Dear Jon,
I'm sorry to hear you had an unpleasant outcome from your time at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. As a former student of IIN and current owner of a private health counseling practice, I feel it necessary to repond to your allegations since it does attempt to tarnish the reputation of a school to thousands of alumni.
First, I acknowledge that I did not know you during your time at the school, nor did I hear first hand what any IIN or Columbia representatives said to you or the tone in which they said it.
What I CAN report, though, is that during my entire learning experience while studying health counseling, and in any contact I have had with the school and the employees of it in the 3 years since I've graduated, never has anyone used a tone of voice or exhibited anything even remotely resembling "callous treatment" as you have described. In fact, I always joked that there must be something in the water that makes them all have such a calm, comforting, and compassionate demeanor and tone.
I do not believe you got this treatment, but am convinced that due to the fact that you made a mistake and have not accepted your responsibility in the mistake, you have adopted the time old tradition of blame and perhaps convinced yourself of a few white lies.
I won't argue with how many notices you got to take your test, because that is silly. The fundamental question you need to ask yourself and anyone reading your report should ask themselves is, "Why should a school have to remind you x number of times to take a test, and if you don't get those reminders and, therefore don't take your test, should they then argue incessantly on your behalf with the ivy league institution that, while offering extra accreditation is it's own separate entity, and had cleary laid out requirements to get said extra accreditation?"
Also, being a former student of IIN, I and countless others can attest to the fact that you were not only reminded through email (which I admit can be overlooked if you have a busy inbox) when a test was issued and needed to be taken, but also on the online student forum, by your personal counselor who you worked with over the phone, by Joshua Rosenthal many, many times in class, and it was plastered throughout your syllabus and handouts in your class folder. In fact, it got annoying to me how many times they mentioned in class that you had x amount of days to complete a test and reminded us of how many people had not completed it yet. All I kept thinking was "how could anyone not have taken such a short, easy, open book test by now?"
Can you acknowledge that it was very understanding of them to have passed you despite the fact that you had not completed your requirements? Throughout my four years as an undergraduate, and my three years of graduate school, I never saw a professor or administrator pass a student if they had not fulfilled the requirements (i.e. handing in all papers, taking tests, attendance if applicable) of a class. Instead you either get failed or the more generous "I" for incomplete. It does not matter the money you already paid for the credits or that you may have done everything else. And why is that? Because, as an adult, it is your responsibility to fulfill your obligations, and if you don't you suffer some sort of consequence.
**I encourage anyone reading Jon's rip off report to regard it as an inaccurate smear and a result of anger from someone not accepting responsibility for a mistake that was incredibly difficult to make.
Why file a report here? Ripoff Report is a permanent record! Other complaint sites copy our content then remove reports for money.
