle and Ghazal x3 :) Or just get more career folks. This is the single most valuable resource Galvanize offers many people. Know that.
6. Instructors are generally fine, but know that many of them have not worked as "real" data scientists or have for only a brief (~1 year) time period. I really like them and a few really stand out, but I wish they had more "on the job" experience overall. I mean, Zipfian was even founded by someone who never really worked as a data scientist. So what do you expect?
Suggestion: try to hire instructors who are data scientists. Or have more lectures by people who are actively working. Maybe have lectures in the evening or morning and have working people give a week of them, or something. People who use this stuff every day or the best suited to teach it, imo.
7. I haven't started my job yet, but I worry that Galvanize did not prepare me to be in a "coding" environment. I wish the challenges were more like things we'd actually do on the job than Kaggle competitions.
8. There is very little feedback on assignments. Like, nothing is graded or even assessed but the exams. What am I paying for if not assessment??
The feedback on case studies is also not great. Solutions presented that were called "great" would not get past the take home level for a company. (I know because I did the take home at several companies where we did mock take homes for. And didn't get through.)
9. Despite promises, there isn't a lot they do in terms of interview prep. Like you practice doing basic question etc., but for a course like this shouldn't they have a binder of questions other grads have received? Or have personalized feedback on practice take homes to learn what is actually being sought?
The resources here were extremely lacking and nothing that couldn't be found online with some Googling and $20.
tl;dr: In the long run, I don't think Galvanize really prepares you to get a good data science job, but it does serve as a useful credential for people who could get a ds job by just studying moocs etc. In that way, it's like Insight but without being elite and costing money. The connections made to companies are really useful, and it would be nice to have more of that. I think Galvanize would do well to make DSI more selective and push more people towards GU. Hiring instructors from industry would help. Having higher standards for sprints and case studies would help. Sharing examples of successul take homes for companies would help. Having a more unified set of practice interviews questions (which was promised and not delivered on) would help.
I rated Galvanize SF's fullstack program highly because I got everything I wanted from it, with greater results than expected. It doesn't disappoint because I knew what my minimum expectations were for a bootcamp, what I wanted out of it (aside from a new career/job), and made a well-researched decision to attend this 6 month program.
Learning and career transitioning cannot be done in a one-size-fits-all approach. By documenting my experiences and observations,...
I rated Galvanize SF's fullstack program highly because I got everything I wanted from it, with greater results than expected. It doesn't disappoint because I knew what my minimum expectations were for a bootcamp, what I wanted out of it (aside from a new career/job), and made a well-researched decision to attend this 6 month program.
Learning and career transitioning cannot be done in a one-size-fits-all approach. By documenting my experiences and observations, I empower you to judge whether or not Galvanize SF's Fullstack program is best for your learning style, your career transition plan, and your life situation.
Here is a summary of what most people wanted to know from me up to this point.
Who is Galvanize Fullstack for:
- People who value sleeping at least 6 hours. I transitioned from the healthcare field and health is important to me. I don't think my friends in 3-4 month bootcamps prioritize their well-being as highly as I do. Three quarters into their curriculum, they look pretty awful and sickly to me. On top of that, Galvanize has break weeks to help prevent burnout and allow those who fell behind to catch up. I found this very helpful and used my time to learn new skills.
- Disciplined people willing to work past dinnertime to finish assignments and polish their projects. The majority of assignments won't have you staying up past midnight, but you can't attend classes like a regular University, where you just need to do the bare minimum for your letter grade. The effort you put in will have exponential results.
- People who value 1:1 interaction with the lead instructors. When I asked various bootcamp students from other schools about their student-teacher ratios and 1:1 interactions, they told me they're "really paying thousands of dollars to be put in a room to learn with 20-30 other amazing people". They might see it as a selling point. I don't. For the money I'm paying, I want ample opportunity to ask for insights from knowledgeable, experienced engineers with strong fundamentals.
- People who enjoy a flexible program and freedom of choice. In my experience, the first three months consisted of JS web dev fundamentals and was highly structured. After the first three months, my instructors insisted we all dip our toes into the job pool because we already knew enough to get hired (true). The last three months is focused on making yourself market-ready and a higher-in-demand developer. 4th month is where you start feeling the pressure because lectures will be shorter and the instructors will allow you to focus on whatever will most benefit you during your job search. After all, your goal, the program's goal, and the instructors' goal is to get you a job. Some people used this time to start to build portfolio pieces. Some back-end people focused on codewars and extra time with datastructures and algorithms. Some front-end people spent time bettering their CSS skills or polishing the CSS of past team projects. Despite the stress and uncertainty of picking your own adventure, I really enjoyed being able to choose what I wanted to do and tailor the experience to what I needed. This sounds like self-study, but having the ability to check-in with instructors several times a day really helped me streamline my supplemental learning to help reach my career goals.
- Self-starters. Example: people who want to gain insights from instructors and apply their skills towards side passion projects during break weeks. During the second break week, I created a pure JavaScript Google Chrome Extension for vision therapy after 2 months in Galvanize! And so could you.
Who is Galvanize Fullstack NOT for:
- People who won't approach instructors or other students when in need of help. The instructor help is the program's greatest resource. Their real world production experience makes all the difference. Sure, you should learn to lookup Stack Overflow and Google first, but don't get too crazy. When you're so junior, you have to know when to stop going down all the rabbitholes and ask for some direction.
- People that just want to do the bare minimum to not get kicked out the program. Your skills and portfolio just won't be job ready in time. Well, maybe within 6 months after the program.
- People who are not inclined to make their education their #1 priority will fall behind and have serious issues catching up, even with break weeks. I've seen people with side jobs fall behind and struggle to catchup. Galvanize is a fulltime commitment.
Suggestions for the Galvanize's interview process:
- Study beginner JavaScript. That's the basis of all modern web development. Galvanize will teach you everything from scratch, HOWEVER going through a single beginner's JavaScript book will prepare you far beyond the not-so-selective application process and give you a good idea if coding is for you.
Suggestions for getting the most out of Galvanize Fullstack before start date:
- Same as above. JavaScript, JavaScript, JavaScript. Code along through 1-3 JavaScript beginner books and you'll be so much more ready to take on the higher level concepts. The more you know before coming into the program, the more you will excel and grow as a result, and the more you stand out from the regular bootcamp crowd. I can't stress this enough.
Suggestions for getting the most out of Galvanize Fullstack during the program:
- Base your projects on technologies you hope to use upon graduating. You can attract companies that use those technologies. Companies that had data visualization features in their product, were interested in me on hiring day because I showcased a d3 dashboard.
- Build a side project in a field you're interested in or hoping to get hired in. Shows passion and interest, but most importantly shows that you're a self starter with the capacity to learn new things on your own. Companies were impressed by the fact that I used one of my break weeks to create a Google Chrome Extension.
- Polish your previous projects or assignments to build a job seeker's portfolio as you go. Or build side projects to accomplish the same goal.
- If you're interested in back-end: learn to build apps with test driven development and get those datastructures and algorithms down pat.
- If you're interested in front-end: React and Angular are easy if your JavaScript fundamentals are strong. CSS is what makes or breaks your enthusiasm for front-end. Don't rely on Twitter Bootstrap for every project. Anyone can master it in a day, and if you can only do BootStrap on the front end, you will only get hired by companies using BootStrap. Learn how to implement your own grid system using positioning and floats, and then learn how to use the newish native grid system, Flexbox. Going without a CSS framework will teach you how to master CSS.
- Put your resume out early (3 months) and start interviewing, so you can fail fast and get early feedback from the extensive support offered at Galvanize: soft skills coaching, negotiation practice, technical/whiteboarding interview practice with instructors, etc. A lot of these amazing career-support opportunities are available by appointment, so you have to know what you want to focus your afternoons on.
That's about it. If you follow these guidelines as I did, you'll probably think Galvanize Fullstack is a 5 star program too.
Description | Percentage |
Full Time, In-Field Employee | N/A |
Full-time apprenticeship, internship or contract position | N/A |
Short-term contract, part-time position, freelance | N/A |
Employed out-of-field | N/A |
How much does Galvanize cost?
Galvanize costs around $19,480.
What courses does Galvanize teach?
Galvanize offers courses like 12-Week Software Engineering Online Immersive, 19-Week Software Engineering Immersive with JavaScript & Python.
Where does Galvanize have campuses?
Galvanize teaches students Online in a remote classroom.
Is Galvanize worth it?
The data says yes! In 2022, Galvanize reported a 100% graduation rate, a median salary of $95,000, and N/A of Galvanize alumni are employed.
Is Galvanize legit?
We let alumni answer that question. 216 Galvanize alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Galvanize and rate their overall experience a 4.5 out of 5.
Does Galvanize offer scholarships or accept the GI Bill?
Yes, Galvanize accepts the GI Bill!
Can I read Galvanize reviews?
You can read 216 reviews of Galvanize on Course Report! Galvanize alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Galvanize and rate their overall experience a 4.5 out of 5.
Is Galvanize accredited?
While bootcamps must be approved to operate, accreditation is relatively rare. Galvanize doesn't yet share information about their accreditation status.
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