Wharton County Junior College Reviews

"Do not come to this school if you have either zero knowledge about the program or if you skin is brown. The reason why i am saying this is because practically my class was more Hispanic than white and by the end of the first year the class was mostly full of Caucasian. The first semester is nothing compare as the second one. Teachers always say that they are for you and tell you to go to them if you need help but at the end they go back and talk bad about you to other teachers. Whenever you start having patients be prepare to deal with bad attitudes with instructors and embarrassment. Ms. Hahn in particular does not care about you! She will make you cry in clinic and afterwards embarrass you in front of your patient. She talks so much about respect but doesn't respect her students. If you have questions teachers will make you feel stupid and its messed up because they are there to help students out but you will clearly see by the second semester how instructors are. There is only a few teachers that are there to actually help you out like Dr. Novosad, Ms. Dobbs, Ms. Bode, and Ms. Petterson. I hope this program gets better for future students but at the ends it keeps on getting worst from the director to the instructors! They should focus more on how to help their students and not making it impossible to pass!"

"Racism is a festering, ugly component of this program. My very first day I was warned by more than one fellow classmate about it. Several of which where white classmates. I was warned that it didn’t matter how hard I worked that it would not be enough. I was warned that I should plan on not passing. I remember thinking to myself “ not me! I work hard, I am an all As student”. I can say that unfortunately this was true. Multiple racially charged things where said to or about me by more than one instructor. Comments about my hair ( which was always in the dress code)where the most prevalent remarks. Every thing I did felt studied under a microscope by one particular instructor the most. This is not to say ALL the instructors where this way, yet when I brought it to their attention I was immediately dismissed. Although I made the Dean’s list with my grades while in the program, I ended up failing out of the program. After I had been out of the program for about a year, I somehow ran into one of the instructors off campus. We got to talking and all they could say with tears in their eyes is “ you should have passed”. This was important to me, it made me feel understood, seen, and frankly like it wasn’t all in my head. Since then I have chosen a different career path- teaching! Some reading this may think I am jaded or angrily writing this review but it has been years and the pain from this treatment is still there. I live in Wharton so it is sad to see and hear of this treatment continuing on after all this time. I hope that perhaps one of the WCJC faculty sees this review and instead of dismissing it- pursues change. It would be unfortunate for the entire program to get punished for the way few higher ups and one instructor treat people. The ones behaving this way have violated their oath as educators. They should be ashamed to treat a fellow human being in such a despicable manner."

"I attended WJCJ Dental Hygiene program from 1993-1995. I cannot say enough good things about what this program taught me. If a program is "easy" then you better watch out because the likeliness of passing your boards are slim. I cannot thank the instructors enough for being tough, but fair at the same time. I highly recommend this program to anyone considering Dental Hygiene as their career."

"This program is disappointing to say the least. You will have to teach yourself in areas you’ve never even touched on before. Novosad is an amazing instructor... the others just make things harder for you to succeed and you will have to teach yourself on your own. I feel like the teaching is lazy here and you will be better off attending elsewhere."

"The requirements are set up for students to fail. Please do yourself a favor and do not apply to this school. Do your research and apply to HCC, Blinn, Lonestar, UT, UH, anywhere but this school. One example of a b******* requirement - You are required to bring 8 patients to f****** Wharton which is an hour a way from Houston 3-4 times to complete their appointments. Who the f*** knows 8 people with that kind of time. We have family and friends who have jobs and have to use their PTO to come to this. The students there are known to take anxiety medications which is not f****** normal. Please save yourself."

"I personally felt that there was a disconnect between the majority of the instructors and the minority students. I could not have tried harder to understand how inconsistent some of the instructors and their interpretations of procedures that they have been doing for many years. You simply can not attend an institution were your are basically trying to read the minds of multiple instructors differences in interpretations of their own written guidelines. Was race a factor? I feel in my heart yes. Can I prove it? No. My caucasian dental hygiene sisters seem to have seen what I felt as well. Not all instructors acted this way, only the ones that held higher positions in the program. I do not recommend non caucasians apply there for the WCJC dental hygiene program."

"I attended WCJC dental hygiene program many years ago. It was not an easy program by far, but they taught us what we needed to succeed on our board exams and in our careers as dental hygienist. Several of the instructors I had are still there educating today."

"The Dental Hygiene Program at Wharton under prepares its students to successfully achieve all requirements needed to pass. Some instructors are passionate about what they teach while others are set in their ways and it's their way or the highway. You will take four classes based in the classroom and also have clinic. You have to find your own patients and the patient has to meet certain criteria in order for you to be able to test on them. Your patient has to be willing to return to the clinic 2-3 times for 3.5 hours each session, until you complete their treatment. Many people cannot take off this much time, so finding a patient is ALWAYS a challenge. It doesn't matter if you're an A student, sometimes the patients do not show up or if they do, they cannot come back to complete the treatment and you now lost valuable time. You are required to complete treatments on a set number of patients (8 completed patients during my second semester) and 7 competency exams to take on those patients. Many times, you bring in a patient who is willing to return several times but they are too difficult, meaning they have too much calculus for you to remove during your first year, you spent a session or two getting them to the point where the instructor tells you to begin the cleaning, only to find out, they will not let you clean the patient this semester. At this point, you wasted 2-3 sessions, and now you have to go look for someone else to start cleaning. This is only one example of the obstacles you face at this school. The way the instructors grade your clinic competency exams are extremely harsh. Most of the time, you have to be near perfect in order to pass. They have to agree with your diagnosis, probing depths, calculus detection, gingival description just to pass one of the 7 competency exams. Another competency is based on you finding EVERY single restoration (filling, sealant, crown) in the patients mouth. This skill requires experience at looking into people's mouth to find such restorations. Some restorations are so well-done, like a composite where the resin the dentist used matches the tooth color exactly, and you stare and stare and stare and dry the tooth out with air to try to find it and if you don't exactly state what surfaces that restoration encompasses, you fail. This is very time consuming and you spend hours looking at the restorations and if you identify 15 correct restorations but miss one, just one, you will fail. This is what I mean by harsh grading. As a first year student, you don't have the experience to spot these as accurately as the instructors want and most students fail dental charting 3, 4, 5 times. This is even the case during your second year when supposedly you have more experience. Another area where this program lacks teaching is their extra oral/intraoral exam, which is another competency exam that is graded rigorously. During this exam, you must palpations lymph nodes, glands, muscles to check for cancer. We were given a hand out and told to look at a video online for examples during winter break. Two teachers argued that it was the other's teacher responsibility to teach this exam and at the end, no one taught this skill and we were given a vague demonstration on how to perform palpations. Instructors are so specific on how they want you to palpate the different structures that a 5 minute demonstration was not enough to learn all the details. Again, this exam was failed 3, 4, 5 times by many students in my class. My suggestion is that you research many programs and ask their directors what the requirements are. How many patients you have to complete each semester. Usually during your second year, you have to complete more difficult patients. What resources and teaching methods are used during clinic. How do they grade competency exams. I should mention that if you fail a competency exam, you can retake it on another patient until you pass it. The problem lies in the harsh way the instructors grade the exams. You can plan to fail several times before you pass and the teachers seem proud that no one passes at first. By then you're rushing to finish the patients you must complete, while trying to find time to bring in new people just to take exams on them and pass. Many students, didn't know if they were graduating until the last day of clinic. At this school, no one is exempt from probably failing clinic. I was an A, high B student and I didn't know if I was going to pass or fail til the last day of clinic. Think really hard and find as much information as you can fro each program. In 2016, 14 of us graduated out of 28. One year, Wharton only graduate 9 students on time. If you fail during your first year (fall, spring, summer semesters) you have to re-apply and start ALL OVER, from day one. If you fail during your second year, you can continue and just repeat the semester you failed. Last year two people failed their second attempt, so they are out and get no credit for anything at all and cannot re-apply. DH is tough. The programs are tough. It is a rewarding career, but they don't make it easy for anyone. By th way, passing is 75, a C. A B is an 84 and an A is a 93. I'm an A and B student although my high B's were 90, 92 so in other degrees, I would have been an A student."