COMMUNITY COLLEGE AT PRIVATE SCHOOL PRICES!
Admissions:
While growing weary of my days of waiting tables and banquet managing, I came home one day to find an admissions letter which was addressed to my brother sitting on top of the trash can. As I was bored from the lack of direction in my life, I took 2 full minutes to fill it out, dropped it in the mailbox, and forgot about it. About a week later, I was shopping for a new bedroom set with a friend when I got the call to come in for an interview. I put the purchase on hold and scheduled to meet with the admissions counselor the very next day.
The interview was actually an instant admissions session provided that I dropped down the $40.00 "application fee." When looking over the courses of study, I saw that they had an Accounting program, but I was more interested in studying Finance. The counselor assured me that they had plenty of Finance courses and I could take as many as I liked as a Management major. I later found out that at the time they only had 3 Finance courses. As SATs are not required for admissions, you need only take a reading and math exam. The caliber of education required to pass these exams could not have been more than an 8th grade education.
The College Experience:
In high school, no matter how hard I studied I never found myself to be a straight A student. I got a few A's in certain subjects, but I never got all A's. Every single quarter that I attended Berkeley College's White Plains campus I got a perfect 4.0 GPA no matter how many courses I took at the same time. Rather than taking fluff courses for my electives I took courses that would have been required by a more rigorous program. After taking 18-19 credits every quarter for nearly 2 years and with only 6 months to go before obtaining my bachelors, it slowly dawned on me that I stood little or no chance of landing a job or getting into a good grad school program from this school.
I got in touch with a school which I had briefly attended after graduating from high school. I was horrified when the Dean of the School of Management confided in me that he had never heard of Berkeley College and asked to see course catalog. He flipped to the back and noticed that many of the faculty lacked PhDs. I knew that I was screwed. Despite my grades, he considered most of my coursework to be non-transferable nonsense. Fortunately, he did see that I had taken so many electives that satisfied the core curriculum, that if I was to transfer that I could graduate in as few as 2 semesters. My decision was simple, all I needed to do was get out of Berkeley.
Exit Experience:
Upon contacting the Dean from the Westchester Campus her demeanor quickly changed when she learned that the nature of my visit was transfer out of their school and hop to take an Associates Degree with me before leaving. Over the next few months they bounced me around the administration despite the fact that there was no rule in the catalog or Student Handbook which prevented me from withdrawing from the College. The fact was that it was far easier for me to return to my old school where I was not a success than it was for me to leave this school where I had 4.0 GPA and that I had always been a role model student.
I later learned that this school was a private for-profit institution through and through. Aside from the faculty, every person in the administration was rewarded with bonuses based on their ability to retain students and prevent them from transferring to other programs. The "Admissions Officers" are their glorified sales force. Just check out Linked In to see where these people have worked before coming to Berkeley and you'll find that they worked at another diploma mill or another for-profit institution. I am happy to learn that this "Dean" from the Weschester Campus has since been demoted to the role of an "Academic Advisor" at the Midtown NYC Campus. read more
