Sanford Brown Institute Garden City This school is a joke! Garden City New York

I went to Sanford Brown Institute in Garden City to inquire about their DMU (Diagnostic Medical Ultrasound) Program, I was not ready to enroll in school, but I wanted to look into continuing my education.  I spoke with an advisor and she told me that I needed about 40 college credits with a biology influence to be considered as a candidate for the ultrasound program.  The advisor then advised me to go into the Medical Billing and Coding program, it would give me 35 transferable credits and I would just have to take 1 additional math and science course at a conventional college or online.  I thought this was definitely a great idea and I decided to go ahead and enroll in school.  The coding program was about $14,000, I got federal loans for about $10,000 and I had arranged a payment plan for the remaining $4,000.  I was enrolled in school and was scheduled to start September of 2012.  A few weeks after I enrolled and registered for school I got a phone call from my advisor that I would not be able to start in September and would have to wait until October.  I was upset and I called a few times to see if there were any students who dropped out.  School started in September and the day after the course began I got a call that I would be starting school immediately.  I was very upset because I did not know anything about the program, I never went to the orientation because I was supposedly starting the following month.  I went to school the next day (it was a friday) and of course I was written up because I was not aware of the uniform policy and I was counted an absence for the day before.  During a 6 week time frame we were given 3 absences, if we take more there must be documentation to be allowed to make up the hours and if you did not you had to repeat the class.  As expected I was upset, I was completely blindsided by all of these rules.  The next following months were alright, I taught myself most of what I learned just by following the textbooks.  Also when first enrolling and finding out more about the school, my advisor was informing me that 3 candidates from each group of classes gets a chance to interview with North Shore Long Island Jewish Hospital with an opportunity to do their internship with the hospital.  I strived to do my best because I wanted to advance my career the best I could and they made it seem like this was the way to do it.  During the winter months I got into a car accident and missed all 3 classes, of course with my luck it was my fourth absence in once of my classes, so I brought my accident report and I made up the hours.  A few days later my final was due and my flashdrive broke off into my computer and I just had the holder with no flashdrive in it.  I had a 100 average in this particular class and was not going to risk getting a lower grade because of this mistake, so I went home and I missed 45 minutes of my class.  I was 45 minutes over the allowed time missed, of course I did not have any documentation because I was driving.  I spoke with the director of my program, my teacher and the Dean of the school and they all told me that I had to complete the class from the beginning.  I was so upset because I had been doing so well during the course of the class.  I told them that that was completely over the top and I did not feel comfortable continuing my education there because there was no help or offer to help me figure this out.  I had no option, so the Dean said "Ok, than drop out" and pushed me off on her assistant.  After they saw how upset I was the Director of my program decided to let the 45 minutes slide and let me continue on to the next group of classes.  In the long run there was documentation on file from my car accident, because that covered me for all 3 classes I missed on the day of the accident, but I didn't need it at that point and the staff did not know that it was on file.  After all of the shenanigans I continued on and finished school with a 4.0 gpa.  I got into North Shore LIJ and went on my interview when I found out the Hospital was over an hour away from my house, there were no other locations and you had to do 9:00am to 5:00 pm.  I was completely crushed because I have my monthly bills due and I worked 5 days a week after school.  I myself had to decline the opportunity to go to North Shore LIJ.  I waited about a week and was assigned a new location for my internship.  I was excited to start and was very eager to do well, I showed up and it was a doctors office above a convenience store in an area that is not the safest.  I overlooked some of these negatives and went to work, my supervisor was not nice and I was told by the receptionists to "look busy".  I didn't know what that meant, but I was not getting a good feeling about this location.  I stayed that day for 8 hours and I made some copys of patient intake forms and sat at a little desk in the corner of a bunch of unorganized files.  After I left I started crying because I was so discouraged to know that I went from what they referred to as the "BEST" (North Shore) to somethat that could have been considered the worst all because I live on my own and had to get the bills paid (isn't this why I started to go to school in the first place, to have a better form of income?)  I called the Director of my program and asked for a site switch, I then went in for a meeting with him a few days later.  I was told by him that my expectations are too high and that I will never make it in life if I keep thinking this way.  During our conversation he pretty much made me seem like I was making myself out to be better than what I really was, but I always thought that to shoot high was the best idea to succeed.  At this point I was just aggrevated completely with the school.  I ended up waiting about 2 weeks and got a new location that I absolutely loved.  I was the first student from the school to go to this site so I was the first impression of the school in this office.  I ended up getting hired at my internship location and currently work there.  I need to now get certified and this entails taking a state test that costs $70 to register for the website and $300 for the actual test.  When enrolled students are told that the certification test is paid for by the school and that the website is a great idea to register with because they have a lot of useful information.  We were never told that in order to take the certification test it is mandatory to pay for the site.  All in all I ended up registering with the AAPC website and registered for the exam.  I called and called the school to get them to send the check for the test because there were only a few seats open.  The Director of the program was out sick and had no one covering for him and by the time I spoke with him I let him know that I was going to pay out of pocket for the test and would like to be reimbursed from the school because I could not let the few seats slip away, I had to get certified for my new employer.  The Director told me that I would not be reimbursed because "they don't work that way".  This was a general certification for medical coders, but in the future I would have to get certified again in the specialty that I work in (which is radiology), I asked the Director if the school could just pay for that and his statement was, "we will see what we can do when the time comes".  That is the last I have heard from the school.