Ascende Learning – Getting Started

If your kids are excited about Java programming, go to Ascende Learning. Ascende is the best place in this area for these classes. The instructor is very knowledgeable, and has great teaching skills: clear and easy to understand. Not only this, she demonstrates great care for her students and will go the extra mile to help her students succeed. For example: this year AP tests have changed format and time because of coronavirus. Ms. Wen proactively added extra classes for all her students, without charge, and has even helped students after the class’ scheduled end date. I feel that she puts students’ needs in first priority and cares very much about their success. My child has been to three different places to learn Java since 6th grade, but this is the best one and I wish I knew Ascende earlier.

My son attended Ms. Wen’s USACO Bronze class. The course curriculum is well defined. Ms. Wen brings a lot of energy to the session. I am happy that my son cleared USACO Bronze in Dec 2020.

I learned a lot from this course, I took the bronze java class and will be taking the silver one soon, I loved the organization and the grouping of individual USACO problems, it allowed me to better understand the best way to solve a certain problem. The teacher is well versed in the subject and very helpful!

Victor is a fantastic programming teacher, and has a great background in competitive coding. My son Ethan loved his class. Victor assigned questions that challenged the class, and brought out the students’ full potential. He explained the difficulty of coding for competitions and helped students with problem solving skills. He inspired my son. Now he looks forward to the summer Bronze class.

My son just started the USACO bronze level online course last Fall with limited knowledge in Java. After three months of learning, he has got the full score in USACO Bronze level test. It was felt Ms.Wen's class is very efficient and well organized, Students can achieve good results with limited amount of time. Ms. Wen is there to help personally if student encounters problems. This is also one of the advantages of Ms Wen's course over other online course. We highly recommend Ms Wen's Usaco courses.

Dear Mrs. Wen, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. I only started to prepare for the APCS A exam 2 months before the exam day. Although I did have some previous coding knowledge, I was very much behind, and I had a lot to learn. Your course prepared me thoroughly for the AP exam. Under your guidance, I quickly grew more fluent in Java. During class, you answered my many questions; after class, I would always go back and look at all the corrections you made on my work. Before I knew it, I had filled up an entire notebook on Java alone.I scored a 5 on the APCS A exam, and I owe most of my success to your course. Thank you for your help, and I hope for the success of your other students. Again, thank you so much

The instructor is not a mechanical person that merely spits out information and expects the students to regurgitate it, but is instead a kind-hearted individual who is willing to tailor her curriculum/lessons to the needs of each individual student. She understands what each student is going through and tries to connect on a truly personal level. She checks for understanding and tries to bring the best out of each student, while still keeping each class short, brief, to the point, understandable, and most importantly, fun.

As a student, I liked how structured the course was.Your course has a great blend of learning algorithms & applying them in practice (which I failed to find in other learning avenues).

My daughter started with fundamental Java Programming class. This is the best class to start programming! The lecture was very precise and fun, once she developed the interest she was able to learn Java quickly. After each lesson the homework assignment is very organized and carefully graded before the next lesson. She enjoyed the class discussions and made some nice friends as well.

We learned a lot of the basics. We also learned the concepts as well as how they are used in programs. The teacher was great and the content of the course was good. I also liked that we didn’t only do practice with certain concepts but incorporated what we learned into fun java programs like Blackjack and CozaWozaLoza.

Thank you so much for not just teaching and guiding me even during the current situation, but also genuinely caring about all of your students individually. This (attached screenshot of AP score of 5) wouldn’t have been possible without you!

The lessons were well explained and organized, and taking a self paced course provided a lot of flexibility. I learned a lot through this course and would highly recommend it.

Thank you so much for your guidance and help. I passed this weekend’s Bronze contest with a perfect score (1000/1000) with one and a half hour to spare! I started the Silver contest but only was able to solve for 5 total test cases. Again, thank you for teaching me about algorithms and data structures. You helped me pass bronze.

My son took Ms. Wen’s AP Computer Science class. Ms. Wen was extremely dedicated to helping her students succeed. She gave thorough feedback for everyone and even extended the class by one week to accommodate for the new AP testing schedule this year which is of great help.

This class is very helpful. The teacher is well-versed in the subject and is very patient with her students. She is very good at explaining concepts and has cleared up many confusions that I had. I highly recommend.

I have just completed this course around 5 weeks ago, and believe me this class was great. I have learned a lot from this class and it was very fun. This course has made me enjoy coding a bit more and made me a bit more interested in coding. I highly suggest you to take this course if you are a gamer like me. You learn a lot about game design, and you get to play your own games that you create!! Because this class was fun, I will go on to take other classes at Ascende learning too. Have fun!

The course doesn't hold your hand nor leaves you aimless: A good balance of examples/explanation and individual practice. The USACO Course also possessed a great balance of teaching algorithms & implementing them, hence the course was more engaging than alternatives.

The course was very good and Victor was a great teacher at explaining concepts to students as well as being patient while helping them.

This class is great for students wanting to pass USACO Bronze and Silver. Ms. Wen is very helpful both during class and for homework. The lessons are well structured and allow the students to learn about data structures and algorithms that may be needed during USACO. The teacher hand picks problems from previous USACO contests in order to practice certain algorithms and data structures. I would definitely recommend this class for students to practice and prepare for USACO.

I really liked the classes, especially the ones that were in person. I think that the amount of time you give us for working on problems is a good amount of time, so that we can get started with finding a solution and we can work on it later, but we still have a good sense of the problem. I think it would be nice to give optional practice problems (other than homework). Overall, I think that the classes were very helpful and enjoyable.

Happy New Years! 2019 has ended, and I just want to thank you for your help this year. In the past, I had to learn Pascal but I never really understood it. I thought that Java would be very hard, but your teaching made it seem easier! Thank you so much for your help this year, especially for giving me the videos (I’m on lesson 9 right now) I really really appreciate it, and I hope that our next year would be even better!

I have taken the Bronze and Silver Java classes, and the teacher is superrr helpful. She is unhesitant to help anyone, and will answer all questions. Not only does the teacher get through the perfectly-paced curriculum, she also makes learning java fun, with an engaging voice and way to teach. This class is super helpful if you want to compete in USACO.

I enjoyed this class a lot! Ms. Wen taught many useful concepts that helped me to do many Silver problems. Like others have said, this class is quite helpful even if you haven’t passed Bronze yet. I will definitely continue with the Silver 2 class.