Year Up Reviews

Pros

Strong Mission: close the Opportunity Divide. Students are highly engaged and will lose stiped money if they don't pay attention to details. This is a great opportunity to teach skills that will change a young adult's life. The heavy use of Slack improves communication between staff, various departments, and students.

Cons

Pay is below market rate. Many managers are not good at plate management. Constantly making last-minute changes and announcements to staff, even though the process repeats itself every 6 months. Expectations from other departments and meetings will take up the majority of your class prep time. To gain real skills, students need and want detailed feedback, not just grades; this takes time. If you meet/eat with students on your break, it is hard to flex that time back out.

Pros

I enjoyed the experiences I had with my fellow scholars and my professors. For the time I was there, it was fun. I got experience with coding and realized I loved it.

Cons

Some situations it seemed like we were set up to fail. Some situations were panic attack inducing for no reason. Would have loved to spend more class time learning more but instead we had to waste it on basic english worksheets and grammar. I get that not everyone is at that level but it would have been nice to be separated from those underperforming. We had to take a test to get in already. Had a mentor from outside tell me that this program was doing more harm than good. Focused on the wrong scholars and not giving equal attention to everyone. The hair discrimination was apparent. Witnessed my male colleagues being coerced into cutting their hair. Put myself through being grilled about my hair styling choices. Got told that I would get reprimanded on internship because having twists in my hair "made it look like I just rolled out of bed". I experienced so many microagressions. To someone who was older, I saw the experience being compared more to high school. Couldn't be honest about the reason why I left because I left with so much ptsd. Elevator pitch was what brought me to tears and made me not want to come back. They shortened the 30 seconds to 10 seconds. And I didn't like the person I became after that. Wishing for others to fail is not how I wish to be. I'm working in a corporate setting now and I see how harmful this program was. Un-learnining the behaviors taught in this program was the hardest and I think it needs to be revamped. I'm a bit ashamed to say that I was recommended to this program by a friend of mine. She went to the NYC branch. I was not aware that our experiences would be the total opposite and upon letting her know of what happened, she was appalled.

Pros

Some of the kids are so kind, but majority are racist and homophobic (whether through internalization or systemic).

Cons

Racist, racist, racist. Many students have become mentally ill due to the trauma and pain they've faced from this program. Please avoid at all costs. Organization has high turnover rate for employees for a reason. The only ones who stay are also racists.

Pros

Pay and professional environment always

Cons

Sometimes can get a little overwhelming

Pros

- Networking, getting work experience, polish resume, internships and jobs after graduation.

Cons

- low pay -lots of time wasted repeating info or doing useless activities, students don't need to be in class for 8 hours or even have classes on fridays.