General Assembly New York

I’ve had a couple of experiences with General Assembly, and to be honest I am a fan. The InDesign one-​day course was indispensable. The Hacking Mindfulness workshop was a little lackluster, but still an alright hour and a half spent. Unfortunately, I had a very costly and bad experience with the uncompromising Education Programs Producer who was not as understanding as my instructor.
I had signed up for the Visual Design Course this fall. I was thrilled to learn a new skill that would compliment my current skill sets and bring me forward in my career. As a freelancer, the $ 3K tuition was a bit steep. In order to pay for the course, I had to take out a personal loan and clear then clear my schedule. A week into the course, I realized that it would be a bit more time consuming than my freelance schedule would afford me. The Education Programs Producer refused to meet with my situation. She couldn’t refund me or even offer for me to take the course at a later date, jumping in where I left off. Sadly, I had to walk away paying $ 3,000 for two workshops and a bunch of PDFs. No doubt, I will return to the PDFs in the future once my year calms down, but I am still upset with the rigidity that resulted in this situation.

I can’t speak for the full-​time programs, but I was really happy with my weekend bootcamp (Programming for Non Programmers). The teacher was invested in making sure everyone in the class of about 15 people really learned the basics, and he adjusted the pace based on feedback. The «campus» itself is a couple floors in FlatIron that have the industrial/​start-​up vibe.

I took a 1 day boot camp and a part time UX Design course here and I loved it! I have recommended GA to my friends and the ones that signed up got a lot out of it too. Like any other learning environment you get what you put into it but GA has great curriculum framework and energetic instructors.

I took a Digital Marketing course at the General Assembly NY campus and it was an incredibly rewarding experience.
NY was one of the first GA campuses and the people, instructors and students there have an incredibly sense of community. The campus and classroom environments are wonderful. The facilities have a really techie-​modern feel (you can even write on the walls inside the class!), bringing education into the 21^st century.
I’d highly recommend taking one of their courses or workshops at the NY campus. GA doesn’t end after the classes as they have constant postings on the walls inside the campus if you’re looking for a job or if an employer is looking for someone talented like you.
I’ll definitely take more classes in NY in the future.

I took the UX Design 12-​week course here and found it to be pretty weak. The class is actually more of a UX 101 — very intro level and would be great for students who are learning user experience and its principles for the first time ever.
The course information on the site promises a lot more than it delivers. The course touched on each point from the course outline at an extremely high level and in the end I barely took anything away from the class. Also the in-​class vibe was very much a nurture environment — all comments were praised including the frequent lonngg overdrawn rants from the LOVE-​to-​hear-​themself-​speak types (annoying). Ain’t no body got time for that.
In retrospect I wish GA would have been more straight-​forward about who the appropriate audience is for this class. Spending 4k on this course is totally outrageous/​unnecessary if you have ANY level of experience in digital already.

I feel a little weird writing a review for a start-​up, but I love GA. They have great classes, a great staff, and cool offices. I’m taking a Digital Marketing class there now and I really like the teachers and the course materials.

Still serving up great classes for the Technologist sect, rooms need better ventilation and A/​C in the summer, but the Wifi is strong and so is the content. I’ll most likely be back.