Chamberlain College?

Kuniklo · Jul 10, 2011

I called them two months ago to get information and I got a weird, unprofessional vibe from them. First, I had to call a 1-800 number which took me to an EXTREMELY bubbly operator who asked me to give her a ton of random information about myself before she would forward me to a secretary at the St. Louis, MO campus. The secretary seemed bored and tired, so I never pursued anything else with this school.

But my phone did blow up with calls from their recruiters almost every day for two months before I finally told them to cut it out. Sorry, Chamberlain recruiter, you're not making any commission off me today and I'm not going to pay private school-level tuition for something that's on the same level as University of Phoenix.

I will say that they seem to accept almost anyone. A girl in my program at UMSL got kicked out for failing but Chamberlain accepted her a month later. She was not very bright and never studied that much and her GPA was unimpressive, so that should tell you something about the quality of students that you might expect from this establishment.

Yes, it is accredited, but it also is a for-profit school, and those types of institutions lose their accreditation all the time. For-profit schools are also always absurdly more expensive than they are worth because they know that if you're the type of person who can't make it into a reputable program (of which there are many in the STL area), you're probably desperate enough to shell out the money to go to their school. Faculty also tend to not have the same level of dedication because they teach for the money, and staff is constantly getting rotated in and out. Couple this with below-average students and you get an inconsistent quality of education.

Finally, you have to think about whether or not credits from Chamberlain will transfer to other schools in case you change your mind or if you want to advance in your degree. I am certain that they do not. I know UMSL doesn't. For-profit credits rarely transfer. Even if YOU are a good student, universities rarely accept credits from these schools because they know how inconsistent the quality of education and the students are.

You really, really, really have to beware of these for-profit institutions. There are tons of information available online about what to watch out for with these types of schools and the kinds of shadiness and lawsuits they're constantly involved in. I think there's a PBS Frontline documentary on Netflix about it too.

Here is a list of nursing schools in Missouri. http://pr.mo.gov/nursing-schools.asp

One thing to consider is to look at that school's NCLEX pass rate. Chamberlain's was 79.47% in 2010. That's pretty bad. Compare that to UMSL's, which was 90.48, or SLU's, which was 92.06. Save your efforts and avoid Chamberlain. It's probably only a matter of time before hospitals avoid their grads the same way that every other industry avoid grads from University of Phoenix, Devry, Sanford-Brown, etc.

BeccaznRN, RN · Jul 11, 2011

Just as a side note to the above post, Chamberlain is owned by DeVry. I am not a fan of for-profit education in any aspect.