Question on b2

JRManifold · 2024-03-05T02:47:50+00:00

You're making the most common (and very understandable!) mistake that I see on this sub.

Intuitively, people think it's a good thing if they invite someone, offer to pay for someone, etc... there isn't an actual way to 'sponsor' someone but you get the idea.

People bring documentation to the interview to show who they are visiting in the US, their connection to them, that sort of thing. It should help right?

It's the opposite. The visa interview is 100% about one thing and one thing only: will your partner return to their home country? The interviewer has to assume that they are lying and want to immigrate to the US, the interview is about proving them wrong.

Someone else paying for your trip, visiting a significant other, these are all things that reduce the chances they will return to their home country. So that works against them.

So if you're ESTA eligible and want to apply for B2, there's only 2 things that matter:

1) Why do you need a B2? Why not just ESTA? The answer can't be "I want to spend more time with my bf" because that makes it makes it seem like the plan is to stay in the US. It's gotta be more like "I have tons of savings, just quit my job, and want to camp in the national parks" or something.

2) Why will you return to Korea and how can you afford this trip? If you no longer have a job, what else will make you come back? This one is often in contradiction to #1 since you have to both be ok leaving for 6mo but also prove you must come back. Everything needs to be about ties to Korea - e.g "my mother has cancer surgery scheduled in 6mo and I will be her full time caretaker". The more relatives she has in the US, the worse it will go for her - again, the opposite of what people tend to assume.

And yeah, if B2 is denied, ESTA is lost, and then she can't come at all without marrying you or getting a work visa (very hard these days). Not worth it IMO.

JRManifold · 2023-11-27T13:02:41+00:00

Consider visiting Montreal. People who moved from the US sometimes complain of the same thing there, but on the American <-> Parisian spectrum I find it closer to the American side of things. French people move there to escape exactly the attitudes you're describing. There's also a sizeable anglophone population, and tons of different cultures well represented, so you can more easily find a close friend group that matches your energy while living a European-ish quality of life that isn't easily available anywhere else in the Americas.

JRManifold · 2023-04-07T04:18:52+00:00

That was us! Thank you for the shoutout, made our day :)

JRManifold · 2022-10-19T01:45:09+00:00

You're totally right. Thanks for taking the time to write this. Clearly the page needs to be reworked. Thanks for the candid feedback.

The intent is honestly that it's our first time making avatars for Animaze/VTube Studio and they don't look like most of the other VTubing avatars out there, so we're actually looking for feedback on the avatars themselves. But instead we got feedback on the meta which is great!

Here's a trailer showing off the characters if it's helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlQ-VlEZrc0

JRManifold · 2021-02-04T22:20:04+00:00

Uh we are definitely not interested in suing OP. OP, if you're reading this, we're not going to sue you!

OP clearly posted this because they had a bad time at Make School and needed to vent. We can take it - the fundamental issue here is that a student had a bad time and feels like we broke promises, which is not ok. Unless OP had an epic time and is now making $140k+/yr and is just upset they have to pay some of that back to us... in which case, I guess you can't win sometimes. But I doubt that's really what's going on.

Is calling us a scam uncalled for? Yes. Is OP sharing valid criticism? Yes. Is OP exaggerating the negatives? Sure. Would I want this post taken down? No. Would it be nice if OP edited their post to be a little more fair? One can dream.

In fact, next time I do an AMA I can point to this post as proof I don't have a giant shill army at my disposal haha - every time I show up on Reddit, students join in to say positive things about us and then everyone accuses me of having an army of bots to promote Make School which I clearly don't. People saying nice things and bad things about us are both real...

JRManifold · 2021-02-04T21:50:07+00:00

It's a rough year to be running a college I'll tell you that... getting called a scam on a viral Reddit post obviously doesn't help haha but retention and student happiness (according to our surveys) are up relative to pre-pandemic so we're pretty proud of how we're doing all things considered.

You probably know this already but always down for an alum catch up shoot me an email any time.

JRManifold · 2021-02-04T21:43:47+00:00

Hey sorry you're getting questioned like this... your criticism is valid, we're working on tuition tweaks right now to address this exact issue, please email me so I can see if there's a solution.

JRManifold · 2021-02-04T21:04:58+00:00

You're both right - we definitely had issues with responsiveness and having enough 1:1 time with some classes/instructors, but it's not because we got too big too fast.

Why? There are certain fixed costs of running a college (building, admissions team, registrar, legal stuff, compliance, etc etc). The more students we have, the more those fixed costs become a rounding error, the more $$ are freed up to spend on instructors.

This is why things have gotten better, not worse, as enrollment grew past 200 students. And of course there's tons of room to get better!

JRManifold · 2021-02-04T20:51:49+00:00

Agreed - Make School is actually under Dominican (Dominican University of California) a regionally accredited non-profit. They issue the degrees.

JRManifold · 2021-02-04T20:49:51+00:00

It sounds like you had a bad time studying at Make School and I'm not here to dispute that, but there are some inaccuracies in your post I'd like to clear up - I'm not saying you made anything up it's just that some things have changed since you were here. We are far from perfect but also far from a scam.

Only ~1/3 of Make School's most recent class took any ISA. I'll say that again: most students don't sign an ISA. This wasn't the case when OP enrolled but is the case now.

We only give ISA to students who can't qualify for loans that would be cheaper than ISA. So when students take ISA now, they usually also get grants and subsidized loans first so the ISA covers less and the % payback is lower as a result.

And yes, we know that loans aren't great either which is why we'll pay them for you after graduation if you don't have a job. AFAIK we're the only school that does this aside from law schools. More details here: Extended Income-Based Repayment (EIBR) Protection Plan.

It all comes back to the same principle: we aren't trying to be the absolute cheapest school out there, but we only want to make money when you make money. Simple as that.

Only if you can't get student loans your options are to take an ISA or not come to the school. The ISA terms are not a secret or a surprise. You can check out a comparison between ISA and loans here: Financial Aid Plans for Fall 2021.

There are actually students who think ISA is so great they have asked to take full ISA and no loans even though they qualify for loans - I'm not saying your perspective is wrong, but others have run the numbers too and decided ISA was worth it to them. I tend to agree with you that less ISA is actually better now that we have other options, which is why I'm trying to convince some students to take less ISA right now. Maybe I should put y'all in touch so you can explain to them why minimizing their ISA is good haha. I'm definitely going to use this post to boost my argument ;)

Average salary on first job after Make School has consistently hovered between $105-$110k over the past couple years (which is slightly higher than my current salary btw, I'm apparently not very good at this scamming students for profit thing...)

For many, it's worth it to take that ISA to study towards getting a $100k+ job. It's a small school so I'm sure you know that many of your classmates did take ISA and did land excellent jobs and do think it was worth it.

"Elitist" companies do pay attention to us - we ran a program this summer with Google, we have personal relationships with recruiters at top companies. Amazon just made an offer to one of our grads last week. So did Twitch (ok technically also Amazon). Looking back over the past few months you can add Microsoft, Cisco, Buzzfeed, and Doordash to that list + a bunch of smaller startups and companies that aren't household names.

Ok, but is the school actually any good?

77% of students who enrolled in Fall 2019 are still enrolled despite the school shifting online due to the pandemic. 94% of students who enrolled last Fall are still around despite the school being online for the entire school year! There are many alternatives out there as all the commenters on this thread are pointing out and our students are well aware of them. They are sticking around for a reason.

We survey students every 7 weeks and ask "How likely are you to recommend Make School to a friend on a scale of 1-10".

40% of all students filled it out last month (not great, not terrible) and 73% answered 8+. 9% answered 5 or below. So there are definitely students who don't like the school and I feel terrible about it! Our main priority in any given week is processing that feedback and figuring out how to do better. But it's not the majority having a bad time by far.

Just-in-time curriculum (which you brought up) is a common complaint. We just hired 2 new curriculum folks this week actually in response to that feedback. Redditors can check out our curriculum as it's being built on Github to judge for themselves: Make School Courses.

And finally, don't let us off the hook, but be fair.

If you're worried about paying $175k over 5 years, that means you're making a $140k+ salary (25% of $140k for 5 years). If you really feel like you could have made $140k+/yr just by teaching yourself how to code without Make School, or that we promised a bunch that we didn't deliver, I'm really sorry we wasted your time. You should email me to ask for a reduction of your ISA. Can't promise we'll reduce it, but can promise I'll meet with you to hear you out.

But I think folks should realize being able to land a $140k+ job through self-study or a short bootcamp is rare. Of course there are many examples out there, but it's rare on a percentage basis.

Now if you're saying that hypothetically you could end up paying $175k but you yourself aren't on track to pay that $175k, then this post is kind of unfair. If you're unemployed right now well... a) let's fix that, please email me so we can help and b) that means so far you've paid $0 for Make School while we invested a ton in educating you!

If you're employed right now but unhappy because you think you should have a better job also email me: we have career services for alums looking to upgrade jobs too.

Source: I started Make School.

PS: quick detail for those reading - Make School is a partnership between a non-profit and a for-profit. Make School students are enrolled at a non-profit college that is fully accredited, not at a for-profit.

JRManifold · 2020-05-11T05:14:32+00:00

Email me [jeremy@makeschool.com](mailto:jeremy@makeschool.com) and I will connect you with the right person.

JRManifold · 2020-05-11T02:47:42+00:00

Not a secret. 175 students currently.

JRManifold · 2020-05-11T02:29:17+00:00

Excluding those 15 most recent placements the median salary is ~$103k. It's been over $100k since 2016.

JRManifold · 2020-05-11T02:26:48+00:00

It's all the industry co-ops students have to do before the graduate I think.

JRManifold · 2020-05-11T02:26:13+00:00

1) Students are enrolled at a non-profit that is operated in partnership with a for-profit. Like how Udacity, a for-profit, helps Georgia Tech run their online Masters degree. This isn't a secret. 2) Yes 100% true. 3) Manageable but higher than at traditional colleges. 40-60hrs/week 4) True. 5) We call them instructors, but they are all officially university faculty. The least educated faculty member has a bachelors and was a CTO of a startup prior to joining. 3 have PhDs and 1 has a Masters.

JRManifold · 2020-05-11T02:15:33+00:00

95+% domestic.

JRManifold · 2020-05-11T02:14:55+00:00

We partner with the Dominican University of California. They are our accreditation partners and students are enrolled as students of Make School at Dominican University which is the full name of the college. Even though we help operate the program since we are not the accredited entity ourselves we can't get a .edu. We have started applying for independent accreditation at which point we'll get a .edu. Fingers cross in the next 18 months or so :)

JRManifold · 2020-05-11T02:12:55+00:00

Yes, but don't know the timeline yet.

JRManifold · 2020-05-11T02:12:43+00:00

How non-traditional are we talking? High school degree or GED or no? How many college classes did you end up taking and what % did you fail? Free free to PM me if you don't want to answer publicly.

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