Just Joined

[dhemphill]

I attended the Arlington, TX campus approximately 5 years ago. I graduated "with honors" (3.75) in September of 2003. I am still knee deep in my loans as I went through a rebelious period where I didn't want to pay them because of the lack of quality of education I received from ITT. Sallie Mae finally threatened to garnish my wages so I set up a repayment plan. Anyway, here's the story.

I enrolled in the CNS course and was in a class of 32 students. By the 4th quarter we were down to half of that, and ended up having 8 people walk to get their "degree". All but one of these people was over the age of 27. I'm a little foggy about my time there as I tuned it out over time, but I do know that when I registered, I was shown their job placement numbers. I found it hard to believe but I still went ahead and enrolled since I had a little one on the way and I wanted out of the warehouse job I was working. Once I finally graduated, myself and the other 7 graduates attempted to get leads from ITT as well as search on our own. At the time, the field was pretty dead here in the DFW metroplex, and nobody would even look at those of us holding ITT degrees. ITT would email us their job leads which were ALWAYS $9.00 per hour tech support jobs. This was about half as much as I was making at my warehouse job so I turned everyone of them down until they finally just quit sending me the information. There was talk between a group of us about a class action lawsuit, but since we were all older and had families and full time jobs, it just seemed to be too much to take on.

Was ITT the worst experience I've been through? Absolutely not. Was it worth the money involved? Absolutely not. Would I recommend it to anyone? NEVER.

As has been said several times here, they make it literally impossible to fail. The answers for every test or exam were given to us in the form of a "review sheet" which was literally taken word for word from the test. How they consider that learning I'll never know. The only reason I ended up with a 3.75 GPA was because my son was born on the day of the Novell final exam and I was unable to attend. They would not let me make up the test because my reason for being absent was not acceptable. One of the books we were using for CNS was an old WIndows 95/98 book. The class that came after us got bumped up to Windows 2000. I was really upset with my experience because my dad attended Control Data Institute in Southern California in the early 80's and ended up as a programmer for Disney. He's since retired, but I've been jealous of his success pretty much since I left ITT. I am still working for the same company I was while enrolled at ITT, but have pushed and fought my way into an Oracle DBA position. I can guarantee you that ITT had nothing to do with me getting the position I currently hold.

I'm sure there are people that have had a positive experience, and maybe even a life changing event after attending this school. But the overall concensus from everyone I talk to that attended ITT is that it is crap. My main reason for posting my story is to hopefully keep anyone that is my age from making the same mistake I did. ITT will NOT change your life. Look for other options.

Good luck with your class action suit... hope you get somewhere with it.

[sevenalive]

Thanks, i just read your story and it's much like everyone elses. Just to let you know, we are aiming to include current and former students in the c.a.l, but at this time i don't know how far back we can go. It still has to be presented in front of a judge and he has to deem it CAL status.

Anyway, i hope you will continue to visit, share specific stories (although probably painful and depressing, sharing is a good therapy) and be an active member.