Samantha F.
Yelp
Excuse me if this list isn't exactly ordered logically, I'm kinda just writing down my thoughts as I remember them:
I signed up with BHCC in Spring 2012, assuming (since they say it's a 2 year degree) that I'd be done in 2014. Ha! They neglected to mention that that timeline only applies to full-time students, so hey if you're working or otherwise unable to attend full time, go fuck yourself.
Their class schedule is just terrible. The school is designed around full-time daytime students, so if you're working or a parent or whatever, good luck finagling your credits per semester. Of course, they have tons of classes at 7-9 AM (?!) and on Saturday/Sunday mornings, but it's like they don't think people work 9-5.
Also, as an IT student, this place horrifies me. Not only are the computers outdated and clunky, but the IT faculty is seriously questionable. I'm constantly getting emails from the IT department that are full of Comic Sans, !!!!!!superfluous!!exclamation!!! POINTS!!!! AND!!! CAPS!!!!! and just...terrible grammar, spelling, layout, everything. I've actually taken screencaps of how hideous and confidence-torpedoing these emails are. (Which I'll try to add to this review.)
Another sucky thing they do is milk the student body for free labor. Seems like almost every class I take now comes with a group project attached, and those projects always happen to be research projects involving things at the school (Their energy consumption is one that sticks out to me). Personally, I absolutely hate group projects and would always, always prefer to work alone, but usually I can tolerate it. Except...again, they assume you're a full-time daytime student. It's not like adults have schedules that don't allow them to run around the school doing the school's fucking work at all hours. And who the HELL thinks math needs group projects? Honestly, what planet is this school being run from?
It's a good thing that they have frequent career and transfer fairs, but guess what? They are, without fail, always in the middle of the fucking work day. What am I supposed to do, pop over on my lunch break for 10 minutes before having to go back to work? It's seriously like they're totally disconnected with the world.
As other people have mentioned, the administrative side of the school is a nightmare. Until this current semester, they wouldn't tell you if your financial aid didn't go through or something, they'd just drop you from whatever you registered for with no warning or notification at all. I found out I was on academic probation nearly a month after trying to register for classes. They sent a letter mysteriously postmarked for late July that didn't arrive until mid-September (And to get off probation? I had to appeal it by mid-August). They sent an email about probation that SO VERY TYPICALLY OF THEM contained absolutely no fucking information, only telling me that I had to come in to some gab session to find out about it. They don't even have information about it on their website.
Their registration system has, every single semester, refused to acknowledge prerequisites that I've met. Nobody ever, ever answers their phones. If you ask five different people the same question, you'll get five different answers. None of the registration people seem to know what they're doing, and a lot of them serve you a lot of attitude for simple things.
I could go on and on about the crappy things at this crappy excuse for a college, but I should mention that (most) of the teachers are actually pretty great. I've had one jackass teacher (Looking at you, Banjo), two indifferent online teachers, and a few great ones. The two greats are Ken Melillo and Ellen Ford, both math teachers, and both absolutely wonderful amazing people. They're both sensitive to the needs of working and otherwise very busy and tired adults (Having to miss class/leave early/etc), explain the material thoroughly and carefully, and are willing to help whenever they can. One of these teachers came in early numerous times to help me, and another let me raincheck a midterm just because it fell on my birthday (Yes, I'm a whiny baby who doesn't like to do anything on my birthday). Seriously, these are A+ teachers.
In conclusion, I've hated my time here at this glorified high school, and can't wait to transfer the hell out of there.