Grand Circus

Grand Circus was one of the biggest leaps I have taken but well worth it! At Grand Circus I found a great environment and support group that wanted to see me succeed. The course work was hard and relevant but pushed you to learn how to code and think like a developer. I am so happy with my new career! I am able to be creative and use my problem solving skills I gained from my Fine-Arts Degree and bridge the gap between developers and designers. Without Grand Circus's curriculum, job assistants and great support I would not be where I am today. THANK YOU GRAND CIRCUS! P.S. Detroit is growing and Grand Circus is a great place to be apart of Detroit's growth.

I attended the October 2017 Java Bootcamp. I have a computer science degree, but I had been working IT and wanted to switch to software dev. 

My teachers were great: friendly, patient and knowledgeable. GC creates a culture where you feel like you can suceed, which honestly in tech, is 75% of it. If you show up and do everything they are asking, give 105%, you will get a job. If you don't have a math or computer science or technical background, you will study outside of school, or stay late. They have plenty of resources to help you. You absolutely can do it, you have a work a little. 

I am also amazed at the community I have become apart of beyond Grand Circus through meetups and networking. This was a wonderful experience and I am glad I did it. I have a job and I start on Monday!

     "Sometimes it's the journey that teaches you a lot about your destination."  That is a reflection by Drake, the musician, that I found superbly sums up my experiences at a 10-week Grand Circus .Net (C#) bootcamp in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which convened on a full-time basis from March to May 2017. 

     Let’s begin by briefly highlighting the circumstances that spurred me to attend the bootcamp.   A career shift to backend coding was on the horizon for me after 32 years in the workforce as a writer and journalist, a stint of self-employment as a consulting web developer/marketer, a webmaster for an agricultural engineering association, and as a webmaster as well as communications manager for a nonprofit workforce-development organization.  My progress on this track was derailed in mid-2016 when my communications post was axed in a budget cut; thus, I began a year-long stint of unemployment. 

     During this period, I discovered a couple of gigantic themes about being jobless:  first, the circumstances drained my self-confidence; and, additionally, the situation compelled me to wrap my head around my complete lack of control over the job elimination I’d endured.   Both of these themes – self-confidence and gaining a feeling of control – played prominent roles in my Grand Circus experiences, as I’ll discuss shortly.

     The bootcamp was rigorous in terms of the amount and complexity of new information presented in lectures, coding exercises (both solo and team-based), voluminous reading and, finally, in the pace of networking events and job-seeking activities.  All told, the experiences were like attempting to drink from a firehose!

     I decided early to make a strong effort and invest lots of energy in the bootcamp, and there was a point during week six when concepts and coding exercises crystallized for me.  At this juncture, with new information and coding practices beginning to dovetail and make sense -- my confidence soared and I was heartened to see positive results produced by taking control and making a strong effort.

    In addition to lots of reading and lab work, I got to know Visual Studio 2015 as well as how to frame coding questions for Google searches.  I invested plenty of time using Github to post and get code. 

   The strengths of the Grand Circus bootcamp I attended far outweighed the weaknesses, of which I found only one.  On the strength side of the ledger would be my interactions with Grand Circus staff members, who were knowledgeable and good communicators.  The instructor, Tommy Waalkes, was excellent in large part because he evolved from being tentative at the beginning to delivering solid, well prepared lectures after a couple weeks.  Tommy was well versed in the material and regularly delivered thoughtful, practical instruction.      

     In addition, he wisely used the Socratic method of asking questions of me when I needed help with a coding problem, thereby nudging me to come up with a workable answer.  Tommy’s method was acutely beneficial in helping me to see how various aspects of C# and .NET linked together, thereby empowering me to make big strides forward to complete the bootcamp.

   Another strength I found was the emphasis of Grand Circus on encouraging bootcampers to network extensively, and the laser focus by Grand Circus on job-hunting abilities (from resume writing, to learning vital soft skills, to polishing your LinkedIn profile) was wonderful. 

     The lone weakness I’d like to report is that the physical space in Grand Rapids was a bit too small for a class of 10 students, two instructors and associated equipment.  The setting was too cramped at times.

     My chief goal in attending the bootcamp was to secure employment.  I’m very excited to have started a new job in August 2017 and while it is not in coding or technology (I’m working in business-to-business (B2B) marketing for a parent operating group that runs several caster and wheel manufacturing companies), the bootcamp experiences contributed immensely to my landing this position.  How so? 

     By successfully completing the rigors of the Grand Circus C# .NET bootcamp, my confidence received such an enormous boost that I performed extremely well in the job interviews.  I was relaxed, made good eye contact, communicated well, provided thoughtful yet concise answers and confidently promoted myself as fully capable of accomplishing all duties of the B2B marketing job.

     Thus, I found that my journey through the challenging yet superb Grand Circus bootcamp taught me much about myself – and helped enormously in reaching my current destination!

I graduated Grand Circus last year, full time for 2 months. I was also apart of one of grand circus's free bootcamps. We were promised if we worked hard, we would get interveiws. When it came time after graduation, we were given an excuse and told they would keep up updated. We did not hear from our program organizer until she found HER new job. 3 months later, there's a new cohort of fools like us who had interveiws afterwards. Our cohort not getting interveiws was a "fluke" according to the staff when I revisted, but other cohorts would. I ran dry my savings after going here, for nothing but very basic knowledge and disrespectful, condescending attitudes from people who aren't very diverse. The only reason I HAVE a tech job because I had to enter another program with a better cirriculum and onsite job training. I hear their paid bootcamps are better since they treat them like people instead of the way they treated us, so go here at your ow risk.

I absolutely loved my time here. They covered everything from CSS to SASS, Node, PostgreSQL, vanilla JavaScript, semantic HTML, Bootstrap, and Angular JS; (which has now been swapped with the most-modern version of Angular available) all within 3 months of full-time learning. 

It was extremely immersive and I absolutely felt career-ready by the end of the course. 

Even a few years down the line, they will go out of their way to help me out in job searches; should I need one in any way that I can. 

If you want to make life-long friends, want access to an invaluable resource, and grow your skills from 0 to career-ready as quickly as possible, give Grand Circus a try! I'd recommend it to anyone.

I graduated from Grand Circus in December 2019. I attended the full time Front-End bootcamp. Before I applied, I took the intro classes which I found beneficial. It was a good opportunity to see whether or not I liked coding and web design. I also learned a few tips and tricks before going into bootcamp.
The full-time bootcamp is a huge commitment. The material does go by at a very fast pace, but David Wolverton my instructor along with my TA Mitch Cuckovich did a great job with helping out to make sure the material is understood. There’s still a lot of studying to be done outside of class.
I think one of the biggest advantages of taking a bootcamp is that you’re not doing it alone. My cohort was great. You make friends, study together. collaborate on group projects and encourage each other.
The soft skills portion and classes were equally as important as the coding. Cody Grant, Hanna Root, Luke Salazar, and Grace Erdmann go over all the things to expect while you’re going through bootcamp (imposter syndrome) as well as get you prepared for job preparation (applying to jobs, resume building, elevator speeches, mock interviews, negotiating) as well as their network of recruiters and job opportunities they know about. Along with that, the career services team assist you after you graduate. Hanna and Cody really helped me stay on track with a game-plan to follow and helped me navigate through offers all while staying positive.
I highly recommend Grand Circus to anyone who’s interested in learning to code and wants to make a career change.

My time spent in the java cohort ended with not only the training in developing software ranging from simple utilities to web applications, but also a skillset to network myself in the it/software industry. The fundamental teachings of these skills also left me able to grow and adapt to the changes in these techniques and practices over time which has also led to a continuous growth of my network of professionals. If you are hardworking and can take the time outside of class to study the concepts or even better, a self teacher. This is one of the greatest institutions of its kind to solidify your skills and make the right connection with a recruiter to begin or elevate your career!!!

 

Prior to bootcamp, I used a computer for such activities as buying things on Amazon and watching videos on YouTube. Obviously, I knew little about development when I started this bootcamp. I didn't know if I'd even like development, but I was determined to start a new career. In 10 weeks Grand Circus packed into my brain everything that I needed to switch my career to something I truly enjoy.

Grand Circus doesn't just take anyone - they make sure that you are prepared to enter a coding bootcamp. They spend the time providing you the tools you will need to succeed as a developer. They teach you the core concepts of the language. They teach you how to think and solve problems. They show you multiple ways to solve the same problem. They teach you how to look things up on Stack Overflow to find a solution (because you are not the first person with that question). The class sizes are small so you can ask your questions. They appropriately plan their courses with enough time to stop and thoroughly answer questions. They will go over the same piece of information until you and all your classmates understand it.

As if attending a bootcamp with such a well executed program wasn't enough, it's the people that really make it. Think of the staff like your friends teaching you something new. They make jokes with you and you get to know each other through out the course. They make becoming a developer relatable. Then the staff treats you like family when you come back. Because you will go back. Your class becomes your network. Even the classes learning other languages becomes part of your network. I still talk to the people that went through my bootcamp, as friends and for help. You can show up for help with what youre working on, you can ask them for resources and they will hook you up. They help you search for and prepare for jobs. They genuinely want you to succeed, and you can tell they actually want to help. 

I had no idea what to expect going into this, but I would say it was totally worth it.

I am a December 2018 graduate from the full time Java Bootcamp at Grand Circus. Overall, I had a very good experience during my time at the school. The program is very challenging, but my instructor and assistant were very knowledgeable, and the staff was completely supportive. I have recently started a position as a Junior Developer with a company that frequently hires Grand Circus graduates, and am getting the opportunity to continue to build my skills in the material that I learned in the full time program. I would recommend a Grand Circus bootcamp to an interested student, but only if they are prepared to make a strong committment to the educational effort. The programs are very challenging. The students will be expected to take responsibility for their education and their own success. If a prospective student is passionate about coding, and is willing to take on the rigorous demands of the school's program, they will be well positioned to make a career change to technology, and I would recommend for them to evaluate/consider the Grand Circus program.