BrainStation

Location and course is inaccurate for anonymity. Graduated end of last year from the bootcamp and most of my colleagues (online, New York, and Toronto) have not landed a position in our respective fields. That's almost 8 months since graduating and maybe... Read More 3 out of the 30+ I know got a job doing something related to what they learned at BS. I have no idea where they get their job placement statistic of 90+ percent or whatever it is. If we are working, it's at a job we could have easily gotten without BS and it's because we need the income to pay off the tuition. You will be paying thousands of dollars to attend what's essentially an educational resort. Be aware that their "industry partners" mean nothing more than someone at Brainstation knows an employee at that company. None of these companies poach for recruits at these bootcamps. None of these employees have jobs to offer, they just come to do talks because they have nothing better to do on a workday afternoon. Brainstation's adminstrators get paid to get people in. The graduates landing jobs is simply a nice-to-have, but it's ultimately no skin off their back. Don't pay them to shaft you, worst case they lose their jobs and get a taste of what their students are going through.

This is a review is about the bootcamp Conducted by Brainstation attended at Vancouver, and all my experiences and personal thoughts(Apr to Jun 2023 Cohort) 1. First of all, their main marketing focus is stating that you can transit any career to IT or... Read More tech, The blunt truth is 3 month program would not make you an IT professional. 2. This institute offers full time physical class, however they do not mention first two weeks is on-line delivery. This is because previous cohort is not finished with the physical classes(Basically lack of physical . So they offer online classes for the first two weeks. (Just a lie/ fake marketing) 3. This program is 400 hours, most of the hours are considered as (Work Period or Open Studio[ask your instructors]) basically the time where you spend the Working on your projects/assignments. You could learn more if you watch YouTube or Udemy, they explain the concepts better and in simple terms. 4. Course materials are zero value addition, you find better materials by YouTube Creators for free. 5. Instructors are not that competent, the instructors get confused during the middle of the lecture. 6. Event space / study area is constantly used for other events, you get consistently interrupted to move away by the staff. This is where marketers show off the area. 7. Social events / Career Events / Demo mainly attended by the past students and unemployed people (Rarely any recruiters) 8. The scholarship is a joke, if you opt for monthly instalment they add additional fees. Demolishing the main purpose of the scholarship. 9. Career support is zero, you are on your own, Searching a full time job is a full time job. 10. Career Development sections are not value adding, no one to one consulting, they just send the messages over slack. 11. For 16K+, it is not worth at all, 5-8k should be ok. 12. The cafeteria is just bad coffee. 13. Finally, DONT NOT TAKE NOT WORTH IT

I had a booked call with learning advisor for a specific times. First time I waited for him 15 min after what he wrote me a massage that he will be ready in 5 min. So I waited another 10 min but he never showed up. I booked a call for next day and he... Read More was late for 30 min! I thought the call is canceled already, so started to do my staff and then he started to call me like a spam every 5 min. Finally we connected and after saying that his behavior was unprofessional he dropped the call. If they have such Senior Learning Advisors and such an attitude to clients I can only guess what is that company about.

After a few years of scattered college classes and Udemy and YouTube videos, I built a decent foundation in web dev basics. I also felt really limited by the lack of professional guidance or any real network to lean on. A bootcamp by contrast is an accelerated... Read More program for non-tech people with ongoing career support and extensive networking. Overall I thought it was excellent. We ran the gamut from HTML to Heroku deployment and finished with resume and interview workshops. The projects incorporate everything learned up to that point, and include one group project, a few hackathons and one industry collaboration with the other BrainStation cohorts. I found it harder than expected - even with my prior experience. The project requirements go beyond the class lectures, so you’ll always be a fish out of water. This is by design to acclimatize us to what a real dev job is like. It still barely scratches the surface of everything there is to know in web development. The field is simply too big for an eight month (or 12 week) program - you’re really learning how to go off and learn by yourself. Still, we spent too much time on some things in the beginning at the expense of later topics. This could be because everyone was starting from different skill levels and they needed to get everyone up to speed first, but the end definitely felt rushed - especially the industry project. The instructors and TAs were pretty supportive, but in the bootcamp’s second half we were only really supposed to ask their help if we’d already tried five things. (We’ll never really learn if they always slip us the answer.) Sometimes so many students needed help it ate up all the open studio time and I was out of luck. I still think they could’ve been a bit more helpful sometimes, even if just by steering us in the right direction. There’s not guarantee of a job, but then again no reputable bootcamp would. They do advertise a very high employment rate but you have to hold up your end of the bargain and put in the hours. BrainStation will pass along job leads and news about career fairs and networking events, but it’s your job to take the initiative of job searching and networking. I recommend BrainStation to someone with at least some prior tech knowledge - even I felt a bit overwhelmed at some points. Think of it as a jumping off point for your own independent learning, rather than doing everything for you. The more of your own time and initiative you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it.

This was such an awesome, unique experience. I learned so much and met really great people. It's so cool thinking back to the first week when we were told all the things we would do during the course and how hard and scary it sounded at the time. It's... Read More amazing to know that we accomplished everything we set out to do and now we are officially UX designers, such a huge accomplishment. Campus felt like a second home and there were so many opportunities for personal and career growth; help with our resumes, career advice, networking events, interviews with industry partners, presentation practice, chat sessions with our cohort, and much more. The course load was pretty intense at times. There were moments when we had two projects to work on at the same time within a week. It was a lot, but it definitely taught us about proper time management and the instructors always encouraged us to try our best and that "done was better than perfect".

I put it anonymously here because I'm afraid the school will come after me by emailing me or something. I did the UX/UI design bootcamp and it was not for me. It was too fast-paced, a lot A LOT of the content I could have learnt by myself, there was not... Read More a lot of focus on the UI and so the projects were not that good and the "demo day" they have is not too useful as our capstones were not REAL WORLD projects. We did not focus too much on our capstone and so was not our best project and we had to present to companies - guess what? no one got a job. We did 3 or 4 projects during the course and I feel I lost time doing them instead of focusing on the capstone. Could have been only 2 projects instead of more than that. I got SO BURNT OUT from the bootcamp (didn't sleep well because I was always studying more hours to keep it up) that after it finished I took a 4 months break. I would never recommed a full time bootcamp like this. I didn't do this one but from what I read they tackled all the problems I had with brainstation and their curriculum seems promising for a bootcamp: https://www.memorisely.com/

This was my first time taking a course at BrainStation and It was a very informative and inspiring course. I was able to gain skills in programs such as Sketch, Flinto and InVision. The most beneficial part is definitely learning all the workflows a typical... Read More company/agency will be going through. I look forward to taking more courses here in the future.

It was a very informative and inspiring course; with lots of anecdotal insight from the instructors. The most beneficial part is definitely learning all the workflows a typical company/agency will be going through. The only negative is it couldn't be... Read More held in person, and so you're missing out on the communal aspect of it.

I took the Product Management course Nov-Dec 2020. The instructors were great but the institution itself was so disappointing. The class was way too full, I felt so bad for the instructors. We spent 2 of the classes just listening to other people's projects... Read More and the other classes whizzing through the material because the presentations took up so much time. I even submitted feedback that I had a bad experience and would like to talk to someone about it, never heard from anyone. Now I'm trying to access course materials to review for my current role and I'm barred from accessing it 6 moths after paying thousands of dollars in tuition. The customer service agent has been zero help and evidently a disappointing experience went from bad to even worse somehow. Save your money and don't bother.

As a product delivery manager this course was great for me as it empathized the importance of empathetic story telling and how it intrinsically links strategy, design and development. The only down side for me was that it wasn't in person and collaboration... Read More of the work we we doing was minimal. The facilitator was awesome.