Overall a decent school
Overall a decent school. There was nothing extraordinary about Independence University. There were both good points and not-so-good points. Discussing some of the negatives first, at times, I thought the course work was elementary and that the instructors often handed out completion grades. This was made evident when I retook a class about halfway through. On a particular assignment I made a 100 the first time. On the retake, I resubmitted the same work for the same questions and got a 60. Despite my questions about why I was docked so many points, I never got a full explanation of what I did wrong, just that my answers were wrong. I revisited the lecture, checked out online forums, and tried to connect with a tutor (of 3 attempts to connect with a tutor in 3.5 years, I never once got a response). All of my searches showed that my math was correct, so I remain confused to this day. Aside from inconsistent grading criteria among instructors, the accesses you are given to scholarly articles is limited. There are a number of sites which house these and Independence University is not partnered with any outside of their limited SHARC system. As far as student experiences go, they try. But many of the events they host are the types of events that one would see an office hold. They also don't really have any relationships or influences with employers. I had to work extremely hard to try to get any kind of experience I could prior to graduation so I could land a job. I was successful in that endeavor, but had little help from the school. Aside from the 2nd class I took after enrollment, I never had any type of career counseling or resume advice. I had to go it alone. At the school I transferred from, the academic counselor would reach out to discuss career goals and plans and try to guide you in the best direction to achieve them. The other problem I had was during enrollment, the admissions counselor was touting the fact that they are a non-profit organization. Really, that doesn't mean anything as almost any university is considered a non-profit. They charged a high tuition of over $70,000 for my undergrad program. Even with maxed out pell grants, a $5,000 scholarship, and 52,000 in federal student loans, I still had to get a payment plan with the school to pay the difference. Now, I have listed several negatives, but there was some good: chief among those is the amount of courses you take. I took Accounting with a Forensic emphasis. In accounting, the ultimate goal is to acquire CPA licensure with your state. This is one of the only programs that actually fulfills all of the required coursework necessary to qualify you to sit for the CPA exam. None of the other schools I researched prior to enrolling here offered the type and volume of coursework necessary for an undergraduate to take the CPA exam. If I had chosen anywhere else, I would have had to enroll in a master's program somewhere else to fulfill the credit requirement. When I looked at it this way, the high cost of tuition actually saves me money from the graduate programs. On the topic of graduate programs, because Independence University is a career school, their accreditation is not accepted by the majority of regional institutions. Even with a high GMAT score, I was turned down by several because of this. I still plan to attend grad school as there are skills I hope to develop later on in my career, but if you want to attend immediately after finishing here, you need to consider that your options will be limited. The school tries to say that they are held to a higher standard because to maintain their certification, they have to graduate a specific number or percentage of enrollees. However, other institutions view this as "they will just give out passing grades in order to keep their numbers good enough to maintain accreditation." Give it careful thought before enrolling. For some this is still a good option, while for others it may not be. For me, it was.