Worldlink Education...Who knows bout this company?

Question

Has anyone ever participated in one of the study/teaching programs offered by Worldlink Education?

How did you like it? how was the school, how was the transition, how was worldlink as a third party (would it be better to enrol directly with the school, rather than using Worldlink)???

i'm considering studying in Beijing but i would like to hear from anyone who has used Worldlink Education.

Answer 1

I would recommend a company called East-West Connection.  The program is very hands-on with its students, with hours of personal tutoring each week, and the latest technology to help further your learning.   They're also flexible and willing to tailor the program to your needs.  You can check out their website at

http://www.1monthchinese.com/Why_Learn_C...

Hope this helps!  Enjoy!

Gia

Answer 2

Dear All:

I am so tired of you Mr. Worley to try to bad mouth WorldLink and ACLS with these negative posts.

This negative post about WorldLink Education and ACLS has been written by Matt Worley who is the “Founder and General Manager” of  1month Chinese, a language school competing with ACLS and WorldLink in Beijing. You can read about him at:

http://www.1monthchinese.com/About_Us.ht...

He has posted similar posts on www.Chinese-forums.com under the nickname “self-taught-mba” And also at http://www.zlsu.com/topic/htm24/13372.ht...

Janalyn C Froese

WorldLink Education

Beijing Academic Director

Answer 3

Hello,

I am Mr. Worley.  

I really don't think it's appropriate to badmouth Worldlink Education anymore.  The original posters seems to have done a good enough job and I appreciate the notice about my name coming up.

Dear Ms. Froese and all:

I'm hardly posting all over the Internet.  

The fact is this: I was a participant in a WorldLink program at one time and I was entirely displeased.  The fact that I started a business is because of this fact.  Not the other way around.    My complaint did not arise from some need to badmouth Worldlink to help my business, but rather from a genuine complaint.   As I quite as clearly stated on the forums, the fact that I was starting a new kind of school did not negate the fact that I was a displeased customer first.   I have never hidden my identity and in fact included disclosures about my relationship with the newly formed school.  I mentioned my experience, along with many other ideas about why I started this business in a very long tell all on the forums - 2 years ago.  Several lines in 20 pages of posting is hardly excessive.  I gave my two cents two years ago and have not mentioned you guys since until now.  

Things may have changed in the last two years and I realized that it was not your ship when I had the problems there.  But the fact is I and a few others were not so pleased  and I had a legitimate complaint.  WorldLink has serviced over 10,000 people and of course there are going to be some problems.  Your predecessor and the company should have used it as a learning experience.   I was not a good fit with WorldLink and the company accepted me anyway, telling me what I wanted to hear.  I have turned down many people that have applied for our school because they would not be a good fit because it would not deliver what they were looking for.   And the only reason I need to bring this up is because my name has been dragged into this and I will defend my original position which was that I was dissatisfied and had a legitimate complaint.  I haven't felt the need to post anything about WorldLink for two years and don't need to now.  WL may have improved significantly for all I know (note for question asker), but it doesn't really impact my business one way or another.

As for the forums:

I've used my position there to help as many people as I can if that includes telling of my experience about WorldLink (again two years ago passed) then so be it.  I have yet to even insert a signature line to my posts plugging my business.

In fact the educated reader will be able to look at the forums closely and find that I have spoken highly of several "competitors".  I call things as I see them period.

The educated reader will also notice that I have been involved in several collaborative projects and have done my best to give back to the Chinese learning community.  This is not just the job for me and it is a passion.

Secondly, despite the threatening letter I received after and making my initial comments saying I started a competing company, we are not competitors.   We have never been in the same market space and are not in the same market space.

Our demographics are different and our focus is completely different.  

WL is a packager of services (nothing wrong with that).  Our focus is primarily on speaking.  You go for the mainstream market we are a niche competitor and get lots of word of mouth business.  (our website isn't really that ugly-- it's just branded differently that's all - our service sells itself anyway).  We don't teacher writing and hardly any reading.  Tours and such are just ancillary services that some people demand, that is wrapped around a completely different package.

Thirdly,  who actually reads Yahoo answers anyway?   Talk to your SEO person.  The traffic for an individual post is negligible and has no bearing in terms of page rank in Google, especially for a company your size.

The market is large enough and there are plenty of competitors directly related to you in the field.  You'll notice from my article about "Why  Learning Chinese Is a Smart Business Move" that part of my job has been trying to expand the market not to fight for market share in it.  

As for the above poster being an alias of mine, I think not.  There is a good chance it is somebody I know though because I do ask people to vote for posts that recommend me,  and as you know I command a fairly decent following on some online form forums and a happy base of customers.  Or it could be a third party that is trying to distract us both in what we both know is the busy season of the year for inquiries.  (In fact it may not be from the real Ms. Froese at all)

The follow-on poster "Susanne Martinger" was also registered yesterday and also seems to have no trouble calling out my name, pretty strange for a random person.  The name sounds pretty real so it sounds convincing but a Google search will yield no results for this person.

So just to defend my name.

To the original question asker, I just say this:

If you do think about coming to our school know that it's not easy and if you're thinking about needing a packager of programs than it might not be for you because we require a high level of independence.

Use all online resources not just this one to evaluate your choices and talk to people who have been personally.  No one knows, the people who answer these questions have what intent?  It is a competitive business for many of them.

If a company treats you well including WorldLink by all means give them a hearty recommendation as many have.  

In all cases, let the buyer beware.

All the best to all parties,

Matt Worley

Answer 4

Thanks Janalyn. I have only heard good things about your organization and it is really bad when someone is posting false information...........

Above post seems to be another of Mr Worley's alias created yesterday.........

Susanne Martinger

Answer 5

My personal opinion in one sentence: they suck and they are overpriced.

I attended their program when I first came to Beijing.  (Their so-called ACLS ).  I've been in Beijing for awhile teaching now.

Why they suck:

>they group people from different levels into the same classes to save money

>they are an accommodation service mostly, you can get the same accommodations much cheaper

>the quality of the teaching generally was not that great

>there are now much better choices

  They basically only care about your money and are dishonest about some of the things that they provide.   several people that went to the University programs there weren't all that impressed either.

Should you attend a university on your own?

Maybe.  But using these kinds of services can be a big benefit especially if you don't speak any Chinese and you don't know where to look.  It's also nice to have someone that is there to take care of you and give you extra like tutoring and tours.  

but there are a bunch of other services out there.   my friend went with Educasian www.educasian.com, he was pleased but said that they are even more overpriced.  (A quick look at them and it sure looks like it!)   other friends went with a company called "PRC Study", according to them they really suck and are cheaters.  

If I had to do it over again I personally would have wished to gone to a program like this www.1monthchinese.com which also offers a University study program (hidden away on their ugly *** website) for a lot less money that even includes everything WorldLink does plus daily 1 to 1 tuition and a Palm Pilot.  Maybe you don't know why you need a Palm pilot but if the price is cheaper than WorldLink and it comes with then it just goes to show you how overpriced WorldLink is.

Good luck and maybe see you here in Beijing.