Know anything about Atlantic International University?

Hi! members, am brand new to the forum, pls, need to know about atlantic Int'l University, they offered me admission, but have read that they are not accredited, is that so, and could one secured his further admission with their certificate?...i become confused especially with Schiller University....what are the differences pls..??

 

Atlantic International University is not accredited at all. That means you will NOT be able to get ANY kind of financial aid and your classes will NOT transfer to any other college and your degree will be essentially worthless. No higher learning college or employer will look at, respect, or likely accept any degree from a completely NON ACCREDITED school.

Schiller International University (my college) is NATIONALLY accredited. That means it CAN get financial aid, its credits will definitely transfer to other Nationally accredited schools and POSSIBLY to some regionally accredited schools, and their whole degrees are accepted and respected, although not as good as a regionally accredited school (to some).

There's a HUGE difference between being accredited and not. I would say RUN as fast as you can AWAY from any school that has no accreditation at all. Thats just a waste of your time and money.

 

Our resident "Schiller" strikes again!

 

Since you know now that the Atlantic is not accredited, it would be helpful to post why you chose it in the first place.
- Do they have a program that interested you (and couldn't find anywhere else)?
- Were you sold on their "affordability"? (at $200 for Undergraduate and $350 for Graduate credit, I feel it's the most expensive piece of crap I would ever buy)
- Is there something else that you found useful with Atlantic?

 

Not entirely true. Some schools will consider unaccredited degrees under limited circumstances.

No one can guarantee credit transfer. Even RA schools can't guarantee this.

Of course, this depends on the person doing the considering. Some have a strong anti-NA bias, and others don't.

I tend to agree with this part.

 

MK ADAM is none other than our resident shill NMTTD. Basically, NMTTD started this topic as MK ADAM so that s/he can respond and advertise this Schiller University crap again. What a loser!

 

MK ADAM has a different IP address than NMTTD, so it is not conclusive that this is the same person. Rest assured, the mods are watching him and the first instance of spam will cause him to be banned permanently. If you catch something that we miss, report the spam and one of us will take care of it.

 

In some cases, there may also be public safety considerations. For example, Atlantic International University offers unaccredited degrees in architecture and civil engineering, including such fields as structural engineering and earthquake engineering, and including degrees up to the doctoral level.

In the US, it is highly unlikely that an individual would be granted structural or seismic design authority on the basis of an unaccredited AIU degree, due to professional licensing regulations. However, this might not be the case in other, less developed countries, which are likely the source of many AIU students.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like some form of quality assurance could be considered desirable for professional degrees pertaining to building design.

 

I am not whoever that other person is. Im not a "shill" or a "shiller". Im trying to answer questions and be helpful as best I can on here. I was answering a question and explaining the difference. Im tired of people on here giving me crap because they dont know or like my school. Enough already. And if you notice, the OP MENTIONED MY SCHOOL. So I responded. This is getting to be a bit much now.

 

Meh -

Seems like there's a lot of wasted and repetitive cycles on the forum after watching it for a couple years.

Unaccredited school threads need to be closed as soon as we recognize them and their names put on a "Less than Wonderful" school sticky somewhere on the forum. If people want the general opinion of the population about unaccredited schools, there they go.

Some RA/NA thread needs to be stickied somewhere and RA/NA discussions need to be closed as soon as possible with a post directing to the RA vs. NA discussion sticky. That sticky needs to lay out the RA v. NA argument and be closed for new posts.

I'd recommend a feature whereby members of this forum post the schools they've gone to. If anyone has a question about one of those schools, they know who they should ask or PM. If they don't see their school, they can volunteer to be the site contact for the school (with appropriate disclaimers - opinions are those of the member, not DI, etc.)

Forums are a good tool for off topic, political and postings in regards to new programs. The problem with open forums on general topics is that people who are tools find new, less productive uses for otherwise useful tools. It's also a careful line to tread with how much moderation or segmentation is appropriate, considering that too much tweaking can kill site activity.

On the IP address thing: Spoofing is easy, post from home and work and you have two IP. Getting hosed is easy too if you're on the same public wifi network as another poster. Yes, it can be definitive if people aren't careful, but most trolls know the tricks to hunt goats.

 

Calm down. Try and understand where everyone is coming from. All in one week, we have had two people mention a school that not many (if any) people have heard of on this forum. You made some pretty bold statements about the school and accreditation...some of which have been used by shillers in the past. Then a thread pops up from another newbie that randomly (of all the schools in the world) hints at your school. That fact that the OP mentioned your school is what kind of makes it suspicious.

 

My thoughts exactly. I have never heard of SIU until this week and now it is a regular topic of conversation with NMTTD using every thread possible to talk up the school.

 

If you are a sincere member, then I offer an apology for the comments of some members. I checked and you don't seem to share the same IP address with the shill, so I am supporting you unless you cause me not to. I believe in innocent until proven guilty and just because you mention a school a lot doesn't make you a shill, but it does cause some members to be suspicious when the school is not recognized. We deal with shills a lot here and many members have little tolerance for them, most moderators share that viewpoint. So please continue to participate and prove to the doubters that you are a sincere member who we welcome.

 

Also, please note that I ran a geolocation program on both of the members in question and they hail from different continents. So unless one of them is using a proxy of some sort, they are definitely not the same person.

 

Just out of curiousity. As I understand it all schools in the US start out unaccredited and, therefore to many, apparently unworthy of consideration ie employers, other colleges, bulk of students(?). A legitimate attempt at establishing a college must be significantly undermined by this assertion.

Why would anybody do it? You would be risking so much capital and have so much bad press or reactions to your degrees and students. How do you tell a legitimate unaccredited college from a mill? What are the indicators? If all accredited universities and colleges were at one time unaccredited, how did they attract students and stay in business? How can they negatively comment on unaccredited colleges that may be "startups" without the opportunity to become accredited?

 

The shiller is definitely using a proxy to make it look like the posts are coming from two different persons from two different locations. It's either one of the accounts is posting by proxy or both of them are. If you want, give me the two IPs and I will check if they are proxies or not. If one or both of them turn out to be proxies what will be our verdict for Schiller University?

 

..and the mods should trust you with that information, why, exactly?

Bottom line is that SIU is likely no worse than ITT Tech.

As to the proxy/shill silliness: If we're going to go on a witch hunt have the mods determine the outcome:

1. Go to whois.domaintools.com
2. Dump in the IP Address
3. Look for evidence of a reverse IP or a hostname attached.

Provided that the reverse IP or hostname is not something like AOL it's likely a proxy.
It's certainly a proxy if a hostname like "anonymizer.com" shows up.
Another trick would be if you see that the IP is hosting other sites. Essentially you're looking for any evidence that the IP is resolving back to a server.

Last with geo-tools you need to run the IPs a number of times over a period of days. Sometimes, someone using a proxy will show up in different countries at different times. I also believe that some of this referrer information may be stored in the admin panel for the user(s) in question.

Thanks,
ITJD

 

In the same way that you are trusting the mods with your IP information even though they are also protected by anonymity (i.e. you don't know them). What is the difference between an anonymous poster like myself and an anonymous mod when it comes to sharing IP information, which will not even reveal the identity of the poster?

Anyway, what you said is exactly what I would have done if ever I was given the IPs. The only reason why I volunteered to do it is because one of the mods said, "So unless one of them is using a proxy of some sort, they are definitely not the same person." His uncertainty of whether proxies are being used or not meant, at least to me, that he does not know how to check.

 

I am not against SIU. I am not for it either. IMHO - It's just another "less-than-wonderful" school.

As per their website, SIU was established in 1964. It got ACICS accreditation in 1983. I remember seeing their ad's in the Economist magazine classifieds in early 90's - along with LaSalle (defunct now) and some other similar schools. I vaguely remember Bear's guide mentioning it, just cant remember good or bad. Sure it's not a mill, but not very great either.

Again IMHO, schools like this might be good for specific people with specific goals (example - a mid or top career professional looking for an academic resume booster), but might not be very useful to every situation in general, and definitely a no-no for career starters.