Columbus State Community College - Columbus Campus — Local services in Columbus

I'm very dissatisfied with this college, mainly the mathematics staff. If you need to get through math quick and have the discipline to achieve this through an online course then this is for you. This course, you walk into a computer room that's always cramped, take a seat and sign on to an online course called aleks. through aleks, you'll be taught, managed and tested. This is all done online through a computer, not the intsructor. You could if you wanted to, complete the course both at home and without any help from the instructor. Yet the mathematics staff will insist that it's not an online course. (It 100% is) Now the main issue lies within their attendance policy that they just sprung up out of nowhere because students were not coming to class because you guessed it, if they don't use the instructor they can easily do it at home. Now with this new policy, if you miss any of the three classes during a week you accrue an "np" which stands for non participation so even if you did the work at home, since you didnt come in and sat at their computers, you're wrong. Now to my story, during the first week I had spoken with all of my teachers advising them that I had just got a job at pnc bank and I had mandatory training the first week of school. This job feeds my family an I can't not have a job. All of my other teachers were awesome, very understanding and helped me stay on track. However my 1099 teacher didn't seem to care. I say this because her response was, you're behind, you should have chose a lecture course and you're starting with two nps. Now my training was poorly managed and my recruiter had told me one week and the next week the training would end an hour before my 1099 class, this isn't how it worked out. My training was actually 2 weeks long 8:30a-5p and one saturday. After reaching out o the teaching multiple times, she kept trying to pass me off to other people and repeatedly telling me that I should've chose a lecture course and that my work that I feed my family with that I had to attend to get the job was not a valid excuse to remove the nps. Even when I offered to bring in all the proof pertaining to this. So what I got from this is that you are not allowed to have a life outside of cscc to these people and that if you have to choose between feeding your family and attending class, you better choose 1099 because your life outside of this class doesn't matter. So after I realized that she wasn't willing to help me at all, I went and spoke with the head of mathematics. This guy was very condescending, if you want to be treated like every other student even if you're a special circumstance, he's your guy. He made a remark that the new policy was made because of students like me. If that's the case then this policy was made to completely screw over any special circumstance student as he compared me to someone that willingly was missing class due to laziness not because I had to get this job to feed my family and pay my mortgage. After achieving nothing he suggested I sat down face to face with the instructor, so I did and I apologized only for her to be rude in her remarks about the situation. I had explained the situation in even more depth just for it not to matter because after I left class that day she said she had spoken with the head and her supervisors and they would not be giving me any help or assistance and will report me for non attendance to my financial aid. TL DR: The mathematics staff suck, the 1099 course is a joke and it is an online course and should be labeled as such. They don't care about your situation. Only gave a 2 star because my other teachers are great and have helped me catch...

I have since transferred to OSU and I am about to get my BA from OSU. I started at CSCC and at first was quite enjoying it. Great professors and was getting into the "college" experience. However, after that first year some of my views started to change. First was when I couldn't register for a class that I needed, so I ended up going to the advising office during the walk in hours and the adviser that I spoke to said that it had me down as a different major and she was friendly and told me that I needed to go to the registration office at Mason Hall to get it changed to the correct major. I make it to Mason Hall and politely tell them that there was a mistake made and I somehow was put in the wrong major. Their response was "It wasn't our mistake! It's your mistake!" now I wasn't assigning blame to a party for it I just was there to fix the the problem, and there isn't any one or any organization that doesn't make mistakes. Then came the problem with financial aid a few months later. I received a notice in the mail about how I was randomly selected for verification for financial aid, so I fill out the forms and send them the correct paper work. About a month later I got the same form in the mail again about a few weeks before the next quarter was set to start. I call them this time to be told that they couldn't accept the forms that I sent them because I failed to sign one of the forms, I asked if I could just simply come down and put my signature on the form that I didn't sign and they could process the paperwork. No I had to do it over again, as it was being close to time for the quarter to start I asked how long it would take for the paper work to be processed. They said about 6 to 8 weeks. I said then that means I can't go for the upcoming quarter at which point they said I could come in the following Monday for on the spot verification. So I went the following Monday to wait for 2 hours for someone to talk to me for two minutes.

Then there was the issue of financial aid to begin with. When I started there before the term or semester would start they would send $500 so you could buy books and any other materials for your classes and the rest would be given to you two weeks after the quarter/semester stated. OSU however would give you all of it a week before the semester starts, however with anyone being allowed to go to CSCC I can understand why they want to guard against people who would take the money and run. And with the 5$00 you were free to buy your books from other places than the bookstore which would be cheaper. I guess the bookstore didn't like the idea of students getting better deals on their books because they stopped giving out the $500 before the term started and instead gave a bookstore credit for the same amount. So instead of students who were dependent on financial aid being about to save some money by getting their books elsewhere were now forced to buy their books from the bookstore.

And then comes the bad advice I got from the advisers. I was basically told that all I needed to do to work on my major was to get to a certain level of Math and English then I would be able to work on my major. Once I reached those milestones that is what I started doing working on the major and not realizing that there were a number of general education requirements that I needed to fill. So once I got to OSU I had completed a a lot of work towards my major but had to do ge's. My advise to anyone going to CSCC that is looking to transfer to another school, check with the school you want to transfer to, to see what they require for the degree you want as the advisers at CSCC won't give you correct...

I love Columbus State and this is why:

Before Columbus State: Growing up, I was never interested in the information taught in school, because I did not feel like it was applicable to the real world. After a year at a private college, I was originally apprehensive to restart college at any college. I was also scared of a community college. I grew up in Michigan, and I felt like our local community colleges had negative stigmas attached to them. Luckily, my older brother took me into the application office in Delaware, OH to take the entrance exam. I believe I tested out of an english and/or a math class.

While at Columbus State: I would like to note that I always attended C-State as I held a part time job (10-20 hours a week). I originally attended an EMT-B class at Columbus State. The class was more challenging than I had anticipated and was pretty time consuming. I received a B in this course, but found employment immediately in the field and felt confident in my skills.

A year later, I returned to C-State with the desires to go to nursing school. Thanks to ample meetings with advisors in Health and Human Services, I decided to take some prerequisite nursing classes as there was a waiting list to apply for their nursing program (while I worked part time as an EMT-B). During this year, I found more confidence in my work and studies, feelings of support and encouragement from staff, and rewards from hard work. I was also able to sign up easily for academic accommodations for the first time in my life! I loved my time at Columbus State within this year! I never thought I would love school or receive my first 4.0 GPA in the spring and summer semesters. For the first time, school finally felt fulfilling for me.

After Attending Columbus State: I decided to leave C-State after a full academic year, and I pursued a BSN degree through another local school. I often look back at my time at C-State and regret that I did not take more classes here while saving a decent amount of money!

I would suggest night classes if you are willing and able. I found that students were more likely to be hard working, more mature, disciplined, and also employed. I also found professors who taught night classes were often from OSU and more understanding. Generally my teachers were all very competent, funny, and held experience in the world. The only negative experience that I found was dealing with C-Stat's Police department staff and accessing their gym/locker room. Students must sign up manually for the gym locker rooms every semester at C-State's Police department and then wait for several days for your card to be accepted from security/police. This system seems dated and non-productive. I feel like this process should be easily automated. This issue led to a negative experience I had with a police officer that identified as Sergeant Diamond. I felt like this officer escalated my personal situation while being disrespectful and patronizing. Another time I was eating a meal in my car between classes when a police car pulled up to me and asked why I was parked between two spots in an empty parking lot and then asked me to pick a spot. I'm sure the police department deals with things they don't want to. I could have been lucky and experienced two poor attitudes on hard days, but I do not feel like the police department is fulfilling their mission that states they want to provide "exceptional customer service" for their students based on my only two experiences with them. I would take a look at how the police staff is...