Sinclair Community College — Local services in Dayton

I'm not sure where to even begin. Firstly I would say that I am still going to this college and am on the Deans list and my GPA is 3.5 in case someone doesn't take this review seriously or think I'm leaving a negative review as result for poor grades. So, I am an online student and the online offerings of this college are piss poor and technically a nightmare. They update their online sections and make their online classes and portals unavailable multiple times per week and normally the time I'm working on school work is in the evenings and that's the time when they do their updates. So if you're doing classes and think that you can work on things in these evening, make sure to start early and save backups of everything. I've lost papers and assignments because as I clicked submit I wasn't aware that they had started maintenance and the site was down. I have had to call into the school multiple times and have had multiple technical issues. One that sticks out to me was a link the teacher suggested and when clicking that link it literally took you to another college login instead of Sinclair. Then contacting tech support they said that the link that was being recommended only works on Campus. That didn't work so well for me considering I'm an online student.

The actual e-learn portal is hard to navigate but at the end of my first semester I finally was starting to feel that I found out where to go to do things. Starting semester two they have changed the whole site and so now for the first few weeks of my new classes I get to re-learn the entire site and it's already beyond confusing trying to navigate their poor excuse for a learning portal. It isn't clean and easily navigable. It is a html nightmare and feels like a 90's website trying to be a next gen site. Load times are slow and graphics aren't properly sized. The website also feels like someone threw it together without taking the time to actually find the flow of how it works.

Something else to note, warnings on websites being down. I experienced on more than one occasion the site being down. They said the notice has been scrolling at the login screen. Going to the login screen, they had multiple messages when you first log in, wait for the 8-12 second delay and the message changes. When logging in the portal most people don't realize there are multiple messages because most of the time there isn't so beware, at times there is multiple messages hidden away.

The Professors, this is the only reason that they get 2 stars instead of one but also why they get two stars. Professors aren't interactive and if you're doing book work online this is a great thing. But.. if you're trying to contact a professor most of these teachers don't have an office and are not on campus. We had a suspected final exam and there was no information and we tried to reach the professor and called the school and finally after 3 days heard back from the professor. There was panic and the students were group emailing each other. It was a horrible experience and just showed how much time the teachers are really putting into a class. On the other hand they are very kind when it comes to technical issues outside of the scope of control and very understanding that the community college website is horrible.

Classroom assignments, are overrated and when the teachers try to get you to interact with other students there aren't enough people interacting to actually have feedback. Case and point, writing assignments where feedback is needed for improvement and no one gives feedback. Even the professors don't give feedback for improvement beyond a structured basic principle.

So, why go to this college.. because it's cheap.. it gets a certificate for completion, and it's easily transferred. The hurdles are really the poor structures and tools in place to actually succeed. I guess you truly do get what...

I attended Sinclair for three years as I worked on my Associate's degree in history. It took me a bit longer because I had to take some extra math classes before I got to the one that I actually needed to graduate and my first quarter there was a mess because I had chosen to go back to school on a whim and wasn't really prepared for it. Once I had gotten back into the swing of being a student, I actually typically enjoyed my classes at Sinclair. I took night classes usually from 5PM until 9PM as well as some online classes. It was ridiculously convenient and generally all the classes I needed were available (not all of the, but most). Instructors were generally helpful, though some could be abrasive. But overall my classroom experience with Sinclair probably couldn't have been better. I moved on to Ohio State to get my BA (still working on it) and I WISH they were as flexible schedule-wise as Sinclair.

My biggest issue with Sinclair was not the classroom experience but the administrative one. I had more problems with their financial aid department than anyone should ever have to deal with. On more than one occasion they would either email me and tell me I had zero financial aid for the semester, which would send me into panic mode, only to get my financial aid awarded like it should have been anyway. Twice, I think it was, they awarded my financial aid and then yanked it for reasons that were never, ever explained to me, and they actually unenrolled me from my classes because of THEIR administrative error. Their "advisors" are about as helpful as a boulder that has fallen in to the middle of a highway. My "advisor" never answered emails and never advised me on anything so my contact with her was limited to one visit and about two emails over my three years.

SO, Sinclair is great. It's cheap, instructors are generally helpful, and you learn some pretty cool stuff if you take the right classes and they tend to understand that adults have lives and things that need to be taken care of. Things that instructors at, say, Ohio State, couldn't care less about. So I recommend Sinclair. Just keep a sharp eye on the administrative part of your experience with them. Particularly the financial...

I went to school here in 2014 and had an Academic advisor help with my student loans. I received a small refund in the mail from the remainder of the loan I had to take out to pay for school. Throughout the semester I decided that I did not like Sinclair and felt like my education was being cheated for money. I withdrew from my last class for the remainder of that semester. I called and asked how much I would owe back for dropping that last class. They said all I had to do was paper for the book because it was paperback and could not be returned. When I went to go make the payment, I was told I owed $2,300. I’m like how?! I got answers from every one that was different, even one lady telling me that there had been another loan taken out in my name and had been sent out in a separate check. Which again was not the case. I’m now a student at Malone university finishing up my BSA and I have had a debt collecting agency bothering me. I have actively been in school again since January of 2015. From my understanding I do not have to pay back any student loans until I am out of school for more than 6 months or if I have graduated and it’s 6 months out. Back to what I was saying when I called nelnet they said they were unsure of why they were saying I had to pay my loan back right then and there. I called nelnet again after numerous attempts of speaking with the president and failed, only to find out my student loans had been paid back by Sinclair and now they were charging me this money that is now with a debt collecting agency. Even though legally I do not have to pay back student loans yet. Now knowing that this debt collecting agency is a scam I have been putting out money to pay back this loan that I could have been putting towards my interest rates on my loans until I made even more money to pay back my student loan debt. This place is very unprofessional and I have definitely saved any of my family from going to...