Prime Digital Academy

I can't say enough good things about the overall experience at Prime. The staff is comprised of a just right balance of instructors and support staff to address any issues that might come up. Imposter syndrome is a thing, and Prime beautifully handles the ups and downs of learning at breakneck speed. The experience taught me how to learn quickly, and helped me fine tune my career direction. The curriculum touches on so many things, and is broad enough to help get your foot in the door somewhere. Did I mention that the staff is super supportive? They're also connected to local employers in a big way. I'm now part of a vast network of potential employers, and an army of helpful alumni. I regularily engage with current and past students and staff on a daily basis. Super valuable experience.

The Good

• Prime brings in some incredible students. Pretty much everyone is friendly and interested in bettering themselves
• It is immersive, so you really get a chance to get your hands dirty and work through some tough challenges
• There was some gender diversity and a tiny bit of racial diversity, which I was pleasantly surprised to see
• Toastmasters is a part of the curriculum, and I always enjoyed hearing people's speeches and participating in the weekly meetings

The Bad

• The prework was almost exclusively online through Code School. For the cost, it seems unfair not to create their own prework curriculum. It doesn't really prepare you to solve problems without a blueprint, so that makes it difficult once you transition into classroom instruction.
• The instructors for my cohort had no teaching experience, and it showed. One was working on her Master's Degree, and the other was planning to and eventually did launch a business during my cohort. They also hated each other, and they never spoke outside of class hours. One instructor would often ask the class if what she was doing looked right because she was unsure. 
• *******One of our instructors got fired during my cohort because of all of the student complaints he received. They never informed us that he was terminated. They just shifted around the instruction staff to "give us a different perspective." *******
• There was no consistency in what was taught. They called it "agile curriculum development," but my cohort was short-changed. My cohort had one lecture on SQL while the cohort after mine learned SQL for one week and learned to setup a SQL and MongoDB database and connect it to the front end. My cohort did not get any hands-on practice with SQL. The cohort after mine learned SASS. My cohort did not. For the final project, the cohort after mine had to get their project scope reviewed and approved before they could start working on their project. In my cohort, there were several students whose scopes were never looked at and where no feedback was given. 
• In my cohort, it was decided that one student could not graduate because she had not reached the "benchmarks" for graduation, but these "benchmarks" were never explained to anyone in our cohort. If you decide to apply, be sure to ask and get written documentation about the expectations, so you know what is required for graduation. They told this student at week 17 of 18 that she would not be graduating, despite assuring her at week 15 that she was doing just fine. Again, get written documentation. 
• The MEAN Stack is almost completely useless in the Twin Cities, unless you only want to work in the front-end. Most companies look for people with .NET or Java experience and a college degree. Don't believe me? Do a search on Indeed. If you come from a technical background, such as graphic design, tech support,  development, etc, you will have greater success than if you have no tech background and aren't the strongest coder at the end of the program. There are companies that don't even consider Prime graduates because of how little training they have.
• There was no discussion of data structures or algorithms, so you will struggle in your first job trying to figure out why something isn't working if it isn't exactly like problems you practiced in class. 
• Some people from the cohort that ended in December 2015 and January 2016 are still unemployed or only recently employed. Be prepared to be out of work for 6 months after the program if you have no background in programming. Seriously. 
• So many people struggled because of the poor instruction that 5 out of 22 students went back at least one cohort, including one person who started over completely. They present this option to go back a cohort as a benefit, but on their website, it says that they can prepare you for a software development job in 18 weeks. My cohort is proof this is not the case. Of the people that went back one cohort, 2 are still unemployed (since February 2016), and 2 work in tech support - not as developers, 1 did not graduate at all. That's almost 25% of the class. That just isn't good enough if you're charging $12,000.
• They advertised an apprenticeship, but they did not inform any of the first 5 cohorts that they did not actually have an apprenticeship network as advertised. They claimed that we would be able to work as an apprentice for up to 5 months to get our foot in the door, but graduation came and went with no mention of said apprenticeships. For many, this was the main reason they chose Prime, and it was very upsetting to find out this option was unavailable. When they were approached about it, they said that the apprenticeship "was just part of their 'launch language' and should have been removed from the website." Oops.
• There was only one code review throughout the entire course for my cohort, so many were left wondering how they were doing through the entire course
• A lot of the students in my cohort were scholarship recipients, and one of my classmates overheard Taylor, Prime's Community Relations person, saying that my cohort struggled more because we were scholarship recipients and didn't work as hard.

Proceed at your own risk. A lot of people have had great experiences at Prime, as evidenced by the positive reviews. Just keep in mind that the experience varies for everyone, and because this is a business and not an accredited institution, there is very little you can do if you disagree with their decisions or are unhappy with the quality of instruction.