Best Mechanic Schools

Reply Subscribe

Thread Tools

Search this Thread

Rate Thread

Jan 29, 2009 | 10:34 PM

#31

AmateuRN

Guest

Posts: n/a

Quote:

Originally Posted by tiguy99

This is an excellent thread. How could I have missed it?

Thank God for search. Anyway, I'm also at this crossroad in my life. I was recently down sized after working nearly 2 years in the health care industry due to a merger.

My story is posted above in the purple link. Anyway, I've always loved cars and wanted to make my career from working in this industry. I have an angle ( entrepreneur of course ) I'd like to work from and felt that its time I get the proper training necessary to pursue my dreams.

Recently, I setup an appointment to go in and tour the UTI campus and really loved what I saw and what was available to students as far as education and resources.

The only thing that left my eyes wide open was the price tag. I was told that due to me being recently laid off, I may have more options for financial aid. Another thing I found out was that if I worked there full time, I could go to school for free.

I was like WOW that sounds great. Only problem is the schedules conflict between work and school. After interviewing with them this week, I discovered that part time employment won't allow them to pay for my schooling (which at the end of the day would help tremendously)

If you were me right now, what would you do? I have a BS in Communications from UIUC (Urbana) and over 5 years work experience (half business/other half healthcare sales) and figured it was time I stop making other people $$$$ and start working on my own dream so in 5 years I can be in a better place financially where I'm on my own doing and enjoying life better than I am now

Thanks for reading

-Mike

Mike,

If you are seriously thinking about it, then you should go all the way. With your background it seems like once you start you want to finish something all the way through. If you keep your grades and attendance up then towards the end you can apply for the BMW, Merc., Volvo, MINI, etc., and they will normally pay your tuition back over time as long as you sign an x-amount of years contract with the dealer. That is one way to pay for the school that they may not have mentioned. I had a 99% attendance and something like a 3.8 GPA at the end of my courses and was offered a deal by BMW (didn't take it to come back and persue medical).

But you should seriously think hard about it. In the state that the economy is in, especially car dealerships, nothing is for certain in that industry (or any for that matter). Just because you sign something doesn't mean that if they shut down you will still have a job. They may be able to break the contract with you, but not vice versa.

I didn't elaborate earlier, but I went to the Houston campus. It sucked. They are 50% about money, 25% about learning, and 25% about jacking around. I thought the school looked great when I visited too. What they don't show is that about 24 hours before they have a tour all the students take a full day to clean the **** out of everything. Thats all we would do from 2pm-8pm, and that's after the morning classes did their part... so everything looked perfect. The other 90% of the time there are cuss words, graffiti, and all other kinds of mess all over the place. I won't say I didn't learn anything, because I did. But I remember days that if I didn't wanna do ****, I didn't have to, and thats what the majority of the kids did. You get out of it what you put in... You can make anything as good or as bad as you want, I tried to make the best of it, and I still hated it.

Thanks for searching, I think this is a good thread for people to be aware of... especially on a car forum where a lot of people come on here thinking that maybe they'd want to work on cars after putting an intake on their G.