Universal Technical Institute

All lies. They make false promises. You get stick with a $ 40k DEBT. DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF ENROLLING! Go to a Community College!!!

Amazing instructors, they hand out free candy at student services every day after 5 pm. Just make sure you keep knocking if the door is closed.

I haven’t even began classes yet and I am already impressed with the contact, information and ease of everything being provided to me. I enrolled over the weekend after being in communication with John Phillips (Military Admissions Advisor) and had ALL my questions answered, was helped extremely well, I enrolled by the weekend and have been receiving non-​stop support and communication from numerous members of UTI regarding every aspect of enrollment. I had a trip planned for the same week as orientation, let them know and in less than 18 hours had a special orientation setup so I could make my scheduled class. I can’t wait to attend cause being a military veteran I know how to give 100% and so far this school is going above and beyond for me.

This place should be made illegal, this is a for profit university do not forget that! their purpose and only reason for existence is to turn a profit! To begin with, if you show any kind of interest for this school you will be hounded by a shifty salesman (much like a car salesman) that will lie and lie just to get you to sign a loan to get you into the school because they work off commission. No school should have sales people that work on the commission of student loans. The education they actually provide is decent but it is absolutely nothing you cant get at your local community college for ¹⁄₁₀ the cost. They try to tell you that they are better because they have access to better tools, which is not really true because the only thing that matters is scan tool quality. If you go to a community college they do have state of the art scan tools but low quality hand tools although that doesn’t really matter because a hand tool is a hand tool regardless of the brand because you are just using them to learn. What this school decides to teach is mainly based on decisions to keep stock investors happy, not what is best for its students. I went to this school for a year and graduated then worked in the field and what I saw was yes there are a select few that actually turn a success story from this place but a very select few, most people I know that went there just regret it after because they find out that they could have gotten the same basic information at a community college but without the enormous student loans. Here I stand as an ASE certified tech and as a current college student soon to transfer to a UC Engineering program and all I can do is face palm when I see the UTI commercial. If you want to risk the journey at UTI go for the manufacturer programs such as Mercedes or Porsche because those are the only ones that really do turn a success story (theoretically speaking) but if you want to only learn a basic knowledge through the basic program just go to your local community college! If you want more info just google «for profit university statistics» you will see the astronomical number of students that just end up defaulting on their loans.

This is a good school. Honestly it reminds me of highschool. I was picked up by the manufacture paid Mercedes Benz program and I couldn’t ask for anything else. Going through this school was a breeze for me since I already had a background on cars. But the biggest thing here if you wanna go anywhere is your attendanceif you can’t be there on time then this school might not be the greatest idea. I’ve seen allot of people drop out and said who cares but if you want a chance to get something big. Then your gonna have to man up. Uti changed me for the better and my life is about to start next week:) please don’t bring drama into the school cause it’s filled with people that all think they are harass cause they go there. remember most people here are straight out of high school. But there are also full frown adults with family’s and trying to better their lives. So just be serious and stick it out throuh the boring classes. It all depends on the instructors. And most of them make time go by fast. Great school. Made alot of friends .
Cons I really don’t think the cost to go here is too fair.

I went to this school for about 3 months in 2002. I only lasted that long as the hours were ridiculous. I did the night course from 7 to 11:30. Now from what I read it is to 12:30am. That’s nuts especially if you work a regular job. I seriously survived on 4 hours of sleep a night and managed to pass tests for three months. I lived in HB and worked in Cerritos. Two hour drive to Ontario at 4pm and hour drive coming home. I barely failed a course section and had to wait a month to come back for some reason. I always thought that was odd. Fail a section and you have to wait even though you are paying for it. The instructor and security dudes were weird. I think they singled me out or something because I remember being so tired I really didn’t participate. They basically thought I was on drugs and stared at me all the time. A lot of my classmates told me the instructors are watching me. I really didn’t care and in reality, I was just overly tired. The bizarre part was I was 27 at the time, not some young kid. Why would I show up to a school that I am paying for on drugs after working all day and why would they care if I were? They are still getting the ridiculous tution. Towards the end of my 3 months there I think they finally realized my situation after I told one of the teachers my schedule and they stopped but it was just a weird situation. I basically had zero money and to work out driving up there, eating while driving and then having to deal with middle aged guys who thought they are overly important enough to harass someone for looking tired and who was just trying to improve their situation.
They had this power trip going even though they were only making like $ 60,000 a year tops themselves. They actually told us the amount they were getting paid. At the time, I thought it was a good amount but now I make that in 5 months and back then I was making half of that at my old job while going to this school. After taxes, they were probably only making $ 50,000. Anyway, the three months cost me $ 3000.00 in student loan costs as I basically quit and didn’t go back.
From what I remember the courses were a lot of lecture and very little time working on cars. The cars they used were also very old.
So glad I didn’t finish the course as I now make a about 7 times more a year as a registered investment advisor than what you make on average as an auto mechanic. Pretty sure auto mechanics don’t make a third of what I make especially coming out of this overpriced school and I didn’t go to school for my current position. Maybe if I did the day course then things might have been different but I doubt it. You definitely need to be into cars to go here. I guess I wasn’t because usually towards the end of class the instructor would put on a racing video and I would always think, I am glad I am paying to watch f. king boring ass car videos while everyone else laughs and cheers them on. This is when cell phones were very basic so you didn’t have anything else to go too. Either watch it or put your head down because let’s face it, it was 11pm after a 16 hour day. Left a lot of the time very annoyed.
Save yourself some time and money and go to community college unless your straight out of high school and think twice about a career as an auto mechanic because you are really not going to make that much money. It’s one of the reasons the instructors told us they teach there. Less work for more pay than they would as a mechanic.
Nice to have Unilocal around to review a school you attended Iong ago.

Jennifer, Thank You for taking us on a tour on Sunday on your day off. That is what I call super dedication. I am a licensed smog tech since 1977 with Rolls Royce Factory train Technician and owned my own business for 25 years. I was super impressed with your school set up especially the GM, Mercedes Benz and the diesel section. It is the best school I ever seen in my 68 years of life.
Apparently the student who putting negative information were miss understanding the requirement that they have to put a thousand percent effort to acquire that position. In the automotive field. I have met a graduate who is employed by an authorized Honda Dealer who was able to repair a Honda with in one hour which it took three independent places that were not able to fix it. Also I met a graduate who was working at an independent place who could do his job and was terminated.
You must be a thousand percent ready to take the course seriously and acquire a dealership sponsorship to put you on the right path to making good money.

If you are considering using Unilocal to influence a majority of your choice, I say don’t. Most of the reviews on here are not accurate at all. I am a current student at this school and loving it.
All the posts on here saying the staff doesn’t care about you couldn’t be more wrong. If anything they care a bit too much haha. they will hunt you down and even excuse you from class so you have everything in order.
like some of the posts above said already, this is a trade school, meaning you can’t treat it like your run of the mill community college where you can skip classes and just show up for the finals. they take professionalism (punctuality, manners, ect) very seriously.
reason why I gave them a 4 out of 5 stars is because (me being prior military) it’s a bit hard for me to not curse haha (yeah I know)
but over all this school is filled with extremely knowledgeable staff members, have a few kinks they can smoothen out (ex. lesson plans (which are power point based) with typos and wrong pictures going along with statements, and how some of the questions are grammatically incorrect for the answers they are looking for.
besides those little things which im sure they will fix as time goes by this school is perfect for anyone who is interested in finding a career in any type of combustion engine vehicle.
EDIT: few months further in and I still stand by what I said before but would like to add that Student Services is a joke (as a department) when it comes to financial aid, education, employment and accounting school is good but student services is just horrible.
They should rename their department «information» because that’s all they do. There is no «serving» going on in the least. The point of student services (in my opinion) is to help the students still attend school when during a special circumstance. Such as new employment, family emergencies and so on. But all these staff members do are recite the rules to yiu with no further explanation.
They should obviously not break the rules but have the authority to bend them according to certain facts specific to the student.
If all they are going to do when a student comes to them with an issue is repeat the rules to said student then they might as well fire everyone there expect for one person that can tell the students «yes» or «no» which is as depth as they go with their explanations.
If I had to compare my experience with student services with anything else in my life, it would be the dmv.
«You need these papers, oh really? Well shit happens, NEXT!»

You get out of your UTI experience what you put in and most students were there just messing around and acting like they were still in High School. So of course most of the student body was unsuccesful.
UTI helped me get hired with no work experience
Sears Auto Center Downey (First Job)
Mckenna BMW (Norwalk)
Southern California Edison came an recruited me from UTI (Current job been here 9 years!)
Had job offers through UTI career center for
Schlumberger (they wanted to fly me to Houston for a final interview)
Tom’s Truck Center
also a big forklift repair company cant remeber the name.
My brother graduated from UTI before I did and he went into the BMW program and he’s been working at BMW dealerships for 10 years.
Here’s the catch don’t believe the what the sales team tells you saying you can make 100k a year that is not the truth even as an experienced technician you’ll be lucky to make 75k a year thats busting your a** more than likely you’ll be around 45−50k a year UTI and Wyotech have saturated the employment market so dont expect great pay.

The schools is good, my son loves the auto-​diesel program he is in; and has POSITIVE coments about the instructors ALL THE TIME. It is ALSO true that kids have a heck of a time to find a job in Rancho. So if you decide to send your kid to this school, just keep in mind that living expenses will be high, and tuition fees are very pricey. So be willing to invest in your kid’s future.
I haven’t had any problems with the administrative staff. However, ONE MAJOR PROBLEM IS THE HOUSING REPRESENTATIVE. This individual is rude and not helpful at all, and will try to suck the money out of you by «creating» additional charges. The «furnished» appartment I was paying for my son was $ 559. The apt was horrible when we moved my son in. The carpet was dirty, the bathroom and the sink brocken, dirty and horrible too, the main door was broken. All these was notified to the rep and nothing was done to fix the apartment. However, now that the lease is over the rep is charging us for shampooing the carpet, and God knows what else. We were not even provided with the detail of the «repairs and maintenance». Very strange that my son was transferred to a different apartment when the other three roomates’ lease was over. My son was told the apartment was going through remodeling. SO IMAGINE WHO THEY ARE CHARGING FOR THAT REMODELING. The kids are harrased by this person, ALL SHE WANTS IS TO RIPP PEOPLE OFF. SO IF YOU ARE SENDING YOUR KID TO THIS SCHOOL, DON’T RENT THROUGH COLLEGIATE HOUSING.

I attended from 2004 – 2005 I was 19 and didn’t know a thing about cars. I regret going there just because of how much it costs. They taught me the basics but that’s a lot of money for the basics and cool looking classrooms. Nowadays just go to your local community college, you’ll save a ton of money and not start off your life in debt!

This school has done nothing but suck ever dollar out of my life. I paid 10,000 out of my own pocket, on top of 30,000 dollar loan hoping for a better future. I attended for a little over a year with no problems. Passed all my classes. But this is wear it gets nasty. I had to take a year off. I let them know of my time being off and everything was ok. 100 dollar re-​enrollment fee when i was to return. So happy to return you go threw normal steps, student services, accounting, then finally finical aid department. With all the paperwork signed shirts bought, glasses, boots ect i find out they hiked up the tuition 3177.00! And wants seven payments of 454.00 for seven months!
Now im a hard working butcher who works from 6 to 6 with a family. I have a house payment, car payment and all of life other bills. 454.00 is unrealistic for me. Needless to say im f***ed. No certs, no job placement, nothing. I HIGHLY dont recommend this school. Its about them not the students.
And let me add. I was taking night classes. 7:15 to 12:05. When i was trying to re-​enroll i found out they changed the time to 7:30 to 12:30. Leaving anyone who WORKS ALL DAY 5 hours of sleep if you are lucky! And ohhh one more thing. Night people only have tell 8 with the office for help. You pay the same as everyone else but you get the small end of the stick at the end of the day.

I can finally write a review. My son has now graduated and I can be honest without fear of the HORRIBLE administration taking it out on him.
Good news first. The program was pretty thorough and my son loved his teachers. He went there out of High School and had no real knowledge of mechanics, he learned a lot and is now looking for work.
Here’s the rest of the story. DO NOT BELIEVE A FREAKING WORD the administration says to you. They make you believe that they are there for all the students needs… I call BULLSHIT. Their goal is to get you enrolled and collect money, whether it’s from you or a Federal Aid program (they have this on lock down and know how to get every penny). They will feed you stories, like how they will help your son find suitable housing, a job and so on. BULLSHIT
Their help consists of an out dated printout and that is IT. The administration is rude, arrogant and condescending. When you ask for clarification, they get aggressive and try to scare you into submission. Once they have your money they don’t give a hoot about your kids education, living situation or anything else.
Be wary of their sales tactics when they try to sell you the school. I promise you, it’s all BULL. My son told me how many students start the program and then quit. It’s not that it is that hard, it’s because they do not screen the students well. They accept everyone and get as much Federal money as they can upfront and then if the student quits, OH WELL, sucks to be them. There are so many that should have never been there in the first place.
The administrative departments do not communicate well and everyone has their own idea of what a newly enrolled should be doing, filling out etc. We got caught in so much bullshit in the beginning. Communication is –50 in this school, and if they haven’t received the money ASAP they start to threaten you.
Bottom line, you can get an education here, but do not expect ANYTHING else they tell you.

Attended from 2004 – 2005 and ended up going to the BMW STEP program after graduation.
If you know anything about cars, this program will seem like a waste of your time. 90% of the stuff is very basic, save for a couple classes and is almost like Automotive Repair 101. The draw is to get into the one of many manufacturer specific programs (Ford, BMW, Mercedes etc).
They make it sound like UTI is the only way you can get into those programs, but it is FALSE. I went to STEP in Orlando, and half of the students there came from community colleges.
Save yourself a lot of $ and go to a community college. UTI costs way too much for what it offers. I worked for couple yrs at a famous BMW dealership and left because it wasn’t for me, so make sure this is where you want to be. Once you’re a tech, its very difficult to move up to any other position outside the service department.
I’m not in the automotive industry anymore, but would advise people thinking of going to UTI to reconsider.

the program and facility is pretty sweet but the staff is comprised of mostly arrogant egotistical former auto mechanics as instructors. They aren’t always helpful and tuition way overpriced. if you are a super douchebag you will fit in just fine with students and instructors alike.