My Experience with Launch School’s first Assessment JS109
I want to share with you how I went through my preparation for the first LS assessment and talk about some studying tips that I followed, hoping it may be helpful for you.
Let us start with the written assessment:
After spending one month on JS101, I thought I was ready to take the written assessment and all I need is a little preparation with the study guide, but that wasn’t the case, there were more things to be considered rather than just studying the materials.

I remember exactly the time when I started reading the rules about the assessment, how my confidence disappeared and I got scared especially when I read about the non-technical grade and how important it is for the capstone program. In that moment literally all I thought about is the word “communication” and I remembered how when I registered at launch School, I got an email from Chris with a few things to do before I start, one of them was encouraging me to get involved with LS community in the chat rooms and forums.
I remembered every time I opened slack seeing other students talking about some topics, but I never tried to share with them or even to interduce myself. Beside the communication you also should be able to explain the concepts accurately and write them down in your own words.
I was not confident with the non-technical part; how should I deal with that??
I spent two days after reading the rules just trying to get calm and handle the mental stress; I was very anxious. Then I decided to start from the beginning! I needed to regain my confidence.
I started reminding myself that I am doing mastery learning and I should be more patient and that being in a rush was neither helpful nor going to save me time.
Also, for me being a student in LS is a combination of new language, new materials, and new community. It is a whole different methodology of learning that I never tried before neither at school nor university.
so, I needed to strengthen my weak points in communication, writing and explaining things or I would never be able to pass the test.
I started over with the Introduction to JS (the preparation book), I spent a week rereading the concepts and wrote explanations in my own words, after that I felt better prepared to start with the study guide. I followed the main points one by one, reading about them again, writing code examples, explaining them with correct language trying to be as accurate as possible.
I also finally tried to get involved with LS community and make friends. It was not easy for me; it took me time. My first study session was embarrassing, actually I had registered for it and then totally forgot about it until the TA send us a message with the zoom link, I didn’t know what I have to do, it was my first zoom meeting, with people I had never talked to before, I was very nervous and I remember how I didn’t answer the TA when he asked me a question about ‘map’ method which I studied a few minutes before the meeting, but anyway I was happy, I finally did it.
After that session I talked with my friend Katarina Rosiak, then we started studying together. She was my first study partner, and she encouraged me a lot to talk to others. We did a lot of pair study sessions, we were giving each other small pieces of code, talking about them, and giving each other feedback. We also did a test similar to the assessment, we wrote 20 various questions, exchanged them and tried to simulate the test by putting a timer for 3 hours, after we finished we exchanged the answers and graded them.
This was very helpful in many ways, starting with writing the questions which you must solve first to make sure they are good and cover all the topics in the study guide, finishing with the grading process which was quite interesting and useful to learn new approaches to answer the questions by seeing someone else’s solutions.
After one month of practicing, I was ready to do the written assessment and I finally did it.
The Interview:
This interview was my first live coding interview, so I had to prepare very well.
For this step, I needed to work on timing myself during solving the problems and working on my stress level, I have to stay calm as much as I can during the interview, since if I get stressed I won’t be able to think clearly and solve the problems in time.
I attended many study sessions with TAs and did live pair coding with other students to get over my fear of doing interview with someone I may have never talk to before and they were very helpful in both learning new techniques and improving communication skills, even when I spent my first study sessions not being active that much but I was trying to observe other students communicate with each other and asking questions and talking about their solutions.
I also started practicing with the small problems, I solved all of them first then I started like others doing random problems on Codewars and HackerRank.
In the beginning I ignored the timing a bit, I wanted to make sure that I can understand the problem very well and solve it.
I spent good time practicing PEDAC process because breaking down a problem to separate parts makes it easier to solve and writing a good algorithm to follow it. I highly recommend practicing to get in a place that you can write a high level algorithm then expand any steps that need it.
After finishing the small problems, I started noticing some improvement, but that was not enough for me. I think for live interview, it is better to be over prepared than just prepared.
I did various type of Codewars problems around levels 7 to 5 and for each one I did PEDAC process with a timer, then I solved all the small problems again using the same approach (tracking the time and PEDAC).
You should be able to do the easy problems in less than 20 minutes, they must feel easy to solve and the medium problem in 20 minutes or less if you can.
You will be able to solve problems in more efficient way than the first time you solve them, you will love those days that add new techniques to your problem solving process and you will get very excited as you solve problems faster.
It took me another month after the written assessment to do the interview, I know it was a long time and maybe I could do it faster, but I enjoyed each day and I learned a lot more than I thought . I do not regret spending that time, it was totally worth it.
Tips for the written assessment:
1- Write about each concept in the study guide, understand them well and make sure to write code examples that illustrate each of them.
2- Repeat concepts again and again until to be able to talk about them and explain them easily and precisely.
3- Do peer study sessions and try to explain things to others, ask questions and let them ask you questions, that will be very helpful since discussing things with others let you understand them much better.
4- If you don’t have much time to do many study sessions, try to practice by yourself, Imagine that you want to explain something to others and do it aloud specially when stuck on a concept.
5- Do not ignore doing some coding while you are studying for the written assessment, try to practice with the small problems, they will help you to fully comprehend the materials.
6- Try to simulate the test by writing questions and answering them under a time limit. The assessment time is 3 hours and there are around 20 questions so it is about 9 minutes for each question, try to solve each question in 8 minutes so you will have some extra time to review some questions. To do that you need two timers one for the 3 hours and one for each question and do not forget to submit your answers before the time ends because the assessment isn’t submitted automatically.
7- Practice typing your answers in the appropriate format. Even if you type fast, during the assessment you need to focus on answering the question correctly and not waste your time searching for the correct markdown format to do it. So, it is better to be prepared and familiar with the normal markdown and GFM.
8- Do not rely on searching for answers even if the assessment is open book since the time is limited and you need every second, you will not have that time to search for answers in the course and even if you do, you should be able to answer and explain concepts in your own words not copy paste the material. I suggest having your own notes if you want to look something up. There are many apps for notes I used boost.io to write my notes and practice typing with markdown as well and there is also notio.so which I found very helpful too.
9- On the test, solve the questions in order, there maybe be some question related to a previous one and it is helpful to have answered it before.
10- Try to stay calm as much as possible and try to do something to help you relax before taking the test like going for a walk, doing some yoga or listening to your favorite music, being nervous will not help you instead it will block your mind.
11- Last thing, do your best and if the test did not go well or as you expect from the first time, do not give up you still have chance to do it again.
Tips for the interview:
1- Start with LS small problems, for the first time solve them in order to make sure that you finish all the easy problems before starting with the medium level even though they are easy, they are crucial for solving the medium problems.
2- Practicing the PEDAC process with each problem will make solving the problem easier, you should be able to go through the PEDAC process step by step and write a high-level algorithm before you start coding.
3- do random problems from Codewars or HackerRank, try to practice with problems with level 7, 6 and 5 but don’t get upset or give up if you encounter some problems that may be on level higher than the test level or maybe you are not able to solve in 20 minutes(or more), I think that happened with most of us, you will not be able to solve every problem.

4- Again, do pair coding with other students and attend study sessions with TA’s to get yourself familiar with the interview environment, you should practice under pressure of a limited time while talking about your solution and then ask for feedback.
5- Also, if you don’t have time to do many study sessions, you can record yourself solving a problem, then listen to the recording, give yourself feedback and try to improve your weak points.
6- Repeat the small problems more than once, they are really helpful and cover various type of problems.
7- Practice until you feel that you are ready to solve any medium problem in time and the easy problems become intuitive.
8- Finally, make sure to have a good night sleep before the interview to clear your mind and I suggest doing easy problems before the interview, maybe two or three just as a warm up, you do not need to practice with difficult problems until the last minute, that will distract you and make nervous if you weren’t able to solve the problem.
I hope that this article will be helpful for you, just keep in mind that everyone has their own style of studying and what is suitable for me may not be appropriate for you, so go with what makes you feel good and satisfied with your progress and don’t forget to have fun; Since we are all studying from home, we know how hard is it without friends, so stay connected with others and you will feel the difference in your journey, they will make it easier, more exciting and you well never feel alone in this.