Where NOT to go to school!!!!!

A few years back I decided that I wanted to improve my lot in life and to that end I initially decided that I would attend Capella College online. I went there for about 8 months and for various reasons I decided that this college was not for me and that I needed to take a break from school. I recently decided that I wanted to take up the college torch again. Mike & I had looked into the possibility of going to Kaplan online. We contacted them and the admissions rep, one very nice gentleman by the name of Dwight Fields contacted us. We started the looong process of filling out the initial entrance paperwork (online). We went in and changed our FAFSA and sent the confirmation to Dwight. We then talked to Trica, the financial aid adviser. She then transferred us back to Dwight. We talked to him for a bit longer. Then we got transferred to a Donna Herman, who was suppose to be our school adviser. This broad was, for lack of a better word, ditzy. At one point she bubbled "Isn't this fun?" Uh-huh, yeah right. We were then told that to insure that we were "serious about going to school we had to come up with a $95 admission fee which would not be part of our tuition and would this be a problem". We said it would be a major problem as we are on disability and can't afford that kind of a fee. We were then told of a scholarship that is available to students in financial need that they would be more then happy to help us get. We said sure, why not. We were told that we had to write a 250 word minimum essay on why Kaplan College, why now and why we needed this scholarship. OK, no problem there. At no point was it indicated that this essay had to be done today. We filled out more forms then told Dwight that we had to break for dinner. Our first phone call from him was at 2:00 p.m. and this was now after 6. We broke for dinner and I wanted to go for a walk. While Sandy was doing the dishes, we get an email with someone Else's information on it. Very sensitive information like SSN, address, phone ect. Whoops! Someone frucked up big time there. Dwight said he must have sent the information to the wrong person. NO!! Ya think!!!!???? That should have been our first major clue. He seemed to be alittle put out that we had to break for dinner. There was more information that he was trying to send to us but was not showing up in Mike's email fast enough. More phone calls ensued. He said he would call us back after checking on something. We waited a bit for him to call back, but finally decided that we would go ahead and take our walk. The phone was ringing while we walked out the door. Sheesh! Talk about over enthusiastic. I wondered aloud to Mike if perhaps he was working for a commission. I've dealt with used car salesmen who weren't as pushy. We get back and by this time I am mentally and physically exhausted, so while Mike was occupied with other things, let the phone ring......and ring............and ring. Mike calls Dwight back and he is wondering if something was wrong. We told him we had to run an errand. He starts pushing us to get the essay in right away. At first we reluctantly agree then decided that we needed to take a break and emailed Dwight that we would get to the essay later that evening and he would have it on his desk in the morning. We get another phone call from Dwight, again saying we HAVE to get this in immediately. Mike trys to tell him that we have hit a brick wall and need some down time and he puts the director of the admissions scholarships on the phone. Mike talks to her for a minute or two then says to me "You talk to her, maybe you can get through to her" and hands the phone to me. She trys to tell me that this damn essay just HAS to be in right now, that her staff is already working overtime to get us processed and that this is a one time only deal and if we don't get it in right now it won't be available later. I ask for just an hour, that this essay needs to be good and if it is going to be good we need to recharge our batteries and she tells me that if I give her a chance she will walk us through it to make it easier for us. Now how is she going to do that I might ask? All she is doing at this point is pressuring us to do something that we are willing to do if she just backs off and gives us an hour. We did not ask anyone to stay over and work overtime. I told her to forget it that we are no longer interested in going to Kaplan and hung up on her sorry ass. We get one more phone call which we did not pick up and whomever called did not leave a message on our voice mail.

We have since received a very insulting email from this lady saying that obviously we were not serious students if we needed to take a break. We have written an email to the head of Kaplan informing him of the practices of his Florida office (where we were going to go), the email we got with someone else's sensitive information on it and that we have no plans of ever going to Kaplan. We have also emailed the gentleman whose information we received by accident, telling him what happened and we are also going to try phoning him tomorrow. It just amazes me how hard these people were pushing us to get this one little thing done. Makes me really wonder if these people do get some sort of a commission if they get students in by a certain deadline. I mean, we were not going to be able to start classes until April 18, so what was the all fire rush to get us to submit an essay in less then 20 minutes? Did they wants us to do a sloppy job so they could say no to the help we were getting? Did they think that if they turned us down for the help on the admissions fee we would be able to cough up the money after all? Did they not want to give us the assistance? Gotta wonder.