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San Diego’s newest corporate darling, Bridgepoint Education
I started Ashford in late 2011, with 9 transferred credits from my prior military work that I completed in the past. Because I am prior military, I attend Ashford with reduced tuition costs, free books, no charge for a technical fee, and so on. My classes wind up costing me about $750.00 per class. Not one cent more. This is very helpful seeing how the VA pays for $718.00 of this and the rest are covered by my pell grants. In other words, I have little to no cost to me, for going back to school as prior service. I'm sure you can understand, why someone would not pass up that kind of opportunity! (Be realistic here folks, would you? I didn't think so.) I have completed several classes at Ashford and maintained a 4.0 GPA. Yes, the first class you complete is easy. It's stupid easy, but it does prepare you for the online classroom experience which is essential. After that, your classes start to become a little more challenging. I only have two complaints about the school. Some of the tests/quizzes feel like their rigged. You'll have a question on there with more than one option as the right answer, and when you chose one, you're stuck praying that the instructor picked that one as the right answer and not the other choice that was also right. It almost feels at times you're set up to fail on the tests, but not very often. If you try to let the instructor know what happened, they'll either ignore it (if they don't want to be corrected by a student) or in my case they'll send you an email actually saying in so many words, "you may be right, and it may be stupid I agree, but what can you do?" that was the first time in my life I felt put off by instructor who couldn't care less. What she could have done was correct the graded mistake, but she didn't. Another problem is the financial aid office. If you don't stay on top of them and badger them half to death, your paperwork will get screwed up and lost in the shuffle. So far in less than a year, I have had to call about 6 different discrepancies and try to sort everything out. Infact, right now I'm waiting on my financial aid advisor to call me about an issue that's popped up about her not submitting my paperwork to the VA to get my tuition for the upcoming school year rolling. But to be fair, almost all university financial aid offices across the country have these same nightmare stories. All in all, my experience with Ashford has been a good one. To be honest, it highly offends me when people want to look at me like I'm stupid for letting them know that I go to school online and will hold my diploma in the same reguard as a diploma from any, "brick and mortar," school. Just because I am going to school online doesn't mean I'm stupid, ignorant or some poor soul from the south who's too stupid to go to a, "real school." I'm just like anyone else, trying to get a quailty education with hopes of getting a decent job after college.— June 20, 2012 11:31 a.m.