Complaint Review: Sanford Brown Institute - Springfield Massachusetts

Hi Marilyn, I grew up in Ludlow, Mass and Chicopee Falls, Mass and lived in Chicopee Falls before moving here. I have experienced the same thing you went through too. This school has let me down big time. I graduated top of all of the classes that were in there at the time I went (from July 1999 to March 2000) Before I moved here I was told that the career services dept. of Sanford Brown could help me get a job no matter where I moved. That is NOT true. I haven't worked as a medical assistant in 9 years. The following is my exact situation and what happened to me... I lived 27 years of my life taking care of 3 ill family members full time. When they died I was a 42 year old woman with no skills and no experience. I went and talked to Sanford Brown reps (then it was called Ultrasound Diagnostic School) and I told them I needed a promise that their school was NOT bogus because going there for Medical Assistant training would be my only chance at getting an education and job skills and that my life and future depended on the school's validity, accreditation and training skills. They told me countless times they had acceptable accreditation. They did not. Their accreditation is not recognized by the AMA (American Medical Association) or anyone else. I know because I checked. I was told by the facilty of UDS that I could become a certified Medical Assistant. This is not true because the school does not have the correct accreditation. The accreditation they hold allows you to become ONLY a registered Medical Assistant. Being a registered Medical ssistant means absolutely NOTHING in the medical world. I graduated from UDS (Ultrasound Diagnostic School - NOW called Sanford Brown University, in 2000. My grade point average was so much higher than 4.0 that they had to conform to educational standards and knowck my GPA down to the highest of 4.0 that is recognized. I graduated at the top of all classes that were there at the time. I gave the graduation speech. I found there were very few jobs in the Springfield, MA area for Medical Assistants unless you graduated from an actual college training program with an associates degree. I was able to get a job at Baystate Medical Center's Pain Management Clinic. That lasted for 6 weeks because I had plans to move here to Henderson, Nevada, where they were supposed to have a high demand for medical assistants. So after 9 years I was employed as a Medical Assistant for nothing more than 6 weeks. The training that UDS aka Sanford Brown provided was useless. They always skipped over all of the procedures in the books that we should have been learning and told us we'd learn it all on the job-sites! That is NOT true! They expect you to already know these procedures when you get a job. When I was in school for those 7 months, there were welfare girls there solely so they could continue getting their welfare checks. They had no plans on learning a career. And if they failed, the welfare system paid them to repeat the courses as many times as it took. They disrupted the classes daily. We had several teachers abandon us and the school and quit during the middle of our courses. We were left without teachers and eventually had substitutes. We had instructors who spent the entire class time talking about their personal lives and love relationships. One in particular Miss Heather Ruggerio did this almost on a day to day basis. Then one day she up and left and never gave notice and left us with no teacher for at least a week and a half to two weeks until they got another teacher in to substitute!There was no consistency in anything in that school. In 2004 I almost became homeless because of my inability to find work as a Medical Assistant. I am broke. I lost my car so I have no means to get around and look for work and here in Nevada they want you to have a car because the office personnel are tired of dealing with employees with transportation issues. On top of it all I had to file banckruptcy. I am financially broke, I am spiritually and mentally broke and my heart is broke because the teachers and school reps promised me they were on the up and up, they promised me written letters of reccomendation, and all I got was taken! I have lost my self-esteem, my confidence and my self-worth. I NEED A LAWYER PRO BONO or one that will file a civil action. My life was destroyed by that school. After my family members died I only had enough money to go to school for one year so I told them my life literally depended on the validity of their school and training. They failed me and my life is in ruins. And my mentor, Ms Terri (Ward) Wyman (whom I looked up to and trusted) failed me most of all because I brought all of my concerns about the school to her attention numerous times telling her I was thinking about transferring to Porter and Chester (who had the correct accreditation) but she and Katherine Dearborn (the female dean at the time) would reel me right back in and convince me to stay telling me one time that 'because I was the the top student, that if I left the school, they were afraid everyone else would follow and leave too.' All of my teachers, especially Mrs. Terri (Ward) Wyman, Mrs. Debbie Fish, Miss Carrie Mack and Miss Stephanie (Merrick) Bogosian told me they would give me letters of references since I asked and since I was moving so far away. I never got one single letter of reference. They lied. All of my references were the teachers at Sanford Brown on Cadwell Dr. in Springfield. And it was only recently in late 2008 that my sister, in Agawam, called me to tell me she drove by the school and that they had closed down. It's no wonder I wasn't getting any call backs for interviews..they were probably checking my references and finding they didn't exist! I have a list of Hundreds of places here in Nevada where I applied for jobs. So I am in the same boat as you...I can not get work and lost ALL of my references when they closed that school down! I'm at a loss as to what to do. My life has suffered greatly from what that school did to me...all of the lies, the deception. That school was there for one purpose only - to make money from the federal student grants. The more students they dragged in - they better - FOR THEM! But me - I was taken by them, screwed over big time! They didn't care about you or me or any of the other students there. They cared about the money! A lot of others who went there must be experiencing the same problems. I can't understand why no one else from, Ludlow, Springfield and Chicopee have come forward. I may contact the Springfield Republican and the TV stations up there. Jeannette Henderson (formerly Chicopee Falls, MA), Nevada U.S.A.