Arizona State University : Phoenix

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One Student Review of Arizona State University : Phoenix

• Kevin

  September 14, 2022

  This school was a waste of my time and money. Here is my entire final email of requesting a partial refund before being told that they will not refund me one bit:

  09/10/2022

  To whom it may concern,

  I am writing to let you know that I have had a horrible experience here at ASU. I took college classes in person at Stark State College here in Ohio from 2005 to 2009 and obtained 2 associates degrees in Mechanical Engineering Technology, and Design Engineering. About 3 or 4 years later, after I finished college, I decided to go back to get a higher degree, but found out that a 12 hour shift and 1 class in person was too much for me. I have recently started checking for online classes about a year ago and was exploring my options on where to go. When I found out about ASU and the online Mechanical Engineering program back in May of this year, that really got my interest, especially on how the program works. It really excited me in a way where I could do classes on my own time and get a bachelors degree with a possibility of going higher in related engineering programs, particularly Quality, Reliability, and Statistical engineering.

  I started my transfer of my credits and got a notification that it was successfully transferred by June 9. I was watching on a daily basis for my status to change from “Pending”. After about 2 weeks, I decided to call to see if there was anything holding it up, just to be told that they do not have my credits. I talked to several different people over the course of a week or so, but Sara Brandt helped me with the process after that. It took about another 2 weeks just to find my credits. Once my credits was found, it took yet another 2 weeks just to go over them. All of that wasted time where they lost my credits had really upset me since I wanted to sign up early for classes so I can get better prepared and get refreshed on some of the topics again. Since I did not know where I was going to start, or if I was going to start at all, I just waited until they finished with my transfer. By July 26, I messaged Sara that my credits was transferred, but was still confused as to what was transferred. After she assured that I can just sign up for English 2 and Calculus 2, I was just going to start with that and finish with the rest of my transferring later.

  I initially tried to sign up for English 2, but didn’t realize that all of the session A classes were taken. My success coach caught that and told me that I still need a class for session A. So I chose Calculus 2. By that time, it was already within the first week of August and classes started very soon. I had just enough time to get a book and some other supplies just for the class to start. My issue was, I did not have nearly enough time to refresh my mind at all like I wanted to.

  When I took the class, and watched the first video of integration by substitution, it only showed about 5 examples. It took me by great surprise that most of the homework problems had nothing to do with the video. I had to research each and every problem, which took me hours per problem. I tried various youtube videos and websites just to find possible answers in how to solve the problems. The next day, I tried to message my professor, Mark Ashbrook, that I am struggling in learning with this, and he just redirected me to Khans Academy, the tutoring center, and the discussion board to get help. I tried the discussion board. Not only was it confusing to read out the problems like “((5x^2-(x-2)) / ((e^x)+5)”, sometimes it took an extra day just for another student to answer me. It didn’t seem like it was even the right way leading to the answer, which confused me even further.

  I tried the tutoring there; not only did I have to wait awhile just to get a tutor, but it seems like not every student had the same resources. Some seemed like they were using a mouse pad trying to draw equations, in which it was mostly scribbles. All they did was help me with 1 problem then they were done, I had to be reshuffled back with another tutor. After 4 hours, not only did this seem to waste a lot of time, I did not learn much of anything from the tutoring.

  After a week of struggling, I messaged my academic advisor that I was struggling a lot, just for her to tell me that I was already passed my drop out date. This did not make me happy that it was so soon. I did not realize that I was already passed it when I messaged her. I just told her that I will wait until the test to see if I need to withdraw from the class. I was struggling so much that I did not have hardly any time to study the other chapters. When I looked at the discussion board the weekend before the test, someone made a post asking others, “does anyone think that this class seems indefinitely harder than the other calculus course you had taken?” At least 5 people plus myself agreed that it was much harder. I messaged the professor again shortly after that, this time requesting some help from him personally, but again, he re-directed me to Khans Academy website. It seems like he did not want to help me at all, and I started wondering what was the purpose of his job. He did not help or try to teach me anything. When I got to the test, since I hardly even went over some of the last chapters because of myself falling so behind, I did not do well. I did not know half the problems and only answered 6 out of 16 correctly. So I ended up having to withdraw from my class.

  All of this is highly upsetting to me since I expected more from this college. For how expensive this college is, they do not have hardly any reliable resources to help me learn. I did not see any hints or help from the homework. Also the problems did not reflect to what the examples were. They were much more difficult and there was nothing I could relate to. I had found some websites that could answer some calculus questions, but for a premium price, they could explain step by step on how it was done. It would have been very beneficial if I had access to a practice program at no extra cost to the students for self help in a much more reliable and quick way, without spending countless hours on researching problems. This practice section, which can be separated by the level of math your doing, can show detailed solutions and hints, one step at a time, to help you learn more efficiently and quickly. Doing the same problems, but with different numbers to help you learn the procedures of formulas and how they are solved would have been a game changer. I believe repetition is key to learning in math. Plus you have it in all one place to learn, without searching so many websites and videos outside the college, wasting countless hours.

  I had tried calling student aid and told them my entire story of what I had just wrote. I was trying to ask for a partial refund, since I was only in the class for 2 weeks, and had a bad experience. They told me there is no refund at all. I was highly upset at this, due to not only the poor learning I received there, but the fact that since the college had lost my credits in the beginning, and set me off by over a month, in which I could have been refreshing my mind on some of these classes, I fell behind and struggled. This is definitely not the experience I wanted. I was expecting to be able to get a great learning experience and to get a great upgraded degree. Instead, I had nothing but issues here.

  Because of all these issues here, I feel that I should be entitled for at least a partial refund due to the college losing my credits, which is not my fault, and the poor learning structures the college had. I did not learn anything while in class, and the professor did not help me one bit. I feel like this was entirely a waste of my time and money here, and will decide to go to a college in person since I will be able to get help quicker and more efficiently.

  Please respond with what you feel a fair resolution would be for the school and myself.

  Overall Score: (1.36/5.00)

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