ABOUT W3SCHOOLS
Before I tell you about my personal experience with W3Schools (a company based in Norway), you should know that W3Schools.com is not affiliated with the W3C in any way. Members of the W3C have asked W3Schools to cut off any connection with their name, and they have refused to do so.
W3Schools offers courses and certificates for web development; the value of those certificates is highly debatable. No employer recognizes or respects W3Schools certificates. W3Schools has absolutely no authority over the technologies for which they claim to provide certification.
At first I believed this website would provide completely accurate information; and who would offer a certificate for $95.00 if their exams and quizzes weren’t completely accurate? The truth is, this site is completely inaccurate. Their exams are flawed. On some exams, correct answers are counted as incorrect! You can read more about this at http://w3fools.com/ where they provide proof to the above claims.
W3Schools robs you of your time and money. They do not allow their viewers to submit corrections anywhere on their site (most websites do, even my blog has this option). The truth is, if they don’t give you any type of schedule, they make you pay more than $50 for a certificate, and they don’t allow you to submit corrections, chances are they’re bad news.
MY EXPERIENCE
On January 28, 2012 I paid $95.00 for an exam that, if passed, would grant me a CSS certificate from W3Schools. W3Schools allows two attempts; if you fail the first, you have another chance to pass it. In their Terms of Service they state that only the best of the two attempts counts. One has to receive a score of at least 75% to pass. On the first attempt (January 28), I earned a failing grade of 49 correct answers out of a possible 70. Next to this on the results page was 58%, which is clearly inaccurate. On the second attempt (September 7), I earned a passing grade of 58 correct answers out of a possible 70. The percentage was again incorrect (this does not equal 78%). The results page, however, indicated I had failed the exam.
The next morning, on September 8, 2012, I sent an email to exam@w3schools.com stating this:
Dear Mr. Kai Jim Refsnes,
On September, 7, 2012, I took my second attempt at the CSS Certification exam. At the end of the seventy-question exam, it alerted me that I had “failed”. However, it says that the score required is 75%. My results showed that I earned 78% on the second attempt, which would be a passing grade if “the best of the two attempts counts”. Despite this, the results page indicates that I have failed. I paid $95.00 (USD) for the exam on January 28, 2012. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Samantha R. Selman
He responded to my father on September 12, 2012:
Hello
I have looked into the matter of your concern, and I appreciate you contacting me regarding this matter. Your daughter participated in our CSS Certification exam on both January 28, 2012 and September 8, 2012. Her first exam attempt shows a score of 35 correct answers of a total 70. Her second attempt however; 48 of 70. Unfortunately, she only earned 68,5% on her second attempt. And a 75% score was required to pass.. The attached file you sent me has clearly been manipulted.
My reply was this:
Mr. Refsnes,
In an email you sent to my father, you accused me of manipulating the attached file. My family and I do not appreciate your false accusations or the multiple mistakes in your website’s code that apparently have not been fixed. I witnessed the final score with my own eyes and took a snapshot of my results immediately after the exam. It showed a failed grade of 49 of a possible 70 on attempt one (the percentage is also incorrect) and a passing grade of 58 of a possible 70 on attempt two (the percentage is incorrect though). I do not blame this error on you, but I do blame it on an error in your code. I did not manipulate this snapshot; if you can access my results, I would appreciate a snapshot being emailed to me, because I can no longer access my account on your website. I look forward to your response so I can prevent my father from contacting the FTC; I do not want any problems with your company, I simply want the error in your code fixed and my truthful results emailed to me. Thank you for your time and hopefully this problem can be resolved quickly.
Sincerely,
Samantha R. Selman
I am not upset because they claim I failed. I am infuriated because they accused me of lying after I provided proof that their system says I passed! The error in the percentages make me question if the results provided are correct; but if they submit results to their customers and present their site as being completely accurate, and the results page claims I passed the test, I should receive a certificate. If it is revealed that their code is to blame for this error, I hope they will review their code and fix the problem. If it is not their code, I would at least like a refund and an apology. For me to pay $95 for an inaccurate exam and an insult is ridiculous!
WHAT TO DO AND WHERE TO GO INSTEAD
As far as certification goes, certification is not required in most cases. Facebook, Google, and Twitter do not require certification from their employees. They do, however, test them (and no, they don’t use W3Schools as their testing platform). If you have a job interview with Google and they ask you to prove that you can “code”, they won’t give you a multiple choice exam. They’ll place you in front of a computer or in front of a drawing tablet and ask you to write the code – actual code that works. W3Schools does not teach you how to do this – they teach you how to answer multiple choice questions.
If they have manipulated your results, or your results are inaccurate, you can always contact the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) and file a complaint at http://www.ic3.gov/complaint/default.aspx . If you have a story similar to mine, feel free to share in the comment section below. If W3Schools is scamming its customers, people need to know about it. No one else needs to be victimized by this company.
If you think W3Schools is the only website where you can become certified after completing courses and an exam, think again. There are many more online sources that are accurate and free. These are a few alternate sources to W3Schools that are free. Their information seems accurate, plus they don’t have sites setting up campaigns against them (which is always a good sign.)
Open Source Tutorials http://www.opensourcetutorials.com/tutorials/Client-Side-Coding/
Better Programmer (Java Certification) provides a free test and a certificate if you pass their exam. Their test is based on real code. http://www.betterprogrammer.com/
E-Learning Center (oh, did I mention it is Better Business Bureau accredited?)
http://www.e-learningcenter.com/free.htm
Opera Web Standard Curriculum
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/1-introduction-to-the-web-standards-cur/#toc
Google Code University http://code.google.com/edu/submissions/html-css-javascript/
Sitepoint http://reference.sitepoint.com/css
The actual W3C http://www.w3.org/wiki/HTML/Elements
Mozilla’s developer network https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs
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