This review is for the MakerPrep course offered by...

This review is for the MakerPrep course offered by MakerSquare that I took. As advertised, the course said that it will prepare you for the MakerSquare technical interview, the main basis for which MakerSquare accepts students. The instructor (unprofessional, unhelpful, more on him later) even said that nothing will be on the interview that was not covered in the course. After my interview, that was absolutely false. 100% of the interview was over functions that were never gone over in class. I know for sure because I never skipped class and was very active during the class. After my technical interview was when I truly felt scammed out of my $750 for MakerPrep, and I do not use the word "scam" lightly.

The lesson in MakerPrep had no structure or clear objectives. Very frequently, after minutes of inactivity, students would ask each other "what are we supposed to be doing? Do we have an assignment?" The advertisement said that it was a class for "those with familiarity with the internet and computers." Thus, for anyone without coding experience. Those who succeeded in the class already had previous experience, or people like me had to learn everything on my own through Codecademy and Freecodecamp, defeating the purpose of the class. The only real asset was to network and meet people, but that was not worth the $750 I spent, nor the time. Hours would be spent inefficiently due to the instructors lack of knowledge or skills for teaching that the instructor possessed.

Furthermore, the instructor showed more of an interest in making friends and conversation than in teaching us. Not that one should be a former teacher to teach the class, but the inefficiency I mentioned was more of a lack of effort. He would give a task for us to complete, and then talk about his personal life while we tried to work. I have heard of other programs where the instructor walks around guiding others, while this one stayed at his desk having personal conversations.

One particular instance, for the last 1.5 hours of the class, he stayed at his desk, coded in front of us and talked to us about his code. For those without coding experience, you do not learn coding by solely watching someone do it and hear him explain it. He had no tasks or activity for the class at that time, and when class ended, I thought it odd that he said, "good job class, you all did great today." He said "we," the class did great, while he did all the work on his screen in front of us.

The true test of failure of the course came from first, that by the 2nd week, half of the people just stopped showing up(the course offered no refunds, so while not sure, I imagine refunds were not given). And second, the instructor (which to him he said it as a measure of success) said that in the latest MakerSquare cohort, 2 people came from MakerPrep.

If the stated objective of the course was to prepare us for the technical interview, and only 2 succeeded, then that alone also shows the failure. Again, this review is for MakerPrep, but it worries me for MakerSquare if it is any indication of the way they run their company. I most certainly regret spending my money on the course I took.