Galvanize

I heard about the DS program  at Galvanize through an alum and was immediately interested. I was looking to change careers but was not committed to a master’s program. I heard that Galvanize had a great Data Science program and an even better alumni network (which let’s be honest is the reason we want to choose a school - popularity).

What I like about the DS Program at Galvanize     is that you learn from really smart instructors who have a lot of industry experience. They know what they are talking about!! Having a program that is relevant and current on industry trends is super important. I also liked that there were multiple projects and case studies throughout the program. The projects allowed me to explore my own interests and at the same time show off skills that I learned. The case studies were really useful to see how Data Science and business interact. We learned how important it is to make your Data Science results interesting and understandable to stakeholders who may not know any technical details.

The things that you have to be ready for in this program is the amount of information that you will learn and be accountable to understand in a short amount of time. The days are long but the weeks go by fast. You must be ready for a new challenge every day and stay confident in your ability to problem solve. The lectures are a general guideline but not always direct instructions on how to do the assignments. Thus you have to be self-motivated and willing to keep digging when you get stuck.

Since graduation I have met with my career advisor almost weekly, have had multiple meetings with employees, HR managers, recruiters, and even senior management at start-ups and big companies. I am constantly meeting more people and make connections. So if you want to you learn about Data Science, complete projects of your own, and have access to a network on people then join the Galvanize family!!

I'm going to keep this review short, sweet, and to-the-point. Galvanize (Seattle) was an amazing experience for me, and, below, I've listed why.

1) The professors:

I cannot stress this enough. Galvanize Seattle has some of the best teaching instructors I've had in all my years of education. They have an uncanny ability to make complex mathematics easy to understand - an invaluable resource in any data science curriculum. Additionally, one look at their academic and industry background (Microsoft, Allstate, PhD, etc.), and you can be confident that they know what they're talking about.

Having great professors was particularly important for me because I had graduated college a year before taking this class with a degree in Entrepreneurship (yes, that's a degree!). So, as you can imagine, I didn't have a great deal of stats, programming, or math knowledge from college. Most of what I learned came from self-studying for 5 months before applying to Galvanize, and the rest came from taking the Data Science Immersive. I say all of this because, if the reader is in a similar situation, I want them to know that getting into the program and succeeding is beyond achievable - it will just take a healthy dose of effort and discipline, but you can do that! On the other hand, there were students with Masters and Ph.D.'s in my cohort, so the class is by no means all recent graduates. 

2) The community:

First, the data science community. This is one of the aspects I loved most about Galvanize. Most of the students were really there to learn as much as possible and were invested in the material. This is HUGE for a productive learning environment. In fact, we have a group chat that is still considerably active for a cohort who graduated 5 months ago. This may sound like it's not a big deal, but having a support network to ask data science questions to and share machine learning blog posts is a game changer. 

PRO TIP!!! After graduation, myself and a couple fellow graduates competed in a couple data science hackathons and won! This led to interviews and job offers for myself and others. In fact, I've heard that we started a movement and that subsequent cohorts have followed suit. So, no matter which bootcamp/school you choose, do hackathons!

Lastly, the Seattle Galvanize community itself is amazing. Between the community manager, career services team, events team, and receptionists, you'll never be more than 5 steps from having a great conversation with somebody. 

Galvanize was an incredible experience for me. The value of a 6-month in-person course is incredibly high in my opinion. Being help accountable for being there every day, 9-5, is a huge part of why I was successful in this journey. Also, being surrounded by a community of people who decided to take the same life leap as I did was also great. Immersing yourself in web-development everyday for 6 months is the best way to do it in my opinion. Not to mention you are also surrounded by resources and instructors that can help you get unstuck and teach along the way. 

The style of instruction is great. There is a guided "curriculum" you have to work through to fulfill graduation requirements. But this was pretty much self-paced. Instructors keep an eye on who is keeping up and who is falling behind and offer instruction to those a little further behind in the coursework. There are regularly scheduled "break-outs" on concepts that students are struggling with and students can request these breakouts as well. The instructors are incredibly smart, helpful, and connected. They have a passion for helping students grow and learn and you can see this in their dedication and attitude.  

The community feel and style of instruction is awesome at Galvanize. That being said, I believe they are moving away from this model in the recent deal with Hack Reactor. Having half (or more) of the course conducted online is a mistake in my opinion. Being there for 6 months straight and putting the rest of my life on hold was what made me successful. They also used to have open beer taps everyday after class which fostered a great community feel within the program, bringing together newer students, older students and employers within the building, but I think they have sadly moved away from this as well. It was a great experience for me, but I believe they are moving away from the system that I loved so much. :(

For over five years, I was a very stereotypical struggling web developer. I worked brutally long hours every day, seven days a week, desperately trying to gain the skills and experience needed to take me to the next level in my career and help me get a job as a full stack web developer.

But despite my best efforts, I was stuck in this plateu that I couldn't get away from. I had heard about Galvanize, but kept telling myself that it was only for inexperienced or brand new developers, and something like that wouldn't add value for where I was. Eventually, I decided to shadow for a day to see what it was about. After sitting in one class, I was hooked.

Less than two weeks later, I started at Galvanize in April 2018. Nothing could've ever prepared me for the experience I embarked on. I learned more than I could've ever hoped for, as well as developed the closest, life-long friends and connections I have ever developed in my life.

Less than one month after graduating, I (along with two of my classmates and closest friends who had no prior programming experience) signed the offer letter to start at not just any development job, but my dream job. I am eternally grateful to everyone at Galvanize. And I couldn't possibly give it a higher recommendation. If you want to change course in life and take on web development, attending Galvanize is an absolute must.

Intro:

I am a graduate from the Galvanize Denver (Platte) Web Development Immersive program. This program was life changing for me coming from Audio Engineering. We were led by Kyle Coberly for the first month of Galvanize and he inspired and set a good trajectory for our cohort.

Curriculum:

Our curriculum is different from the cohorts following us. My cohort, g90, had a drill-based grading system where you had to complete the drills at an acceptable level to be passed. The new Learn curriculum is slightly different. It seems to be designed with an approach that is a lot more problem based with projects thrown in between. Both designs do what I feel is intended. Which is to give you a broad spectrum of knowledge on development. I do, however, prefer the drill based system.

This program is designed in a way that encourages, if not demands, you to work with others. We had many groups in our cohort that would get together and study everyday. Our success and experience in the program was definitely tied to working together.

With that said this program will not teach you in depth concepts. You must search that out yourself. Which is not a bad thing. It teaches you how to learn, and how to find information on your own or collaborate with others to find a solution. In the real world that's what you are going to be doing. 

The Teachers/Staff:

The instructors in the program are very approachable. Every instructor has shaped me in some way and has gone out of their way to inspire me. They are driven and want to see you succeed. 

Career services is something Galvanize offers. We worked with Chris and he gave us an amazing tool set to work with. From networking, to marketing ourselves, and interview advice, this alone made Galvanize worth it. 

Closing:

This program was everything I wanted. I was able to work with many intelligent individuals in a fast paced environment. I learned how to better present myself to employers. As well as be inspired by the many friends I've made and the instructors and staff that surrounded me. This course definitely lived up to the expectation of an immersive program.

I graduated from the Web Development Immersive at the Platte (Denver) Campus on October 5th, 2018. I am currently invterviewing for a React Developer position in downtown Denver.

The Web Development Immersive is a full-time, six-month educational program. With over 700 hours of coding, the Web Development Immersive teaches students how to create innovative, real-world applications using languages, frameworks, and computer science fundamentals.

The experience is very demanding and very rewarding. I learned many different technologies (Javascript, React, Vue, PostgreSQL, Express, Knex, Node). My capstone project was an IoT project that utilized a Raspberry Pi and an image processing library Tracking.js to count items in the refrigerator - technologies outside of the curriculum. I was prepared to take on these challenges thanks to the core of the Galvanize curriculum - learning to learn.

If you're ready for a career change - and you're ready to put in the work - this is the best coding bootcamp out there. I emphasize that this is a difficult program; it takes a lot of focus, self-motivation and grinding. If you're not 100% sure about this, I recommend waiting or finding something else.

I ultimately chose Galvanize over other bootcamps, because I felt that Galvanize's career services were worth the investment. Chris and Angela (Platte campus) are fantastic, and they have prepared me to find a job in the tech field. I am confident I will do well in my interview because of their tutelage.

I highly recommend Galvanize.

My time at Galvanize was both fun, and very challenging. After completing the program, I received a job offer as a Software Developer at my top choice company within 3 weeks.

You can learn everything we learned at Galvanize in many other places, and you can even learn it on your own if you're dedicated enough. What you won't get anywhere else is the knowledge and help that a Career Services manager like Maria Montoya will bring. That knowledge, along with going to school in an tech start-up enviroment like Galvanize, will allow you to network and make connections that will make finding your first job much easier. If you continue to apply that knowledge while developing your programming skills, you'll always have a bright future in Software Development.

Maria builds relationships with hiring companies, giving us opportunities to meet/interview with them, which lead to several of us receiving job offers from those companies. While making your decision on which school to attend, make sure that school has a great Career Services program, along with networking opportunities, as they're the reason I'd still pick Galvanize Phoenix if I had to do it again. 

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.