Complete waste of money. There were over 144 participants and $850 per person, they are getting $122,400 for 15 hours of virtual teaching. Predatory and useless material. read more

"Where's Dorothy?" Ten years ago, the answer might have been that I was buried knee deep in books at the San Francisco Public Library... In 2010, I'm alive, well...and taking a short story writing course with Shimon Tanaka at : "The Stanford Online Writer's Studio" continuingstudies.stanford.edu/courses/onlinewriters.php and you can too. "Courses are open to all adults and all levels of writers are encouraged to enroll." That's what the website says, but here's the gosh-darn truth... This is one of the best writing programs available. Its both flexible and challenging . And both the teachers and your fellow students will stretch your "mental muscles." You'll do a lot of writing and read a lot of material...but you'll come away from the program with a new-found respect for what it takes to be a good writer. Trust me, on this. See you soon..........D. read more

Stanford Continuing Studies - From "pics of the Stanford University" - Adult Education Near Me - Stanford, California

Quite a number of low quality courses, while there is some gems and excellent instructors. Stanford continuing studies is a waste of time and money. The people that run the program are rude and cold. Charles Junkerman and Elana Hornstein have run the program into the ground and I am very disappointed by Stanfords poor performance. The people that need the program need to improve the quality of the classes and how the program is run. Several teachers are teaching classes just to promote themselves. Photography class was awful, so was a career class and product management class. read more

Enjoyed taking my 4-5 day course here in Winter 2019. Found it beneficial and worth my time. Wish I lived closer to this school so I can take more classes but the one I attended was held at the GSB. read more

I've taken two five-star classes here, one one-star class, and one two-star class. 5-star class: Matt Abraham's "How to Create and Deliver Online Presentations" was fantastic. I used everything I learned in this class to really up my presentation game. 5-star class: Danielle Harlan's "The Exceptional Leader" was a super-fun and insightful two-day workshop (in-person) where I learned many practical insights into being a better leader. 2-star class: Yoni Mayeri's "Introduction to iPhoneography" was literally 3 straight hours of lecture with almost no time to try out the hundreds of features she covered. I was exhausted after the first class, and could barely remember anything I learned, so I never attended the second class (which looked like 3 more hours of lecture). 1-star class: I took a coaching class with some guy who was a new-age scam-artist, who should never have made it past the Continuing Studies screeners. We sat in a circle discussing various new-age, Buddhist, and vague spiritual topics. I hope this guy is no longer teaching here. read more

Having gotten my diploma, then putting it neatly into a nice frame, and finally hanging it straight on the wall in my office above my clean glass desk, I will have to say publicly here what I have been saying privately for years... there is no bigger fan than I am of the Stanford Continuing Studies Department, it is perhaps the best extension-based University program in the world. The courses, teachers and staff, are world-class in every measure. In fact, you will, in many cases, find yourself being taught by the very best professors that Stanford has to offer. Several of my thirteen course teachers were Stanford faculty that had been awarded Excellence in Teaching awards from their various departments or in a few instances, University-wide awards. You just can't get any better instruction anywhere and although the prices per unit have risen dramatically, they are still well-worth it for the intellectual and spiritual value you will derive from them. After all, an education is the greatest gift that you can give someone or give yourself and also something that can never, ever be taken away. The C.S. staff is also amazing, from the top on down, everybody is friendly and efficient. If you have questions, they answer them right away. A+ for everyone. Some of the courses I completed were; Music Appreciation, Leadership, Hemingway & Fitzgerald, The Jazz Pianists, Archaeology & the Bible, Gothic Cathedrals, Beginning Spanish, The Jazz Singers, Financial Planning 1 & 2, Financing the High-Tech Startup, Jazz & the Concert Hall and the Invention of American Movies. Taking the Startup Course helped to get my angel-invested company, "Compareitall.com financed so I got the most out of that one until the whole internet bubble crashed, then took us all down. And my Spanish course got IGETC'd by West Valley so I avoided taking 2 years of Spanish at Berkeley along with all of the C.S courses that I took before applying to CAL transferred in, so I saved a boatload of money there too. Yea for Stanford and for me too. Personally, I love Stanford, all of it with a total love. I love the libraries, the parks, the museums, the churches, the stadiums, the bookstores, the golf course, the cafeterias, the pools and on and on. Often times when the weather is warm, I just drive up from San Jose, park my car and walk around with my business number forwarded to my cell so I can do two things at one time. The campus is gorgeous, with all of the oak trees, walking paths and sandstone buildings to feast your senses upon. The smells, the feeling of peace, the happy tourists and students going back and forth on bikes or with cameras just add to the bubbling inner excitement that you get when you enter Stanford's space. In my opinion, Stanford is the finest university in the world and if I had my choice to go to any school, I would choose it over any other. read more

Just thought to write this up. Stanford University Continuing Studies Program is as good as it can possibly get. Try this on for size: Last spring I signed up for Jack Rakove's course on The American Founders. He assigned 8 books to read (that was a LOAD!) All eight authors showed up in person and spoke at the course. One of them, Annette Gordon-Reed, won the Pulitzer Prize for History two days later. So, four of the eight authors turned out to be Pulitzer Prize winners. The course was just totally over-the-top great! read more

This 4 STAR rating is an average of my ratings for the classes I attended, listed below: SPA 01: Beginning Spanish (Summer session) - Rating: 5 STARS - Taught by Hae-Joon Won - Prof. Hae-Joon by far has been one of my favorite Spanish instructors ever in my life. Class was structured well and requires heavy participation. I took it for a grade which means I had to do the homework. In the end, it forced me to get more out of it. I really got to know the students in my class too. Highly recommended. WSP 236: Women Leaders- Mastering Influence, Authenticity, and Power - Rating: 5 STARS - Taught by Dikla Carmel-Hurwitz and Denise Rabius - Helped me identify strengths and areas for improvement. Requires heavy participation. Great leadership class for women. WSP 75: Effective Non-verbal Communication - Rating: 4 STARS - Taught by Jeff Cabili - Helped me identify areas for improvement. To this day, what I learned there is something I keep in mind when doing presentations. WSP 177: Digital Photography Basics- Getting to Know Your Camera - Rating: 2 - Was taught by Joel Simon - Instructor was incredibly knowledgeable, easygoing and well-prepared which I appreciated. It just took a long time to start learning core photo topics (aperture, shutter speed, composition). Too much time I think was spent on background/history. Heavily lecture. Drawback- There isn't really any opportunity to get instruction on how to apply topics to your own camera. WSP 19: Negotiation Mastery - Rating: 2 - Was taught by Jessica Notini read more

Worst photography class ever. The description should be 'instructor shares shots of his cute daughters'. The daughters are super cute, but despite the accolades that Stanford claims for Joel Stein, his pictures of his most beloved subject are only subpar. After a whole hour of going through his drive, the class shared their own respective pictures and there was nothing - NOTHING - educational about his feedback. He was almost scared of displeasing the students. Understandable. But educate your students in some other way! Joel himself is a nice guy, but I don't want to pay people so much just because they are nice folks. Unfortunately I did not think to research these offerings by Stanford Extension on Yelp before signing up. And to this day I seethe and remain sorry for losing a couple hundred quid for one of the most boring, uneventful, useless class of my life. If you want to figure out the arcane functionality of your fancy DSLR, look elsewhere. Have signed up the hubby for a weekend seminar at the Aperture Academy and have high hopes from the reviews. read more

I've taken some classes here. The best classes I took were a medical classes, some rotated through speakers on different topics. They were excellent, super well organized, incredibly useful with the result of making me want to go there should I ever be in dire medical straits. In fact all their medical classes have been excellent, including their mini-med series, and especially anatomy led by a hand surgeon - super awesome. Their jazz program is amazing, and some of their random offerings, on baseball for instance, were great. Business classes are mixed, depending on the instructor. Actually a lot depends on the instructors. I've had non-Stanford professors that were enthusiastic and eager to impart knowledge, Stanford professors that are just as amazing and wise as you'd hope, and once and a while a Stanford professor that so seems to hate teaching that you're just like, whaaa??? But that's rare. I took a few writing classes here and for the price wasn't impressed. The instructors were variably uninterested or unavailable. The student demographic seems markedly different between the online and in person classes. The online classes populations were from all over the world. This meant there were a lot of timezone differences that made for some pretty disjointed classes. The disjointedness was complicated by some students who were needy, or who would complain about the slightest reading load, and many/most who never read others' work. I haven't yet taken a writing class that hasn't been populated by people yearning to write their life story, regardless of what the class is supposed to be about. But although I personally might look elsewhere, there seem to be some people that really get a lot out of it - so don't let me dissuade you. The organization itself is super responsive. The staff are efficient and nice. Their online registration is easy and excellent. You can drop classes if you do it really quickly and that's an option if they turn out to be not for you. (They also cancel classes if there's not enough interest.) Some of the online forum software they use is clunky but other software tools are fine. The campus is of course beautiful if you take classes on campus. read more

I have taken a few courses here and they have all been pretty good. As long as you do your due diligence about the instructor, I think its good learning. read more

Accent Reduction for Non-Native Speakers of English - I took this class. I got money back since I didn't learn anything. The instructor forced all students to pronounce bad way as if "This is bad pronunciation that Chinese people speak! Repeat after me!". He continued how bad German and Japanese people pronounce. It seems like the instructor is changed. The new person is teaching two same classes. Someone from school administration should monitor this class. read more

I have been trying to work with this studies group to get online for a class and it is IMPOSSIBLE. I am in tech and i work with tons of ONLINE stuff and this class registration and getting on line SUCKS. DEAL WITH ME. Please. read more

I took an online writing course with Sarah Stone called "Discovering Your Novel's Secret Center" It was mediocre at best. Stone never really delved into anything very deeply and didn't deliver any incisive intelligent anything. The drop date was three days after the class started and one day after the teacher posted the first assignment. How on earth can anyone figure out in less than 24 hours if a class is going to work out? The coup de grace was when one of the students critiqued my work in the most snarky, attacking way. I think she was secretly angry with me because I wasn't participating full on -- a fact i discussed with the teacher early on due to time constraints. Instead of defending me or calling out this behavior in the interest of keeping the forum safe and supportive for all the students, she noted that it was good for me to get a negative reading. REALLY??? Stanford is coasting on its reputation for this one. The quality of instruction was not great. Stone's posted lectures were very long but with little helpful or incisive content. read more

The continuing studies program is an embarrassment to the Stanford name. I signed up for an in-person live class. Then they changed it to a digital online class because of COVID19. Then they wouldn't offer a refund even though the course was no longer in the original promised format AND didn't function properly, AND even though I asked for a refund well within the request date (that wasn't acknowledged or respected). I was looking forward to spending thousands of dollars on courses with this program when live enrollment opened again. Now I don't trust these stingy scam artists with my money. Even worse that they were so inflexible during a pandemic when unemployment is sweeping the country. GROSS. Furthermore, every single online course from Udemy to LinkedIn offers self paced video recordings, group resources, and downloadable digital materials. Stanford's digital system is a clunky mess that makes no use of the online resources other learning resources offer online. The courses are outrageously priced and low quality compared to the thousands of others available online. Shame on you, Stanford. Shame on you. read more

Kelly McGonigal's classes are life-changing, intellectually stimulating, and enjoyable. Every single one of them!

I've been very disappointed by the selection of course and that there's little variety from semester to semester. I took an advertising course that was interesting and a linguistic course that was absolutely insufferable! read more

Liked this place a lot! Had good memories while taking classes here!

Anyone interested in signing up for writing courses offered in the Continuing Studies Program must be careful: some courses are taught by instructors who are NOT professionals in the field. Currently (Fall 2013), there is a three-part on-line course about writing a nonfiction book taught by someone who has written literary short stories but has NEVER authored a published a book, fiction or nonfiction. He is a "former Stegner fellow" (a Stanford fellowship program). Stegner fellows are SO FAVORED by the Continuing Studies Program (because the fellows have to teach a number of classes "for free" as part of the program) as to devalue much of the program itself. They should give away these courses for free to students rather than passing them off as being taught by professionals. Before you sign up for a writing course, check out an instructor's credits on Amazon. If they haven't been published in the field in which they are teaching, don't take the course. It will be about as useful as trying to learn how to tune up a Ferrari roadster in a course taught by a bicycle mechanic. read more