This blog is part of a series on transcription. If you haven’t read the other blogs in this series, make sure to check out the summary page for a listing of all transcription blogs.
I have to admit: I am slightly biased when it comes to choosing a medical transcription school, if only because Career Step is my alma matter. Actually, I’m not sure if it can count as an alma matter because I never graduated, but the basic thought is there. 😛 I attended Career Step, and therefore I know it’s a good school. That does not mean, however, that I cannot objectively and in all honesty say that Andrews School and M-TEC are also good schools, because I have met quite a few people from those schools, and I know that they too are great schools.
Other than me just sitting here and blathering on about it though, I thought I would bring the AAMT (American Association for Medical Transcription) into the picture. As an MT student, there was quite a few times that I wanted to strangle AAMT with my bare hands because of something they did or said, but out of all the things they did wrong, they did something very, very right, and that is, they started a school approval process, so that someone who is interested in becoming an MT can go to the AAMT website and find a list of good schools to get their degree with. Before AAMT stepped up to the plate and started this program, there wasn’t any way to point a wanna-be MT in the right direction.
Now, I can simply have you check out the list of schools that AAMT has approved as being schools that will allow you, upon graduation, to actually get a job. It may sound crazy, but there are a whole lot of schools out there promising you a whole lot of stuff, and almost none of it is true. I have heard, all too often, stories about people attending a school for two years, spending thousands of dollars in the process, and when they graduated with “high honors,” not being able to get a job with anyone, because all of the employers knew that this school did not produce graduates that could hit the ground running.
I personally attended a school that is well-known for not producing employable MTs, and luckily I figured that out before getting too far in. I only wasted $400 or so. There are a lot of people who have wasted a lot more than that on their bad choices, and I want to save my readers from making those same bad decisions.
In the medical transcription field, there are three schools known as “The Big Three” and those three schools are Career Step, Andrews, and M-Tec. If you click on the link I gave above, you’ll see that there are more than just those three schools listed, however. But since these are the best-known schools out of the bunch, these are the three that I will be focusing on in this blog. Do know that there are others out there, and you should investigate all of the possibilities before making a choice.
Having said all that, let’s begin with M-TEC!