RED Academy

I went to RED for UI design for it is the only bootcamp that offers a course with focus on UI instead of UX. UX is a trending profession but I wanted to get some UI skills under my belt. At the same time I didn't want to completely miss out UX course, which RED curriculum helped me exactly with that. Because for two months out of three, UI students sit in UX classes (UI and UX also have so much in common that you can't teach them in separation) and sit together with a UX student to work on real projects. I got to see the whole process of UX and also after we knew each other pretty well, I started to chip in in the UX decisions and UX students started to help me with UI designs. So our path is very much inter-related and we gain experience in both fields.

There are two layers of "life changing", first being the stuff I actually got exposed to and got my hands on. One thing made RED special is its interdisciplinary exchange, we had HTML & CSS class with web development instructor and Google analytics/Snapchat class with digital marketing instructor and so on. You can definitely learn a lot more than just one course if you are willing to. Another thing that is pretty "RED" is that we got to work on real projects from community partners. Sometimes it is just a personal idea from an ambitious client, other times it is real businesses who want to build their site better. Either way they are very valuable experience. Think as if we got to work with 3 startups (3 real projects) in 9 weeks. Pretty crazy right?

Another layer of "life-changing" is that it transformed the way I deal with people. I gained some good friendship and reinvigorated my career and life choices. Just because they had so many social events outside a rich curriculum to encourage good bonding and going out to socialize. I am an introvert but now I opened up a little bit.

I went to RED Academy in Toronto during the winter cohort 2017 (January to March). During my stay, it was a mix of positive and negative experiences, but the latter one would describe it best.

I went to RED since it's the only bootcamp in Toronto offering full-time UI Design courses, the other ones only offered part-time. Since I wanted to fully immerse myself and make a quick career change (doing FT vs PT), I enrolled with RED. When I was trying to sign up, they told me about their student ratio of 1:7 and how they already had 6 students signed up for UI Design, so they rushed me to quickly pay and enroll into the course before somebody else did. As I believed them to speak the truth, I became anxious and desperate so I enrolled at RED right away. Turns out, on my first day of class, there were only 4 students (including myself)! I was quite disappointed that they lied to me just to get me to enroll into the course.

RED offers a PPD class where they teach you "how to get a job in the tech industry," it turned out to be a waste of time and money to me. Instead of preparing us for customized classes directed towards the tech industry (for example: knowledge about salary for a junior role, portfolio preparation, drafting a freelance contract), we were given very generic and basic resume classes and nonsense exercises such as creating a rap song or building a tower with popsicle sticks. I asked for some material and resources from the PPD class and the instructor never sent it to me. At the end, she was let go, although we were promised that she would provide career coaching once we graduated. 

RED has partnerships with a recruiting agency called Creative Niche. You would think that they will either help you land a job or connect you with other companies. Instead, all they did was say that my resume was perfect and gave zero constructive feedback. If my resume was perfect, why didn’t she ask me to do an interview right away? Also, I noticed that they always have online job postings for UI Designers, yet never bothered to asked any of us.

In general, my instructors (UI Design only) were pretty good. The instructors were knowledgeable in their craft and helped me with all the questions I had. On the other hand, I had HTML and CSS class with one of the other instructors and it was horrifying. He kept telling my class (all UX and UI design students) to Google everything, instead of teaching us how to write the code. Although I took some previous online courses in front-end development, I still couldn't grasp the basics of HTML from this class. After a few months, I bought an online course through Udemy for $15 and I understood every single thing they explained.

I'm not sure if it was my cohort's fault or not, but UX students love to overstep on the UI design A LOT. I just wished that the UX instructor would've done a better job telling the students to set boundaries when it came to working with us. There were a lot of times where UX would want to make the decisions for the user interface (typeface, icons, colours, logo, and so on). They would literally argue with you for hours if you didn't agree with them on the visual elements. This was definitely not a pleasing experience for me and made me doubt about the workplace in real life.

There's still a big chunk of graduates from my cohort from the Web Development and UX program that are still trying to land their first job (its been more than 3 months). If I were you, I'd recommend going to another bootcamp that actually knows what they are doing and would provide you with all the resources and support that you need to land a job in the industry.

The Digital Marketing Program is great! Of course, as it is very intense (3 months, Mon-Fri 9 to 5), it is easy to get stressed because it is a fast paced environment! Projects, lessons and other deliverables and internal (amusing competitions) are included in the program to make it more lively and interesting! Instructors are great, very resourceful and always willing to help!

I went through different phases: At first I thought I was going to drop everyday, because there is a lot of content to learn and understand (first 5-6 weeks). Once we get our feet wet with the first client, everything that we learned seemed to make more sense. This real client opportunity is great as we face problems we could face in real life! Meeting their requirements and needs and having them appreciate your work, which is not always the case.
As we got closer to the end, I felt  way more comfortable compared to the beginning of the program. It is thanks to the instructors who always believe in you!

Keep in mind that you are learning a lot of new tech skills in 3 months, when instructors learned them on their own for years! In fact, we are very lucky to have to possibility to learn all these cool new tech skills at school!

I would like to have more improvement in the Career part. The problem is that when our cohort started, the person in charge of career dev, got another offer elsewhere, which made it a bit hard for us to have proper follow up, in that purpose. But Creative Niche, a tech recruiting company did a decent job in terms of interview prep, resume revision, etc. Still room for improvement. Although, instructors are always happy to do mock interviews with you even after you graduate!

The overall school atmosphere is great! take advantage of all the social events that Emily suggests! Our cohort was a bit boring so we didn't enjoy these social events as much as we could have, I regret this! I also wish we had some kind of conclusion event - apart from the prom which was a lot of fun - but like a diploma ceremony. Maybe something to introduce...

Now RED Academy has a new member in their staff, the Manager by the name of Peter Lane! This guys is absolutely awesome, you will learn a lot along his side and he is a lot of fun and gives a so many good tips and advice!

You'll enjoy the 3 months for sure!

Overall it's quite a positive experience. 8.5/10

RED is completely unprofessional, disorganized, unaccountable, and breaks virtually all their promises.

(I gradated from the full-time professional UX program from RED Academy in the Winter 2017 cohort in Toronto) 
 
Where to start...let's start with the beginning on a positive note (because, *spoiler:* it goes south pretty quickly after that...). 

This was a huge investment for me, and so I researched as much as I could into this school (which was challenging because at the time, the Toronto location was finishing up its first cohort, but still managed to talk to who I could/reviews of the Vancouver campus). I talked to the Admissions team and they were very quick and clear in taking the time to answer my questions and concerns. I was pretty impressed with this and felt like it was mutually a good fit. As soon as I sent my money though, it all changed. I didn't hear anything from them until the week before classes were to start. 

My overall experience was disappointing...a lot of promises were simply not delivered. The school is very disorganized and therefore a lot of things were done very unprofessionally (if at all).

It was initially advertised that they guarantee a 7:1 student to instructor ratio. I was in the UX Professional class, with 17 of us in my cohort, we had one main instructor. It's interesting to note that this promise has since disappeared off their website. The classes were very much all over the place by the end of the term, the schedules were not followed, things in the curriculum were never taught (it says on the website that Omnigraffle was part of it, it was never even mentioned). Software licenses were supposed to be set up prior to the start of the course, but were not and one of the students had to take it upon themselves to do this.

A large reason why RED was such a poor experience was because of how unprofessionally the institution was run and managed.
While a few instructors and staff seemed to go above and beyond, many more seemed very unmotivated, disinterested, disengaged, and had no patience to teach. I don't care how great of a designer or developer you may be, but this is a school, therefore teaching and what comes with it (patience, compassion, and understanding) are imperative. Their lack of interest on their part ultimately affects my and my peers' futures! At least do a better job at pretending you want to be there? 

Also to note, some instructors were not respectful enough to see the importance of getting to know their students' 'names. Some instructors also had very obvious favourites (so if you're not one of their favourites, don't expect any kind of attention). 
 
I originally decided to pay more for an in-person course (as opposed to an online course) to have access to support, mentorship, and personalized feedback if needed (I am not someone who needs hand-holding, but I know the value of having personalized support). I didn't get any useful help, personalized feedback on progress or support. We didn't get any feedback on our projects beyond our group presentations (which were about the presentations itself). I've asked for feedback but never received anything useful to work off of.  Our community clients also seemed to be kept in the dark, and students were expected to take over communication when there was no communication between staff and students on what was discussed, expected, etc. I can't see the clients having had a professional or pleasant experience. The short amount of time we have to work on client projects also hinder in us ever delivering on a really great product. I was told to just know that the pieces can be fixed up later for my portfolio....but my concern is not my portfolio first and foremost, it's delivering a great project for these businesses/organizations - these are people's livelihoods, and I felt that the RED does not take them seriously nor follow-up with them after the fact. I'd like to know how many websites have actually been launched from the Toronto campus? 

We never got connections to the industry despite what was told to me when I signed up. Apparently RED has "industry partners", but I have yet to know what that means since there's been zero connections....Oh, let's also talk about their Grad Hiring event (which was cancelled 2-3 times without any notification to students -- we had to find out from each other through Slack) which was finally held 1.5 months after graduation. There must've been less 20 people who came...about 80-90% being recruiters from Creative Niche, their sister (recruiting) company. It was like filling your audience with your friends and family so it looks more successful than it is. I'm not quite sure why we had to give our presentations to various Creative Niche staff who all work together and we could have been connected with individually prior, during the program. I believe it was more for show, because as far as I know, no one got anything out of that event (probably because it took so long to put together and was constantly cancelled without notification -- that's a great way to organize a successful event!). 

Career support and Personal and Professional Development (PPD): I must say I was pretty excited to see them offering PPD - a few hours every week to devote to career and personal support. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to its potential. I would have expected the material to be more specific to the tech industry, as well as specific to our fields (UX, UI, Development, Marketing), but instead they were very basic and very generic material on how we should remember to make eye contact and have a firm handshake. Please remember that a lot of us have been working for years and decades...it was ultimately not useful and kind of condescending! Even when I had my resume looked over by HR staff, it was a generic review and not specific to tech/design. They weren't able to provide things like portfolio reviews or coach us through design tests and portfolio reviews (because for those entering the design field for the first time, THIS is what's new to us, not general resumes and interviews!). As mentioned by others, conveniently, the week following our graduation, we lost our career support. This was not announced until a month later, of course. Students of course had to piece together things through the grapevine because RED is not transparent about a lot of things and makes me wonder what else they're hiding. Their staff have continued to turn over at an alarming rate since April. Overall, support throughout my time at RED has grossly declined...ending up with none after graduation (unless you want your resume to be looked over for the umpteenth time because that's all they can offer along with a 20-min pep talk over the phone).

For a school that offers user/customer experience classes, it's telling that we have not been reached out to to see what kind of support WE actually want and need. I had reached in earlier with my concerns (along with a lot of time spent on feedback surveys that apparently no one reads because things just progressively got worse), the most I've gotten is offering to look at my resume again (really?!).  

There's also a new initiative, RED Studios (now RED Design Labs -- this is another thing, they like changing names of things every once in a while just to keep confusion high). It's a period after the program where a smaller number of alumni are so privileged to work for free for "global clients". What does it tell you if they need to build an extension to the program that should be enough on its own (at least that's what it's sold as), but also one where they're encouraging their students to be exploited by doing free work. Don't worry, they're not stopping there -- they will soon be charging...THE ALUMNI....to do free work. Why RED Studios is a thing when you can't even figure out your primary product (a school), is beyond me. 

It was a lot of money for me to invest into a course and I'm not sure I know what I paid for. I felt very much like I was just another number that they're churning out. Unfortunately, their (lack of) action just shows the lack of respect and care they hold for their students, as you can tell from my and my peers' experiences. It's frustrating and disappointing that despite all the hard work and effort a lot of my peers and I have put into the program, RED's end of the deal was not held.

If you want to get a Digital Marketing job in the tech industry, take this program. RED is so much more than just the instruction, there are staff to connect you to jobs, personal development workshops and job hunting coaching from professionals. You get out what you put into this program, so be prepared to study hard and to do a lot of self-learning at night to learn more about topics of interest. RED provides a supportive environment where one can be uncomfortable and learn. If you are interested at all, book a tour, it's free! 

I'm happy with my program but the administration won't respond to inquiries and emails unless you are making a purchase. Way to make us feel like 'cash cows.' Sometimes they give no response and don't even direct to someone who might have an answer for you. I wasn't able to get a response from them once and had to talk to my instructor who thankfully clarified the issue for me. Ideally the administration should have either let me know or checked in with the instructor. The level of incompetency is what drives people away from RED. 'Admission Officers' or the glorified receptionists either need to change their attitude or go. I'm actually thinking of not attending RED again for another program because of the fact that the administration is unresponsive. Their admission process is hectic. You don't know when you are going to get a call and they don't even have a transaction channel for credit cards. Other places book a time to call you or even have their staff show you around at a designated time slot. What does RED do? Ignore emails, Slack messages and leave you in the dark. Don't recommend.  

I enrolled in RED's UX Design program because I was looking for a career change, and it was the only full-time program offered in Vancouver at the time. 

The 12-week program was very intensive and they cram a lot of information into a short amount of time. The pace does not let up from day one, so it's sink or swim. If you are driven, focused and have a strong work ethic, you will be fine. There is little time to absorb the information and there is a lot of self-teaching (which was frustrating, as you wonder why you paid $7500 when 'googling' is free).

One thing that was missing from the program was detailed feedback from the instructors on the projects. After presenting each of our 5 projects, we were asked to write a case study outlining our thought processes and how we arrived at our solutions. We were told that we would get detailed feedback for projects 2 through 5, but only received feedback project 2, and it was so late (we were already working on project 4 or 5) that we couldn't apply it to each subsequent projects. It was frustrating to go through the entire program not knowing whether your work was good or bad, or how to improve.

After finishing the program, RED offers assistance with job placement, but it's not really 'job placement' where they direct students to particular jobs that are best suited for their strengths, skill set and career goals. Instead, a few jobs are posted on Slack, and they're not unique to what's already on the job boards. It's a shame that they don't take the time to get to know all the students, so they can properly guide and support them in the real world. It would be nice if the placement manager initiated regular touch-bases with each of the students to see where they're at, make sure they are on the right track, or if they need help, etc. Some people may not be comfortable reaching out for help, so to do regular check-ins and make sure no one falls through the cracks would help those students a lot. There is definitely lots of room for improvement here.

Overall, the program is very comprehensive, and you get out of it what you put in. If you're lucky enough to be in a cohort full of intelligent, ambitious and supportive people, like I was, your experience will be very positive despite the flaws in the curriculum and services. Be prepared to spend about 12 hours on campus everyday and do homework on the weekends. I did learn A LOT and gain a good set of core skills that enabled me to get hired as a UX designer. Besides covering the main pillars of UX design, current software and methodologies, they also teach you how to do presentations, which is an invaluable skill in today's job market. 

I moved to Vancouver from Alberta hoping to start a career in the Tech industry. It has been quite the experience and I definitely would not have made it this far without the guidance and expertise of the staff at RED Academy. The Front End Dev Program is similar to most bootcamp programs, a lot of work every day for 3 months straight.

However, I do believe that RED Academy has more to offer than other coding bootcamps. Being surrounded by students taking other courses like UX Design and Digital marketing made it a very unique environment. I learned what Sketch is and how to use it to redesign my resume. How to optimize web pages for SEO purposes. How to utilize LinkedIn to get a job and network. What it's like to have a kegger every Friday. 

All these tools I gained on top of learning how to be a Web Developer from great instructors. The curriculum can be unforgiving, but I promise you that if you really enjoy coding and you put in the time/effort, RED will help you find a job.

When I decided to switch Careers, I came accross RED who helped and guided me through the whole process before even putting my deposit down. It was their culture and openness to help that pushed me to join the Full Time course. 

It's a fast paced environment that really does prepare you for real, industry work and cultures. The people I have met and relationships I have gained from atteneding RED has helped me expand my network so much. 

It was a great experience and I would recommend RED to anyone with ambition