Graduate School USA

Overall, my experience at Graduate School USA was a good one. I was in my last year of grad school at GW when the Engineering school decided to change the curriculum and added a statistics requirement. My academic advisor gave me two choices: either take an integrated stats class on campus (for roughly $ 5000), or take Stat 1 and Stat 2 over the course of two semesters here (for about $ 500). Since I didn’t take Stat in undergrad, he recommended that I take the classes here. I’m glad that I did.
Each class was about 10 weeks, including a midterm and a final. It was conveniently located mere steps from the L’Enfant Plaza station, which made it a lifesaver for a commuter student like myself. The facilty is clean and comfortable. There are chairs and couches for students to rest in between classes, as well as a few places to eat on the ground floor of the building. There is also a break room that has a vending machine and a microwave. Sometimes the staff leaves boxes of donuts or other snacks in there for everyone.
The only thing that I did not like about my experience here was my Stat 1 professor, Nassir Abdelmajid. He was an awful instructor: surly and rude, like someone forced him to come and teach against his will. In addition, it was very difficult to understand him; he accent was very thick, he became viably annoyed when someone asked him to repeat himself (or asked him anything, in general), and his handwriting was barely legible. In addition, he often forgot what he’d previously taught us, and would put a question or two on the exams that none of us knew the answer to because he never taught the material. And when the class asked him about it, surprise!, he got upset. It got so bad that I contacted the school’s administration to report him. It’s ok if he doesn’t want to teach, but I came (and paid!) to learn, so if he didn’t feel like teaching, I was going to make sure that the school was aware so that they could bring in somebody that did want to teach.
My Stat 2 professor was exponentially better (but for the life of me I cannot remember his name… that’s a shame too, because he was great.). He was pleasant and enthusiastic, but he also had real-​world professional experience, which he was able to apply to the examples, as well as the exams, he gave. He was not shy about giving homework (some nights it took me 4 hours to complete), but I survived and I learned a lot… which was exactly what I paid for.

This place made me dread Wednesday nights for 10 weeks straight and after I completed the course I celebrated more than I did when I got out of undergrad.
Our class routinely started 15 – 20 minutes late for reasons I still don’t understand. Everyone in the class was 22 or over so one would guess that at that age you’d have responsible adults who could get to class by 6PM, they could not, so the rest of us suffered.
For a three hour class we were provided one (sometimes) two 5 minute breaks, so by 730−8PM everybody was in zombie mode due to the nature of the curriculum being about as fun as having salt rubbed into a wound.
Class would also routinely end well after 9PM (keep in mind my day starts at 5AM) because there was no positive control over how time was spent.
There might be some classes where students collaborated better and actually had a bit of fun but I honestly learned nothing I couldn’t have gathered from reading a good economics book. Either way I’m glad I only had one prerequisite for my course I had to complete because I would never come back here.

I like Graduate School, USA. I like how the classes are designed for working professions and I can easily related what I learned in classes to what I do at work. To date, I had taken the following classes:
1. Access Database — Beginning, Intermediate, and Advance
2. Technical Writing
3. Introduction to Federal Accounting
The instructors that I had are all very knowledegeable in their subjects and delivered the contents well.
The school is easily accessible via L’Enfant Plaza Metro Station. During lunch hours there are many food truck options available and some time there is entertainment from street musicians.

My review is for use of the facility for a professional development course that the organization I was associated with was using for a week. The building itself is conveniently located right next to the L’Enfant Metro station (Maryland Ave and 7^th St.). Most if not all of the classrooms are located on the second floor. The rooms that we used were spacious, the chairs extremely comfortable, and the climate well controlled. Something that I’m not used to being from California were the many coat racks located in each room. I had to ask someone why there were cloth hangers in every room.
The bathrooms were remarkably well-​maintained and clean for the amount of students and guests that walk through the halls every day, including Saturdays. If you’re looking for a bite or something to drink, there is a Vie de France bakery/​restaurant on the first floor, a convenience type shop on the first floor, and a Starbucks both across the street adjacent to the Holiday Inn and one inside the building itself.

This review is for evening Spanish class.
The good news is that I feel like I’ve learned some basic Spanish very quickly. I’ve impressed my friends by telling the time, discussing the days of the week, and talking a lot about university. The class is super small and the teacher is very nice and funny.
However this class feels like a high school Spanish class all over again. None of the students seem like they want to be there, the teacher doesn’t want to be there, and we are even using the same textbook from high school Spanish. Why we’re not learning vocabulary more relevant to real life (i.e. eating in restaurants, weather, shopping, work), I don’t know.
Considering that I’m paying $ 375 for this class, I would have liked a more motivated class and more personalized instruction. Then again, it’s a much more affordable option than private tutoring!

This review is for the evening classes. I’ve taught classes AND taken classes here.
The good:
A variety of affordable classes
Nice facilities
The bad:
The admin people don’t understand what makes for good instruction.
Instructors are not held to any objectives or standards, and they never receive the feedback submitted by students. This is bad for both instructors and students, because students are disappointed with poor instructors (like the Russian language instructor who thought it was a good idea to lecture a beginner-​level class for 90% of the time and the Arabic language instructor who was such a poor instructor that I was the only one left in the class one time), and instructors who are honestly interested in bettering their craft don’t receive any of the feedback that the administrators collect from the students. I’ve also run into blatantly rude instructor who scoffed at questions… I guess I wasn’t the only one who complained, because I was offered a re-​take of the course.
In the case of language classes, admin people don’t assess students’ proficiency levels, either, so students are accepted into courses they are not prepared for. It’s an inconvenience for both instructors and students. I had one student in my intermediate level class who could not read or write the language– needless to say, he slowed both the instructor and the other students down, and he had little to contribute. I’ve been a student in this kind of class too– there are many beginner-​level folks in an intermediate/​advanced-​level class, and I learned almost nothing.
From the instructor side, there is no continuity or consistency among language instruction levels, so you really don’t know what the previous instructor did. Yes, there’s a common textbook, but that doesn’t say much. The administration should really look into establishing a curriculum (objectives and all) for the language classes, then hire qualified instructors who know that instruction isn’t about lecturing.

Signed up for an Advanced Russian class, and just recently dropped it. The teaching was fine and I have no problem with the teacher, but the class description is definitely a misnomer. An advanced class should consist of primarily advanced students, those who can more or less fluidly speak the language. It’s frustrating being an advanced student in a class with beginners. The course title should accurately reflect the level.

Really four and a half stars. Read on. Well. I became the duchess of Graduate School USA and I managed to get an «a» in Conversational Spanish 1. Yep. Every Wednesday since the end of January, I have been coming in here for three hours (6pm-​9pm) to learn Spanish. I am quite certain I will be able to do more than order a beer, find the bathroom, and book a hotel room the next time I land in Mexico. Or the DR. I am also certain I will need many many more classes to just hold a conversation like I do in English.
The professor here for Spanish I was on loan from the State Department. She was excellent. I say was because she has retired. Just my luck. Get a good professor and she retires. Darn. Oh well. And the next course, Conversational 2 is held on Tues & Thurs. Well I already have aquafit on Tues & Thurs so there will be a break in learning here.
So anyway, what’s the half star dockage for? I mean the facilities overall are great. Well lit, clean, and safe. There’s even comfy-​shmumfy couches for you to lounge on prior to class if you get there early. Also, there is a tiny pantry (fridge, mic, vending machines) if you have a snack for the break. If you don’t have a snack, there are two starbucks within a stone’s throw and Vie de France and Gallery Mart are right downstairs. I dock a half star because of the bathrooms. Oh Lord. I mean I know the bathroom is a place where people go to make a big stink but dam! At school? For real?! No seriously, DAYUM! It is always super stinky in there. One day, the cleaning lady was just rolling her cart out of the bathroom and I thought «oooh, this is my chance to go into a non stinky bathroom»…wrong…dam…it was already (or still) stinky in there.
I’m a fan of Graduate School USA. But not their bathrooms.

I took a language class here to help me better communicate with a coworker. My agency didn’t pay for it; the money came out of my own pocket. The teacher was excellent. He was knowledgeable and passionate about the subject that he was teaching, but there were many nights when he excused class an hour early and I feel like we ended up cramming a lot of material into the last 2 classes to make up for it. Consequently, I don’t remember any of that later material.
If I’m Paying $ 375 for a class, I want to learn. You’re not doing me a favor by letting me go early. I’m an adult and this isn’t Freshman chemistry where I used to pray that class would be cancelled. I’m not sure how it is with their other teachers, but I know that the teacher who taught our class had a full time job and teaching at the graduate school was just a side job.
I wanted to take the second level of the class, but I just don’t think it’s worth the money. I know it will take longer, but I’ll teach myself with books and podcasts. The other thing that bothered me was that we had tests constantly. The class isn’t for credit; I would rather use the time wasted on tests and quizzes (and there were A LOT of them) to learn more material.

Came to the Graduate School for a week of Leadership Training (remainder of the course is online except for the one final week of classes at the end). Had wonderful teachers and learned a lot within the first week. Not sure how the typical classes/​professors are. However, based off of what I saw, I would definitely recommend this school.

Took intro to macroeconomics. Everything I learned was from the textbook. The teacher raced through the pre-​provided slides in class, then let us out an hour and a half early. There was no homework. The final exam had no problem sets. He told us what the questions would be two weeks in advance, and even what page numbers to find answers on.
However, I know someone who took Intro to Micro with a different professor here. They had real homework, causing people to drop out throughout the semester, and a real exam.
So I think a lot of people just come here to get credit, not to learn, and I don’t know if it’s because the teachers are usually bad, or because the teachers are catering to the students’ desires. But I am not risking taking another class here, because I could have learned the same thing from a textbook. It’s not worth the money.

Taking a Korean course here and only two classes in but I love it! The teacher is enthusiastic and is trying to use the immersion technique as soon as possible. She loves teaching, and you can tell by her attitude and all the activities she enjoys doing. She is very inspiring and I am looking forward to my next class.

Have taken two classes in my beginner spanish course so far and I enjoyed them so far. Nothing special though. The teacher just walks you through the book and speaks in Spanish the whole time. Since there’s around 24 of us in the class we don’t get to speak up very often. Building is clean and well maintained.

Based on the previous reviews, I was a bit nervous when I signed up for beginner Spanish classes at the Graduate School. Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised. No, I did not walk away fluent in Spanish but I did establish a nice basic understanding of the language. I walked away more comfortable with my Spanish skills than before and it was all done at a very affordable price! I would recommend this school to anyone interested in enhancing their skill set.

Taking a Chinese course here and was laughing when the only thing I walked out with was «Ni Yeo Da Ma Ma.» However, I will say that the it’s what you pay for — if you’re expecting Dead Poets Society, well, get your ass up to Harvard.

This a great place to take some graduate school prerequisites, continuing education courses or a language class if you need to get a grade and transfer the credits. I took Intermediate Spanish here to refresh my Spanish. The teacher was pretty decent and the class took place once a week for 10 weeks from 6 – 9. Most classes are evening and weekend but they do have daytime seminars. It’s much less expensive than a course at GWU or AMU. i didn’t like the class that much because it was just doing some exercises in the book for home work and a little bit of conversation and then reviewing the exercises in class. There was no variety in the type of activities so I wasn’t really retaining the material.