Gateway Community College — Attraction in New Haven

This place is a perfect example of “you get what you pay for”. I attended September 2009 - May 2018 (with a 3 year gap from 2012-2015). The hospitality teachers and department head were wonderful, and a lot of my general Ed teachers were amazing too and I have nothing but great things to say about the teachers. However, the registrar office and academic advisors were a nightmare to deal with. No one ever smiles, my message NEVER got relayed to the right person, and it was such a headache to deal with offices equivalent to dealing with the DMV. They also claimed that when you graduate you can transfer your credits to a state college which is false. Some of the credits transferred, but classes like Math don’t transfer and I have to take a placement test to get into the same exact math class I took at Gateway and passed the class with an A. The bookstore staff was the most incapable, rude, useless group of people. Graduation was a completely unorganized joke - they told graduates to arrive 2 hours early to stand in a parking lot with no instruction and 1 porta potty for about 300 people. They also only announce 1 of your degrees - so if you have 3 degrees they won’t even take the extra 5 seconds to announce all 3 (I thought graduation was supposed to recognize your achievements?) I would have never wasted my time going to graduation if I knew how pathetic it would be. Parking on campus in New Haven was crazy and the lot constantly overflows into the Temple Street lot so you get to walk in stairways that smell like urine with bums roaming the lot and drunk people stumbling to their car after your class at 9:30 at night with no security guards to get to your car. Literally no security whatsoever like your completely on your own in a public lot in the heart of New Haven. Like most schools, they don’t allow weapons inside the building so you don’t even have a way to defend yourself if you get approached in the lot which will happen at some point. There were also hospitality classes that I had to buy things out of pocket and was promised reimbursement that...

Gateway CC is the worst school Ive attended. I enrolled in a course that was supposed to be preparing me for an exam given by an outside vendor. Several students voiced their concerns to the professor about how they were having difficulties understanding what was being taught. We were told that "eventually" it would all make sense. One day the program coordinator was interested in how the students were doing in the course so she asked that we be tested on what we were taught up to that point. The majority of the students panicked along with the professor. We were told how the coordinator had never made a request like this before. He felt that he would also look bad if everyone did poorly. The professor gave the "practice" exam with questions similar to the real test. The majority of the students failed the practice exam. He told everyone not to worry because as long as nobody told the coordinator that we havent been learning anything he would make sure everyone "passed". To some people, that was the deal of the century. They were foolish to think this way because the Gateway Certificate you receive here means nothing to employers. The certificate that you receive from the outside vendor is what they were looking for. If you are looking to further your education this isnt the place you want to come to. I felt like I had been robbed of my time at Gateway...

I visited Gateway Community College to get information and apply for classes, but from the moment I arrived, I was treated with complete disrespect. The security staff spoke to me in a rude and dismissive way, with clear attitude, as if I was bothering them just by walking in.

When I tried to ask questions about applying, the staff was not welcoming or helpful. They made the process confusing, gave me the runaround, and acted like they didn’t want to assist me. I felt discriminated against simply because English is my second language. Instead of trying to help, they were impatient, dismissive, and condescending.

I also called several times for help, and every time the people on the phone were rude, unprofessional, and acted like they didn’t care. Some didn’t even know how to answer basic questions and clearly didn’t want to help.

Based on my experience, I do not recommend Gateway. If this is how they treat someone who’s just trying to apply, I can’t imagine how they treat their...