Southwestern College — Local services in Chula Vista

Let me say these Southwestern College has improved over the years, but as a alumni I have to say the services rendered in SWC and especially financial aid it's very bureaucratic process in every sense. Financial Aid is the worst in the services as far as bereaucracy is concern first of all it takes weeks for fininacial aid in swc to reward you any type of financial aid especially if you decided to drop a class or add a class or vice versa. For applying it takes weeks too, Counseling service is second to worst for helping students you have to make an appointment a week before to see a counselor and if you have an emergency or can't make the apppoint and need to resechedule good luck in getting an appointment you will have to wait at least two weeks if your lucky enough. I can go on and on with services that I see that needs a vast improvement over the years I have been in SWC. Second area that I see SWC fails to students is the instructors, the instructors, professors, teachers whatever you wanna call them most of them are adjunct instructors; why you say it's a concern or bad? The reason is that everytime you want to see a adjunct instructor outside class he or she can't because he/she doesn't have an office therefore if you have questions on campus or need to see the instructor asap you can't only because it's a adjunct and they are considered part time instructor's. Let me tell you in my experience in SWC there are A LOT of adjunct instructors. Thirdly like I said from the beggining the staff,governing board, and office leaders have improved a lot because since Chopra ruling as superindent there was construction bribes, budget cuts, classes cuts, protests, and corrupted staff who did everyhting chopra asked so yeah ever since than there is more transparacy, fairness, and less power abuse, but on Spring 2013 I see a lot classes cuts and prop's to fund schools have been aproved SO I DON'T KNOW WHY THERE IS STILL CLASSES CUT DRAMATICALLY!

Overall I would say SWC is fair only because it has improved from the horrible state it was that it almost lost it's accrediation just because the lack of leadership and corrupted the governing board, staff, and leaders who made decisions that effected, instructors, employees, and students. So because of the state it was before and now is a major improvemnt and I would say SWC is a fair school, but beware if your expecting not to have buereacracy, and have good quality instructors, and a overall good community college these is not for you. There are better community colleges out there such as cuyamaca, grossmont, city, mesa, miramar and other one's to look forward. On a side note 90% of the students are mexicans from Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico...

I am a veteran and moved to California from Virginia Beach. My wife is still active duty and got stationed here in San Diego. I had previously received an associates degree from Tidewater Community College just before I got here in San Diego. I applied to SDSU and UCSD and was told I needed a few extra classes in order to transfer to those schools. So I thought ok no problem. I'll just go to Southwestern College (closest CC to me) and get these few classes (two physics classes to be exact). Boy was I wrong.

I had my transcripts reviewed. The admissions department checked my degree against the wrong degree. So naturally none of my "major" courses transferred over. Once I pushed hard enough to find out why this happened I was told to petition the Dean of the Math department to "Substitute Major Requirements" with the courses I had from TCC. The Dean promptly told me that was not his job.

At this point the Dean of admissions got involved and seemingly all was well. Again, boy was I wrong! The Dean of the Math Department changed his mind and agreed it was his job to review my courses and "substituted" my previous courses for the ones required by SWC. In congruence, I was never showed or told which classes were "accepted" by admissions from TCC.

Fast forward one semester. I decided to change my major and therefore met with a counselor. During our meeting she printed out my transcript from SWC. At the time I didn't notice but later that night I was reviewing the paperwork given to me by the counselor in order to determine which classes I would enroll in for Spring 2017. Apparently half of my courses from TCC didn't "match perfectly" with their courses and therefore were not accepted. Not only that but the courses that were "approved" by the Dean of the Math department we still not listed on my transcript. 6+ months had past! Why weren't they listed yet?!

With minimal effort from myself I was able to match ALL, let me say that again. With MINIMAL EFFORT I was able to match (almost perfectly) all my courses to ones in the SWC course catalog.

None of my classes are currently "accepted" by SWC. I have completed every step they have provided me with to absolve this problem but none have worked and I am still on square one. In fact I have emailed everyone from counselors to the Vice President of the school and have still not received a response.

PLEASE I EMPLORE YOU DO NOT ATTEND THIS SCHOOL IF TRANSFERRING FROM...

Let's see, where do I begin. Their website is horribly made which results in random crashes, constant lagging, and a suffers from a low level of functionality. I think they went to the cheapest people they could to put in their IT department (if they even have one). Everyone that works there makes it seem like its an inconvenience to get any help from them. I'm a disabled combat veteran and have not been able to get my financial aid this semester. Every time I have gone to the financial aid department they can't even give me a clear answer as to when I will receive my disbursement. They just say "Oh it should be there sometime this week".

I understand this is a public school but hire some people that actually want to help the students instead of giving them the run around. I rely heavily on my financial aid and can not even get any type of direct help as to when I will get it. My financial aid has been awarded and when I log in, it says I am going to receive my initial disbursement in September. Its now 3 days away from the end of the month and I have yet to hear ANYTHING as to when I will receive it. Luckily the teachers there are willing to work with me.

The VA dept waits until the first week of school to submit for your GI Bill benefits. The only reason I can think of for this is they are just LAZY. What other explanation could there be for this? It takes up to 4 weeks for the VA to process GI Bill benefits after they've been requested by the school. LUCKILY for me, I was able to talk to a VA case manager who was able to manually review my file and approve the request so I could get paid in a timely manner.

Hopefully I will only have to deal with this for one more semester. If I can't get transferred to a state college after this school year, I will just go back to a private school. Being a public school is no excuse for its failures. I went to a public school in L.A. and had no problems like this.

Unfortunately this review will fall on deaf ears and the school will continue to operate the way it does. So good luck to all future students of...