Im back home now, and here is my final thought of SF.

Its pretty much every thing they said it would be. You learn alot of material very quickly. The majority of the students i spoke with in the class were satifised. If you have no experience in .net what so ever it is very beneficial, especially for me, because there was no way i was learning all of that material on my own in three months.

And to learn all of the material would probably take a few college courses. Bottom line, i felt that it was worth it, i have no regrets. Not to say there werent any flaws, but overall im leaving feeling satisfied. And i have a interview set up this week. 5 or 6 students have already been offered jobs or accepted them... The bottom line is people are being employed, and that was the main reason we went.

Not only that, but we also can network amongst other alumni. The career services was very practical, i cant believe i never used a cover letter or thank you letter..As insignificant as it sounds it does make a difference. That and a couple of other strategies such as having a script you say every time you talk to an employer and other tidbits were very helpful.

Now i can put everything i did at SF to fill my resume up, and it looks alot better now. Before i just had four projects i did in school on there, the before resume definately looked pathetic now that i look at it!

You may be dissapointed in the program if you want it to go really, really deep into .net, like advanced topics. It pretty much covers what it says it covers on their website. I reccomend them to anyone wanting to learn .net in a short amount of time.

[Edited by - jason02 on October 1, 2006 4:53:19 PM]

One more thing, as far as the online test is concerned, you still have to know basic OOP for the phone interview afterwards.

Bottom line is, you will not make it at setfocus if you were some random guy off the street. You have to have some sort of computer science background to make it. Thats why they make sure you have a CS degree to join the program. We had some very bright kids in there and even they had struggled on some of the test, sometimes we needed a curve! So how would some joe schmoe off the street make it?

The program is accelerated. We were going through entire books in a week. This isnt a intro to .net community college class. If you dont have the background or at least study hard(some students spent pratically the whole day @ SF studying) you will not make it.

Jason, good for you! For those getting leads is because they had previous real world experience? I noticed that most, if not all, of SF grads had real world experience. I browsed through their backgrounds and they're experienced individual. If i remember correctly, you had at least 9mos experience yourself. I dont mean anything bad. it's just something i noticed. If there's anybody with no experience at all in your class, how are they doing so far in finding job leads? Were there anybody who didnt finish the program or did not pass?

thanks dude!

Quote: Original post by jason02
Im back home now, and here is my final thought of SF.

Its pretty much every thing they said it would be. You learn alot of material very quickly. The majority of the students i spoke with in the class were satifised. If you have no experience in .net what so ever it is very beneficial, especially for me, because there was no way i was learning all of that material on my own in three months.

And to learn all of the material would probably take a few college courses. Bottom line, i felt that it was worth it, i have no regrets. Not to say there werent any flaws, but overall im leaving feeling satisfied. And i have a interview set up this week. 5 or 6 students have already been offered jobs or accepted them... The bottom line is people are being employed, and that was the main reason we went.

Not only that, but we also can network amongst other alumni. The career services was very practical, i cant believe i never used a cover letter or thank you letter..As insignificant as it sounds it does make a difference. That and a couple of other strategies such as having a script you say every time you talk to an employer and other tidbits were very helpful.

Now i can put everything i did at SF to fill my resume up, and it looks alot better now. Before i just had four projects i did in school on there, the before resume definately looked pathetic now that i look at it!

You may be dissapointed in the program if you want it to go really, really deep into .net, like advanced topics. It pretty much covers what it says it covers on their website. I reccomend them to anyone wanting to learn .net in a short amount of time.

In regards to the above post by Anonymous Poster, I would like to add my 2 cents. I was asking exactly same questions to previous SetFocus students, as well as people involved in this thread before I started SetFocus. But I believed in SetFocus and stuck with them. I am in my last week right now and have been hired by Infragistics as an "Developer Support Engineer". Although I did have 10 months previous experience, one of the students in my class was hired a week before me with the same company and that person did not have any IT related experience. Infact he is a fresh graduate. There are so many companies looking for lesser expereienced (0 to 2 years) people.
It's just that many of these job postings will not be seen on Monster, or Yahoo or many other places. SetFocus gets these postings straight away in their inbox because they are the only .NET intensive training institue you can find anywhere in US.
We have an individual who did struggle with the program. Given his age (60+), it's hard for anybody at that age to keep up with fast paced environment at SetFocus. Although it is fast paced, the professors make sure that you understand the material. If I compare myself today compared to when I started SetFocus, I can see the difference. I had learned a lot and hope to build on it. Once you place you resume at Monster, Yahoo, Careerbuilder etc with SetFocus' name and experience listed, believe me you will start getting e-mails and phone calls. I still get phones and mails after getting a job. Infact most of the people in class are getting calls and mails (even those with no real world IT expreience before). Passing the Master's program by no way means that a person is an expert in .NET technology. Yes, an individual has the basic knowledge of getting the job done and then it's upto the individual's personal passion to explore .NET in detail. Going to SetFocus is worth it. You will learn the basics (and sometimes more) of cutting edge technology that will fancy your chances of getting employed and start a new career.
Hey Jason, nice to know you are back home. I am the same person from Jersey City class that met you during the Infragistics presentation at Parsipanny. How's Ghekko doing.

Gekko is doing fine last time i checked. He was always walking in and out of lab all of the time because of his phone interviews, so its a matter of time before he lands something.

Congratulations on your hire at Infragistics Nainil. Seems like they hired a ton of SF grads. They seem like a good company with a cool, laid back culture.

And i had no IT experience what so ever before SF. I worked at bank before the masters program.. SF is the closest ive come to being in IT now that i think about it.

I think your location does play a part in the amount of leads you get. If youre in the NJ/NYC area you will get a ton.

Hey, what up there Jason02!
I can't believe you posted here again.

Pretty soon guys, pretty soon, I shall put a SF compilation website to help everyone considering SF. it'll be a resource to consider prior to slapping down 17k (i hear it's now 18k).

i'll try to keep it neutral. but it's coming.

oh yeah. I learned to not really like recruiters. you kinda love 'em, but at the same time you just want to punch their noses in. those bastards.

Jason is over-stating my phone interviews during the lab sessions. But right now im getting more interviews than i can handle. SetFocus really gets you the ability (confidence) to get those interviews. The rest, however, is strictly up to you.

- my 83 cents.

I am at SetFocus now taking their 4th quarter 2006 C# master program. I came across their company less than a week ago, wednesday, and on Saturday I moved to New Jersey to take part in this.

I was accepted under contract, so I take the training for free, but will have to work for a year at reduced wages once the training completes, but I just look at it as another years experience before I start my job search.

It's a great program and the $17,000, if you pay it, is only going to cost you $175 a month to pay off in 15 years. If you move up $10,000/yr+ in your job search, it doesnt cost you anything.

Okay, here's my "guide" for anybody taking the SetFocus program in East Hanover, NJ.

If you are thinking about signing up with SetFocus, then this might help you as well.

http://edan.48thfloor.com/SetFocus

How many of you SetFocus marketing guys are running around this thread? jason02 and ajay614 are definitely advertisers. I don't know who all the anonymous posters are so I can't say about that.

EDIT: Actually, more like one guy with multiple accounts.

You know, i really don't blame you for thinking we're all setfocus advertisers.
I dont know who aday is, but Jason is not an advertiser. he was my classmate.

im not going to say where he's from, but i will say that he's a recent college graduate who was as clueless about .Net as I was.

Now we both got jobs. SetFocus didn't get us jobs. SetFocus gave us the foundational technical knowledge to pass those interviews and the like. Knowing this consequently gives us high levels of confidence. These two things, i think, are important to impress and ace interviews.

To paraphrase, SetFocus indirectly helps us to get the interviews. But from that moment on, everything is left up to us to actually secure a job.

I guarantee you, we do not work for SetFocus.