DeVry University Online Mislead me on costs and then refused to help me ripoff Internet

Let me start from the beginning:

I had just finished high school, and was looking into a few different local colleges to go to school for MIT. DeVry called me one night and told me that while I was in school, I had signed a paper saying that I was interested in what they have to offer. The woman on the phone, who happened to be the same woman that had come to my school to talk about DeVry about a year earlier, set up a meeting with me at my house a couple of nights later.

The night of the meeting, we talked about a lot of college and school stuff, and she began presenting me with the numbers. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I know that the number $20,000 was thrown around quite a bit. After talking for a couple of hours, I decided to go into DeVry University Online, as it seemed convenient, and was affordable to me. So we filled out all of the paperwork that night. This is where the trouble began.

I was given a checklist of things to take care of before I began "attending classes." I got through most of them, but as a new graduate, I was having a little bit of trouble with the loans part of it. I didn't understand it. In a frenzy to find help, I called every number I could find that the woman had given me. The school is so messed up, though, nobody could help me, or give me a suggestion as to who I should call for help. So I called that woman back.

She informed me that she wasn't supposed to help me as far as that goes, and I wasn't allowed to meet her again after I had signed up. It appeared as though she was just a recruiter, and only had to get me to sign the papers before she could sever all ties with me. So there I was, attending classes with NO LOANS AT ALL. I didn't quite know what to do, but I really couldn't do anything at that point.

We recieved our first statement in the mail after my first 8-week session. It was a bill for $5000. Five grand for an eight-week session? If this school was going to cost me twenty thousand dollars in the end, then the numbers weren't going to add up very well. So I called the number on the back of the sheet. I was finally able to get through to someone that may have been able to help me when I needed to get a loan. Unfortunately, all of these jobs were outsourced, and the person I was talking to had no idea what I was talking about. As a side note, the next college I went to had a student finance manager that knew me by name every time I saw her. That's right, I actually saw her...in person.

So anyway, I decided to try to call the recruiter again, as I still had her number, to get some answers. It was then that she told me that it was going to cost forty thousand dollars, not twenty. I was frustrated and furious, and told her I was done with this school, and that was it.

That night, my family and I sifted through every document that we had looking for something that she had written the $20,000 estimate on. Unforunately, she had written it on scratch paper and that had been thrown out long ago.

But that's not the end of the story. I then got a bill asking for a monthly payment of about $550. This is because I hadn't gotten a loan. Well, being a new graduate with no degree and working at a low-paying job wasn't going to get me $550 a month to hand over for nothing. So I ended up having to take a loan out of the bank for that amount, and am currently paying back that loan.

I have since gone back to the high school that I graduated from on severel occassions. And every chance I get, I inform the students there to be careful about what that recruiter says when she comes to talk to them, as she does every year.

Jacob
West Liberty, Iowa
U.S.A.