I walked into SBI July just to check the school out and see what they had to offer. Next thing I know I was forced into a program (MBC aka Medical Billing and Coding) I have never heard of in my life and I was there to check out a different program. I asked if I could have a few days to think about it about but I was told I didn't have much time because classes were starting soon. I still asked if I could think about it for a few days because well you know going back to school is one of the biggest steps you'll ever do in your life.
The next day my admissions person called me and talked me into going I still wasn't sure I wanted to go but since she was a great salesperson and could probably sell the shirt off your back to a person who didn't have a dime to their name I said yes. At orientation they explained things about the trade schools (none of them were Sanford Brown and none of them mentioned names of others), classes, and finical aid. (You'd think they'd have these before you signed up) We were suppose to get 2 sets of scrubs that day but most of us got 1 pair or none (you also had to beg the MBC Program Director to get you your 2nd set).
I started my 1st day of school a week or so later only to find out myself and a few other students were starting the 2nd module (MOD. B). You'd think by the way they sell, sell, sell, you when you walk in the door you'd be starting the 1st Module (MOD. A) so of course our class was somewhat split. My 1st Mod they changed teachers on us 3 times (of course we were teaching ourselves medical terms so it really didn't bother us) the excuse though was "Sorry for the change but the MBC program is new you will all be the 1st graduating class of this program so we have a few kinks we need to work out please be patient.", turns out months later it was the same program with a different name and formally the HIS (Health Information Specialist) program.
One of our instructors, Mrs. A, (we will call her Mrs. A because I'd hate to slander someone on the internet even though all this stuff is very very true) always had an attitude towards the white and Hispanic students. If any of us (white, black, Hispanic, etc.) got less then a B on one of her tests she'd take us to the break room or wait until lunch to chew us out and make us feel like crap her excuse was "I'm not trying to be mean but I think this will make you want to try harder on the tests." Mrs. A also didn't know what she was teaching half of the time.
Not only were the teachers working my 1st Mod neither was the A/C when we tried to talk to someone in the nicely cooled business office just a few steps away from our inhumanly hot classrooms we would get ignored or ask if we had an appt. But yet this school was suppose to have an "open door policy". The heat made me sick so I had to miss a day we were allowed to miss 4 days a Mod, I got chewed out because the heat in the classroom made me sick and probably could have killed me if I was there 1 more day. We were also told we would get a break every hour since we were there for 6 hours a day we got 2 morning breaks and a lunch.
The billing software rarely worked and neither did the computers half the time, we had like maybe 10 books in our library and non e of them could have helped out the MBC program. They also gave us the wrong book for one of our classes but didn't realize it until the end of the Mod, of course they didn't refund us for that book or give us the right book.
Now back to the teachers, Mrs. A got promoted to be the MBC Externship Coordinator but since there wasn't many MBC's (there was 6 of us left in the MOD B part of the class and maybe 10-15 MBC MOD A students who went on externship) she still taught 2 of our classes until we were done (this was my last MOD Thank GOD!) She asked us to cold call Dr Offices for her to find extern sites for the other classes turns out she was doing that to get us extern sites because she hadn't gotten ours already. I told her I would not do it and of course I got given an attitude til I left for my externship. They also had a "stepping stone policy" and if you had a problem you'd go to your instructor 1st then work your way up. Well when you had a problem with Mrs. A and would try to discuss it with her privately she would get angry and tell everyone in the class what was said. If you went over her head of course they would tell her exactly who said it and what was said, but yet we were told it would be totally private and your name nor what was said would be told. A lot of Mrs. A's friends and children's friends were in our class also I do not know if that was against the rules or not but these people would get special treatment.
I taught myself mostly everything we learned in the program because we didn't have a teacher or they just didn't feel like teaching. While Mrs. A was "busy" doing externship work our last Mod we had at least an hour of nothing to do until our MBC Program Director would come in and take over 1 of the classes he said he'd take over. Mrs. A would also have students in our class make up the tests we took, make up the notes we had to take for a test, and enter our grades and her other classes grades into the computer for her because she was just too "busy". Another one of our instructors Mrs. H would sit at her desk, tell you what chapter to read and would teach nothing at all and at the end of the week give us an open book test. They never once told us how to use the computer coding program that was on our computers only told us how to use the book. Mrs. A would always try to teach us professionalism but would never use it. She would always gossip about her family life, people in our class that weren't there that day, her co-workers, her bosses, the problems she had with her bosses. One day one of our classmates was on a cell phone in the break room during one of our breaks and one of the instructors from another program asked her to get off her cell phone because cell phones weren't allowed on campus (yes of course a policy we didn't know about and were never told about), the student came back to the classroom and told Mrs. A about it, she stormed out of the classroom then came back grabbed her things and stormed out of the building and we had no idea what was going on, so yet again we were left the rest of the day without a teacher. This same instructor would answer her cell phone during class or taking tests and disrupt the whole class and would not leave the class to make a call she would sit at her desk and we'd hear pretty much everything, she would also answer her cell phone during class hours. If her cell phone was d/c she'd ask a student for theirs. If Mrs. A was in a bad mood she was mean to all of us and not teach us a thing and tell us it was "study time for us" but would sit there with the people she was friends with in class and talk to them about what was going on while we were all sitting there trying to study or do homework.
We finally found out about the new cell phone rule we were told no cell phones were allowed on campus at all, then of course changed it and said we could have cell phones on campus but they were to be turned off during class, if we had to check our messages during break/lunch or make a call we had to go downstairs and outside of the building to make them, but yet they put pay phones in the break room.
Our tests rarely made sense with the notes we were given. We were told we were suppose to get a Medical Dictionary to go along with our CPT books since we weren't real advanced at Medical Terms and of course we didn't get those books until our 2nd to last Mod when our coding classes were over. During our coding classes Mrs. P expected us to be able to find the right CPT codes for something and we couldn't due to our lack of knowledge in Medical terms. Mrs. A started out as our coding teacher and told us "she had no idea what she was doing because she hadn't done coding in so long". Mrs. A was also very, very, unorganized and forgetful, she would lose our homework/tests/papers before she graded them and blame us for not turning them in but yet we'd have folders we turned in once a week with all of our homework in it, she would also mark off our grades if we put something in there she didn't want but yet she assigned it the start of that week and changed her mind that she didn't want it but yet wouldn't tell us. Her mind was also changing everyday she wouldn't remember what she told us the day before and if we wrote it down she'd protest she never said it. If we missed a day and asked her what we missed before class started or during break she would tell us to get it from another student. She rarely had tutoring classes if we needed them.
The school never told/sent me about a payment for the loan I had to pay while I was in school and blame me for not knowing when to pay it. Once I was out of school is when I started getting bills. I was told my cap and gown was included in my titution but yet when it came down to graduation I paid for it out of pocket. I was always asking when graduation was and Mr. H (the person in charge of this event and school ID's and no idea what else) would tell me he didn't know and he'd inform me and the rest of the students before we left the school for our externships, we weren't told about it until a month before. I always also never told by anyone at this school I needed a school ID a student told me who to get them from and where. They would pull the 4.0 students out of class (while class was being held of course) to go talk to new students at orination about the program, classes, instructors, school, etc. I remember Mrs. A telling them "Don't tell them how crazy I am and bad stuff about the school just lie to them if you have too."
I've been out of school since May of this year and I still haven't had 1 interview. I've done everything I was told to do in the Career Development class and what my career advisor told me to do, they have changed my career advisor 3 times and never told me. I've been contacted 3 times in the past 4 months by them just to update my information. I really don't know what to do in 3 months the rest of my student loans will start and I will have no way of paying them which will leave me in more debt. This school also loses students information all the loan info/personal info/etc. It happened to the Mod A part of my class.
I'm sorry this was so long but I wish I would have found this site before I signed up and I thought if I shared my experience about SBI Dallas it will keep people away from there and save them some money and stress. I am also sorry the events in this are so spared out but I was typing this as they came to mind.
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