Rio Salado Community College

This school is a joke. First time taking a online class and I regret it. I am so stressed out for a not even too hard class. It is a jokkkee how hard they make online classes. 15 minutes for a lab practical? You are kidding me??!!!!!! I am so pissed for not dropping this class since the beginning. It is impossible to do good in this class with how much time we get for the quizzes and exams. I know its okay to have timed quizzes but really only 15 min for a lab practical, only 13 minutes for a 25 question quiz, only 40 minutes for a 50 question exam? This is insane. There in no way you can do good in these online classes. I regret and I am never taking a class again in this school. Waste of my time and waste of my money. I have taken online classes in other schools with timed quizzes/exams but no other school gives a 15 minute lab practical quiz. Mind blowing!!!! I try, I study and the timing just kills me. There is no way you can pass with an A or B there is no way. I am so mad for ever spending my money with this school. My hands shake while I start to take the quiz because there is not enough time to read through and think and make sure u did them correctly. I am never again taking a class with rio salado. Stressing us out and giving as not enough time you think you teach us something?!! This is mind blowing. I paid my money for nothing I learned

I finished my MAT217 - business calculus. I met all deadlines, but I only received my midterm score two days before I took the final. It has been over a month since the course has finished and I have still not received a final grade. This class is a prerequisite to business statistics. I can not sign up for the next class till this one is closed out. The responses by the "instructor" never exceeded one sentence and would always contain a link. This is the worst school I could imagine on so many levels. It is almost like they are trying to suck.

Greetings: Rio Salado College once again falls short of expectations. The employees of the college consistently and, may even deliberately, come up short on fulfilling their required tasks. This incident - like the many others – has placed me once again in an economic hardship. One of the past hardships was becoming homeless for 10 days while waiting on my Federal student financial aid (7+ months) – but that’s another chapter in the saga. To further, my experience with the college suggests much more difficulty in dealing with the college’s administrative infrastructure than the college courses themselves. Sadly, this is my fault for placing so much trust in the college. In addition, I am a war veteran as well as a former American Legion Commander (the youngest in the nation in 1993). That being said – I don’t think recommending the college to fellow veterans would be a very-nice thing to do. Also, I don’t feel that Rio Salado College is worthy of the so-called: Serviceman’s Opportunity College designation – PERIOD.

Overall the school & staff are great. The problem is their semester blocks or when you can choose to start a semester. They allow you to sign up for classes on any Monday listed for the class, but then within a week they threaten to drop you and they do! Its a school thing and it SUCKS! Im late graduating and I just got dropped again and they even signed me up at the school! SUCKS!

Apathetic teachers that won't answer you, poor support, terrible math tutoring, and now they say we owe them money because of a financial aid overpayment 6 months ago. I went to GCC for my associates degree, and thought that since Rio was also a Maricopa Community College it would have the same standards for my husband. I was sorely mistaken. Take your online degree with Mesa cc or Glendale cc. Rio is a joke.

The Dental Hygiene program is a joke. the teachers are great, but the high high ups jerk the student/staff around. The students signed up for a 15 month program, to be told it got switched to a 18 month program, and now the NEW High ups are extending out the program further! the students are being held captive, not knowing when they will actually be done with school. Are the students being trained? Sort of. They have a new clinic team that is being forced to play catch up. I feel bad for this current class of students and staff. Before you apply, ask if these issues are resolved and ask around to other schools to see if these are current problems? Guess what? They're not!!

If there was a level below community colleges this would be it. Registration is a total joke. A few days into my class they wanted to see my drivers licence and I was dropped from my class until it could get "processed". Processing takes a week and I was dropped until it could be done. I won't even get into the payment fiasco, but more inept bumbling there to be sure. READ THE REVIEWS, THEY SPELL IT OUT NICELY, THIS PLACE IS A JOKE.

This is the worst school I have ever attended. They are so unorganized. The financial aide and enrollment office are not helpful at all. If you have to deal with Victor in enrollment, it is impossible. He is incapable of doing anything that is required of his job. My advise, find another school.

Okay, I have had some real trouble with this school's financial aid office since I began going there. I went to a University in town and compared to them, Rio has some very different, strange and sometimes shady ways of paying for your classes. Its sad that their financial aid office staff seem as if they aren't quite sure what is going on, either. I have enjoyed the course work and my teachers so far. But one thing that I noticed is that they were charging me in state tuition. They know I live in Utah, so I called them and they changed it to out of state tuition. If they come after me for the rest of the costs that they messed upon,I will be so irate. Along with that, I have had to push back my classes for their supposed financial aid regulations. One time they were stating that they wouldnt let me start classes if I didnt show them a color copy i.d. even though I had done this a couple years prior. I was already two weeks into classes by this time and they were going to lock me out of my classes and put me on a payment plan! They were demanding six hundred dollars up front. They said it had to be done because I moved and one guy there in the FA department was saying things on my account weren't adding up and that I was being shady! I can't believe he thinks I am the shady one! All because I moved? Anyways I would really exercise caution when dealing with their Financial Aid department. The cours ework is not bad at all and most of my teachers have been great. I am glad I am working on my last semester there so I never have to deal with the financial aid department again.

My daughter attends Rio, but this is the last semester. I am a financial aid officer at a different university, and even with financial aid knowledge, I could not help these morons do their job because they are all clueless. If we are lucky enough to resolve one issue, another one immediately pops up. [The person] who stands at the front desk in financial aid, told me that as a parent, I would have to be a student at their school in order to apply for the Parent Plus loan for my daughter. Say what? I share that story with coworkers just to watch them laugh historically. They put a block on thousands of accounts arbitrarily, so people are being told to push back their classes over and over again. Rio knows about the block, but clearly have not run a system-wide fix because people are still in line at Rio talking to the airhead at the front desk, who continues to tell students to push classes back instead of fixing the problem. If you call Rio, it's just as bad. They will tell you your account is fixed just to get you off the phone. They will tell you to submit paperwork, but never resolve the issue. They will try explaining stuff to you that you already know, and trust me, if you go through Rio, you probably know more about financial aid by the end of your semester (if you ever get to START your semester) than the idiots that work for this school. Expect to be pissed off when you take your midterms and finals because there will be questions on the test that never appeared anywhere in your text. Expect to be ignored by your teachers if you have a question. It doesn't matter if you have done everything you are supposed to do, you will get screwed over by Rio.

Horrible financial aid office. They are completely incompetent. Failing to process financial aid seems to be their goal. It has been over 15 months since my wife applie for financial aid for 2012. Still nothing. They continually ask for the same forms to be submitted over and over again. Now they also say they don't accept their own online forms. In addition, they decided it was ok to change her fafsa form to the amount she paid for tuition since they were taking so long and he had to pay out of pocket initially. They save 5-6 days for processing, but expect 15 months or never. Rarely do I encounter such a high level of ambivalence and unprofessional behavior. Oh...also expect that many quiz and test questions will not have answers that can be found in the textbooks. Also, some tests say you got a question wrong, but it clearly states it is correct In The literature. Don't expect contact with the teacher to help either. They rarely respond to emails.

Here's my experience...Last semester had to file max time frame as I'm going for transfer credits to earn my bachelors. It was approved. About halfway into semester and numerous calls and excuses later as to why I hadn't received fin. aid, was told classes were wrongly approved and I would not only not recieve aid but would owe hundreds for their mistake. After speaking with advisement, she said I could add the courses I needed and would be okay. Financial aid then notified me that I would need to drop unnecessary courses. After dropping first one which I had an A in, was then told oops, don't drop. I now have a withdraw on my record and had to pay for the dropped course. This semester...called 4 days ago as to why I haven't heard anything on my fin aid. Was told still working on it, done by Friday. Today is Friday, called to find out again what's going on. Was told, oops, fin. aid forgot to release the max time frame hold so I couldn't be awarded. Ticket was put in today to remove hold which will of course take 3 business days. Too bad my tuition is already past due and my classes will be dropped early next week without an award. Asked to speak to the main supervisor of fin. aid who intervened last semester but of course he was busy. I was told I could try back monday though. When I asked for a direct number, I was told he didn't have one. I find this quite odd since last semester he did have one. Moral of the story......don't go to Rio Salado.

I tried to get my degree through Rio Salado and reconised right away that all the material came from Sacremento college. When I needed assistance from an instructor it was nearly impossible because besides being instructors most had real jobs and really seemed to not have time for teaching students. I once tookl a midterm exam that turned out to be a final and was not covered yet in the studies and when I asked the testing center how long this mistake has gone unnoticed they told me four years. I was sent a new test that was made up by the instructor and it was on subject matters not covered in the subject material studied. furthermore the college made promises that it never carried out. this was ten years ago and I still have not recieved the certificates I was promised or any kind of graduation. I would recomend if you are triing to get a degree in applied science (water/wastewater technology) go through the college that made the program Sacramento college there are amazingly more helpful than this college that is in the state you are residing in.

Signed up for a Certificate in Accounting. was thrilled that I could do it online considering that I live in far west valley. Got a grant that were essentially cover everything. Got signed up. In August I waited for instructions on starting classes. Went to get books and I was told that Financial Aid did not have my ID. I had sent them that and all of my financial papers in May of that year. I went through TWO MONTHS of retoric and run around by staff before I could start. By then they had changed to a BLOCK system. That screwed up things even worse as they did it in the middle of Fall. This put me back to part time and I lost hundreds of dollars in grant monies. They instruct you to fill out forms to resolve these issues and give you "respond" dates but they never get back to you!! There is imcompetence in every department. I spoke with department heads and even contacted the Dean of Students. No matter how many phone calls and letters I have written it has been all been naught. If you are thinking about taking classes with this institution...RUN AWAY!!!

I have had the hardest time getting anything done correctly the first time around with this school. Registering for classes is very difficult because the online format does not always recognize the classes that you've taken as prerequisites. You will likely find yourself talking to someone who has little to no actual information about what they should be doing or how they can help you. The most frustrating experience of late has been trying to get the school to certify my loan. I've called about 5 times, and each time, I have gotten excuse after excuse over why it wasn't done properly the first time. I was suppposed to start classes a month ago. If you must take classes from this school for whatever reason, be aware that you will probably have to call this school several times to verify that people are, in fact, doing their jobs. The one positive thing I can say about the institution is that I have had two teachers that were helpful and knowledgeable about the subject matter I was studying. Rio Salado has a very long way to go in the way that they deal with their students.

Just after registering for classes on Dec 5, it took forever to register fro classes. I had to push my classes back 3 times, because they were not organized. I had all my paper work in and completed, but someone missed something here and there. I had to keep calling, and fianlly someone made sure I could get register for classes. Financial Aid gave me a relative date for my funds to be released, tehn I had a hold on my acct. I had to EMAIL a COLOR copy of my drivers license for some reason. They stated it would take 3-5 days. Its Jan 5 and there is still a hold on my acct. Why put holds on all the accts when they knew that particular dept would be out the enitre week after Christmas. What a bunch of crap.

I've been waiting on my finacial aid for 3 weeks now everytime I call is a different excuse I sent the documents they asked for and they said it would take 3-5 days to process and I sent it in on Dec 16 2011 and now its Jan 4 and still no word from them

Tey had did a review of students account on december the 12,2011 and said it will take 3-5 days after they get the document in to lift the hold off your account so that you will get your funding for school.Now here it is the 28 on december and the hold is still on my account.Dean ruby miller stay out the office more then she's in the office.And they say they are on winter break until January 3.They shouldn't have went on break until they got the student account right.This is a terrible school.

Rio Salado is so unorganized. The study guide that my teacher gave us for the final exam what about 30 pages long. How on earth can a person learn that much information in such a short amount of time?! They require you to write too much. And no matter how hard you try to write a good essay it's never good enough. A person cannot go through that if they they work full time or if they are disabled. I took a Biology class with them last year and it felt like I was taking a premed class. It's insane how much they make you do. And how much they make you do on the midterm and final exams. It is also a rip off that if you don't pass their exams by 60% even though you are passing the class that they fail you anyway. I had a B, but I didn't do good on the final and she failed me. Luckily I did good on the midterm. I've gone to other maricopa community colleges where I was passing the class, but failed the final and still passed the class. They do that in order for you to retake the class. I will never take science classes at their school again. I'm not sure how hard their math classes are, but I'm scared to try them. And the teacher doesn't teach you anything. If I asked her a question, she would just send you a website. She would never in her own words answer a question. I thought this school was all about writing in your own words...

I took some classes to help supplement those I am taking at another college. In comparison to online classes there, these have all been awful. NOT for transfer students or those who really want to learn - great for those just looking for an easy degree. I could've gotten a similar education going to the library and just reading textbooks, as that's about all this "school" does to teach, anyway. Lazy, useless instructors that are extremely textbook dependant, which is unfortunate since the books are so cheap that they fall apart (and I'm neurotically careful with my textbooks!). None of my classes ever had discussion boards, either, so no chance to communicate with other students in the class, which can often really help. RioLounge is a joke. I've gotten all A's somehow (mostly by memorizing textbook info), but haven't learned a thing. I am so disappointed and scared I'll be ill prepared when I transfer to university.

Rio Salado is an excellent choice if you just want to pay someone some money, skate through school and "earn" a degree. However, if you are truly looking to learn the material or are unfamiliar with the course do NOT take your classes at Rio Salado. Good luck teaching yourself things like Calculus or French at Rio. Additionally, the quality of the assignments and quizzes is absolutely horrible. I've repeatedly emailed my teachers in MULTIPLE courses about quiz questions that were poorly written. The three things I see happen most frequently are: 1. You are quizzed on things that haven't been covered in the course yet or aren't going to be covered at all. 2. You answer the quiz with the correct answer but the automatic scoring program marks your answer wrong. 3. There is more than one correct answer in the multiple choice questions, but you will be marked wrong if you don't answer the one that the automatic scoring program wanted you to. Like I said, Rio is great for remedial credits, taking classes you just need to pass in order to graduate, or "earning" a really cheap degree when you already know all the information that is covered in the course. But if you are looking for a real education, this is not the college for you. I will say this though, the more you effort you put into the classes, the more you will get out of it... as with anything else. I do recommend this school over other online schools that just want your money and whose degrees are literally worthless after you graduate. This is because Rio Salado is actually a Maricopa County Community College and not a "degree mill." Accordingly, their tuition is the same as other Maricopa County Community Colleges (affordable!!). Instead of Rio Salado, I would recommend taking online or night classes at one of the other Maricopa County Community Colleges like Glendale or Scottsdale.

My wife is currently attending this school and working on getting a degree in computer programming. This is a terrible school. I have 12 years of software development experience and have never before in my life seen such a piss poor attempt to teach such things as web programming, math, and intro to systems. The web class was completely essay based up until the last 4 assignments, then you get 1 chapter for each, html, css, javascript and the final. Bear in mind this is an "Intro" class the teacher...who is also their "Web Manager" aka self important know it all...and they have the students build websites with no instruction. They require the use of Javascript in one assignment but don't go over any programming basics!!! like how to declare a variable or what it even is they are trying to do! I have watched my wife struggle to grasp basic concepts and in the end have to teach her, and then she gets it just fine. For the math the screwed up a test pretty badly. In the middle of a pre-algebra test that is covering square roots they suddenly jump to college algebra, going over function domain and range! from roots to domain just all of the sudden! has to be an error right? WRONG! even though the material is not covered in anywhere in the book. We let the professor know what is going on and her response was "I cover that with my freshman algebra class" and points us to stuff that is not in the book. I am lucky i went to a decent college and have years of experience to back it up or my poor wife wouldn't know what is going on. I truly feel sorry for anyone that is attending that school. you are not getting a quality education.

Rio Salado... Well I did get my associates in arts and then a partnership with Northcentral to get my Bachelors in education. Let me take you on my nightmare. FIrst I enrolled and one of the "academic advisors" told me all of my AP credits would count this was a total of 18 credits. Well after I applied for teaching program 18 months later I was told these credits did not apply I then had to take these credits over the summer and the program admissions did not even recheck my program application till 9 MONTHS LATER! No one is there for you at the academic advisement and the program leaders really could care less about you. Being able to take classes at home was nice, but the money you pay for a university really is worth it... if you don't want a headache don't go to Rio.

No joke, Rio Salado is the worst school I have ever been enrolled to. The Online material is unorganised, and the books provided miss out on valuable information to do your studies independantly. I took 4 classes Math 092-122, English 101, and Psych 101 after being told that Rio Salado would be a good start for completing my prereqs in nursing. turns out I was given bad advise..... I couldn't grasp the mathmatical consepts in the course load because of the missing steps in the book. Everytime I was on a math question I couldn't complete, I would have to attend the tutoring sessions which eat up a good chunk in my wallet for gas. I found the english and psych courses to be easily understood however, the instructions given to me by the instructor was obscure, and I was constantly being downgraded on assignments that I put alot of effort into. After talking with my instructor and student dean about the course outline and it's obscured context, which the student dean agreed with me on, I was given only the option to either drop out of the classes or take an F and be put on academic probation. Rio Salado doesn't care about your education. If you have to drop out, they still get there money. Now come on I obviously don't have a problem with my english. English 101 and Psych 101 are some of the easiest classes in all the prereq requirements for nursing. If you do attend this school, you will soon find out just how sloppy it is truley ran. In the end I own about $4,000, was treated like crap by the school especially my instructor, and past only 2 math classes that I wasn't able to understand all that well. The instructors don't have time for you, and if an important issue comes up in your course work, you will be past from one person to the next with no real solutions. BEWARE OF THIS SCHOOL.

I needed one 3 credit math class to complete my BA. this class was last because of a terrible fear of failure in math that began back in high school. Math 102 was selected and proved to be the perfect choice. Professor Strom stayed in continuous contact and provided constant encouragement. The end result was a successful grade and a good level of learning. I would encourage anyone with a fear of math to look at this option.

Rio Salado College in Tempe, Arizona has excellent customer service. Their financial aid department is top notch. Everyone in each department is always so friendly. They have a great book savings program. Their automated phone system is excellent. Their online self help is a bit tricky, and I recommend that you use one set of user names and passwords for everything: riolearn, forms and mymaricopa. They have a large selection of online courses and I find their online learning works just as well with Linux as it does with MS. The absolute best thing the college has going for it is that their live customer service for admissions, registration and financial is available after 5 pm and even on saturdays. I highly recommend this college to anyone that wants to take online courses or get a degree entirely online.

Overall this degree has been a good experience for me and I feel confident in getting a job related to what I have learned. Also, rio offers general education blocks of 30 credits that get you into Universities.

I took just one science course with this college (that is all I wanted to take) and it was a good experience overall.