I am currently in the Occupational Therapy Program at the "old" campus (Telegraph & 30th St)! We…read morewill be moving to 12th St in Downtown Oakland in 2026. Coming to Samuel Merritt was one of the best decisions of my life. There a number of factors of why I chose SMU and why I love it more everyday. First: Why did I choose SMU? - Prior to starting at SMU, I attended SMU's immersion day, countless zoom info sessions, school tours, and meet n greets. When meeting the students and faculty they really made me feel welcomed and supported. I felt like I belonged at SMU and that I wasn't just another person joining a program. I liked watching the current students interact with the faculty. Everyone knew each other's names and talked like old friends. This made me feel excited and comforted when thinking about which university I wanted to choose - Campus is located a short drive away from my family home yet is also far enough away to experience personal growth. The location was ideal for me because I wanted to stay in the bay to be with my friends and family. - Campus is safe. There are many people walking around every day and I haven't heard about any crime on campus. Students, Healthcare workers (Alta Bates), patients, faculty, and security guards are always around. SMU has shuttles to take students to Bart and there is a guarded parking garage. Each building has security and sometimes Oakland police are on campus patroling. - No GRE - Great reputation and alumni I heard that many alumni end up in prestigious hospitals like Stanford Hospital - Many of my old high school classmates came to SMU for various programs and they enjoyed it Second: Why do I love SMU more everyday? - My cohort is amazing!! I truly love all my classmates. We have great respect for each other and we all get along. Outside our individual friend groups within our cohort, we still want to see each other win. Every day we laugh, chat, connect, and grow together. I really love that we all think of each other. Like how we celebrate each others birthdays by signing birthday cards and hanging out after class. - There are many fun events on campus!! We've had multiple fun events throughout the year. Note that each SMU campus have different events. At Oakland campus, so far, I've experienced.. * Free Taco Day * Free Yoga * Free School Supplies * Free Coffee/Tea * Free Gelato * Free Fenton's Ice cream * Free Pantry * Etc... TBD - SMU OT Staff are very supportive and have great personality! Myself and the cohort love the faculty! They bring great energy and want to see us win! Overall, I feel like the program is going by fast because we're having so much fun. Every day is a new experience and I look forward to the rest of my program.

Everything is subpar at this school but they definitely have the worst and incompetent financial…read moreaid team available. If you're not new and incoming, good luck to actually getting someone to address your issues. Dr. Larsen is officially the only good director in administration but one person can't make up for the kind of subpar education and lack of support this expensive scam of a school provides

Berkeley City College Campus is so gorgeous. I have seen students, staff, and teachers in friendly…read morecommunication. I felt comfortable in the college. I took ASL classes and digital photography classes for my major. Good coffee shops and restaurants are close to the Berkeley City College campus. I took the Bart from San Leandro to Berkeley College, and it's easy and fun. Thank you!

BCC is awful. I gave every one of my teachers a 1 star rating on Rate My Teacher .com…read more Administration has a policy of not hiring teachers with a good educational background. BCC teachers do not have doctorates even though UC Berkeley is right up the hill and full of professors who have doctorates and need the money from teaching. I believe Administration maintains this policy because they themselves have such a low bar for their administrators that they are too stupid, uneducated, and lazy themselves to be able to handle real professors at the college raising the bar and making the school a better place to learn. BCC is simply a holding pattern to screen students for UC Berkeley. BCC isn't there to help students learn. Each class is like sitting through detention. I will never attend BCC again even if my life depended on it. BCC SUCKS.

Always fun to visit the campus with family after coming here for college. Every visit feels…read moredifferent and something is renovated at each visit. Love this school, had some great memories made here!

Good school Go Bears - was a student there and an employee. Make what you can out of it. You can…read moreget a PHD in Foreign Languages and do your dissertation on Erotic Portuguese Ballads of the 12th century. You will get a barista job for your efforts, Or you can go to Cal for one semester, drop out and become an HVAC technician and become wealthy.

We toured A LOT of schools before settling on Little Elephant. First, we saw plenty of larger…read moreschools and its smaller more intimate size was appealing to us. The space shows very well with two bright well laid out classrooms, nice outdoor space and lots of pets! Most importantly, we found the teaching staff to be warm and generally very experienced with reasonable tenure at the school. Our three children all had a positive experience and have fond memories of their time there. We spent almost a decade there (including through COVID) and appreciated the staff and parent community.

We love LEMs! Our 3 year old has been thriving there since she started the week of her second…read morebirthday. The teachers are fantastic and loving and fun and the environment really fosters happiness, curiosity and learning. The community is wonderful as well and we've become close friends with a few parents and good friends with the rest. We also love the diversity they foster and our bilingual daughter (we speak Spanish in our home) has flourished as she gets to speak Spanish with several of the teachers (who happen to also be native speakers) but has picked up English quickly from the learning and atmosphere here. We plan to send our second child here as we've had such a wonderful experience all around!

UC Berkeley should never, ever have graduations in the Greek Theater in the afternoon. We attended…read morea graduation that started at 2 pm and it was so sweltering hot that we could not stay for the whole ceremony. We were admonished to stay for the whole ceremony but if we did we would easily have a heat stroke. Delaying the ceremony a few hours later would make the ceremony tolerable. The public health graduation ceremony we attended today, indeed was not in the interest of public health.

Had a good time studying here. I enjoyed going deep into the stacks at Doe to read for hours in…read moreblissful silence. Many afternoons spent people watching in Sproul Plaza and cheering for the Bears on Saturdays in Memorial stadium. More people watching while sipping espressos at Cafe Roma. Getting lost in Dwinelle. Washing dish and mopping the floor at the sorority on Prospect Street. Making friends and pondering the future. You'll like it here.

Parking is a you-know-what. It's a hit or miss, a shot in the dark, it's a bitch... whatever. The…read morewait isn't too insane, the staff is kind and communicate clearly, and they are good with needles. The person inputting a needle into my arm to draw blood was so good! Since I'm terrible with needles, she really nurtured me in the blood-drawing experience. How comforting she was!! =)

I learned about Pacific Coast Montessori from friends years ago. My daughters, now ages 11 and 8…read morehave had so many enriching experiences throughout their schooling and care at Pacific Coast Montessori. Director Ann Toy and Teacher Pat were instrumental in transitioning my girls to kindergarten. Ann and Pat's nurturing manner of teaching helped to foster independence and confidence in the many kids who were/are lucky to know and learn from them. Pacific Coast Montessori's calm, bright, clean and tidy space is complemented by a cheerful play structure, teaching garden and shaded lunch area in the backyard. My girls fondly recall many memories and friendships at "Ann Toy's School."

We looked and looked and looked, and finally landed here. The decision was right. Director, Ann…read moreToy's warm, loving, with commitment is what this preschool is all about. I had a minor concern about the yard being small. But turned out just fine, as I met many nice Moms and quickly formed after school play dates in nearby parks. In the end, it's not the yard size that makes the school great, it's who teaches and cares for your children.

So I was taking the part-time Data Analytics boot camp hosted by Trilogy Education for the past 6…read moremonths AND...I just graduated from it!! Yay!! Go me!! Hehe ANYWAYS, when I started this boot camp I thought maybe I'll learn and retain ALL the information. Though, I knew it would be very difficult because I came into this with NO CODING EXPERIENCE! This class is also fully virtual and I was probably the youngest one in the cohort since the majority of them looked like they were in their mid 30s-50s. NOTE: The instructor reminded us multiple times to expect many headaches, tears, frustrations, and the feeling of giving up and YES, I and many others in the cohort felt it all (~1/4 of the cohort dropped). Ok, so since this course is held fully virtually, that was something I was worried about. I actually ended up barely noticing it was an online class since it was LIVE and very INTERACTIVE where the instructor teaches and then everyone gets broken up into groups for classwork, and then we all come back together to discuss. Since I chose the part-time option, that meant there would be classes two days per week where each class was 2 hour sessions. Class was enjoyable and I ACTUALLY had fun and looked forward to attending class! We also had 5 TAs who held their own office hours for two hours on their chosen day (Friday-Sunday) or if you attend class 30 minutes early, they hold office hours there too. I attended office hours at least once a week and the TAs were very helpful. The instructor seemed to know his stuff when teaching during class, BUT sometimes he didn't know the answer to the questions we asked him. Not going to blame him though! This course is taught VERY FAST since it IS a boot camp. It's 24 weeks long, so each week is a new topic or language. Something which helped me complete all my weekly assignments was by starting the homework LITERALLY right after the Wednesday classes (my class sessions were Mondays and Wednesdays)! It's VERY important to form a study group in the beginning of the course because having a group helped me understand the material better (my study group was a group of 7 girls who met up weekly on Thursdays through Zoom). A perk from this boot camp is you can sign up for a tutor. I definitely knew I wanted a tutor! I mean...I might as well get all the help I can get and use all the resources and people available since this course ain't cheap! I don't know what I would have done without my tutor's help; she explained things well and sent me some resources. I also enjoyed the AskBCS service they have which is available throughout the majority of the day, BUT sometimes the person I got wasn't as helpful as others (several people in my cohort agreed with me on this). My class had about 44 students (the ones that didn't drop) and it was mixed with people of different education and career levels. For example, there were some people with a PhD, a Masters degree, and people with only a Bachelors degree. There were also people who already work in the industry as Senior positions. Knowing all of this was a little intimidating for me, but hey, it's great for networking! Oh and speaking of networking, this course comes with a "Career Services" section to help you become "employer competitive," but most of that doesn't start until the last month of the course. The career services was pretty much non-existent throughout the course and I wish I had more time with them. Would I recommend? I feel like I would recommend this boot camp to people who want a career change, BUT I would NOT recommend it to people who ONLY want to learn more of a specific language. The instructor only spent one week on most topics. I personally think one week is only enough to get the basics of a programming language. Even the instructor said we would have to review everything all over again AFTER the course! IF you do decide to take this bootcamp, then I would HIGHLY recommend having 2 or more monitors since that would make it less frustrating during the live online classes. I only had 1 monitor and got overwhelmed when the instructor was teaching too fast or when he was jumping from screen to screen, while others had 2-5 monitors.

Do not get the bootcamps they offer. They just waste your time. They cancel on me twice. After they…read morehad me paying ahead of time they canceled on me when I only had $3,000 left to pay. Now they are making me wait 30-60 days until I get my full refund. That is not fair, they are making me pay for their mistakes. I am not happy. They have $5,765 of my money and they are holding it hostage. I am very upset about this. Please don't do it, don't let it happen to you! They cancel the course and they don't even tell you why. Don't trust Edx or 2U.

Eli and her team are AMAZING! They are wonderful instructors and teachers who really know their…read morestuff and yet are accessible, patient, and understand how to teach complete beginners. I know Eli is also very intentional about who she collaborates and works with, which explains the high caliber of guest instructors who lead workshops and classes. I cannot imagine Elmwood without Studio Sessions! Such a special small business. Please support your small businesses! which also means understanding why their policies are what they are--last-minute no-shows and cancellations are extremely detrimental for experience-based businesses. Anyway, I'm excited to take more classes in the future!

DO NOT SIGN UP FOR SEWING CLASSES!! no refunds or cancellations under any circumstances, and $22…read morerescheduling fee. places like this give small businesses a bad name :(