The Swedish Institute

Must admit. This is the best massage school you will go to. The amount of information they give you is quite useful in everyday practice. However, the degree they give you, and the fact they say that whatever you learn here is good everywhere is only true if massage therapy is the last career on your list.
If you would like to go anywhere else with this degree and become a physical therapist, chiropractor, occupational therapist,
acupuncture, etc… The schools you will apply to will pretty much laugh at you and turn you down. They do not recognize any of their «Harvard of massage school» credits.
So you’re pretty much back to square one!

Went back to the institute to meet with someone else. My experience was totally different this go around. I met with Karen. She walked me through everything and ALL my options were explained to me. Unlike last time, where I was showed one option and left to walk myself out. Things went so well I actually enrolled that day. Start my program in September. :)

Went there for an open house, and happy I did because I really thought about starting studying there.
The welcoming is cold, staff members are anxious and pushy, they don’t care who you are and what you are, looks and feels like they just want to make money and enroll students.
The staff was acting fake, and they look like they don’t trust each other, not working as a team at all and not sharing love and care between colleagues.
Now I hear the instructors are great, but they way the managing staff made me feel was so shitty I don’t even want to hear from them any more.
Hey guys at the Swedish institute, don’t even bother calling me again.

First off, let me be clear this review refers to the PERSONAL TRAINING program offered by this school, not the massage/​medical assistant/​etc. programs.
I made the choice to attend based on the fact that many reviews on Unilocal and elsewhere (all reflecting other programs, not personal training) were fairly positive and my brother, who attended the massage program, did say the instructors were very good, so I had high hopes.
Unfortunately, while the Swedish Institute (hereafter shortened to SI) has been around for almost 100 years, most of that time they were a massage school, so as one would expect their massage program is pretty solid. The personal training program has been around for only a few years — the dean of the program told me it’s almost 10 years old now. Well, I gotta say, ‘You got some S’plainin to do!!’
–The textbooks published by SI themselves are very poorly written. Spelling and grammatical errors abound, but more importantly, they are very poorly organized. For example, a new term will be used over and over for pages without any explanation until much later. No index or glossary exists to make finding answers easier. When I brought up this issue to the Dean, he said it was because they were ‘reference work books’ (that I still had to pay $ 50 a pop for) and that they look like they have never been looked over by an editor (like ANY PROFESSIONAL BOOK!) because SI is ‘going digital’ by handing out iPads to students who can get the books in digital form.
Hmm, that’s interesting… they’re going digital just this year, but the first page says the book was published in 2009… isn’t that like, 6 years of time this crappy book remained crappy and still cost money and was obligatory? And just because it’s a ‘workbook’ does that mean it should look like it was written by an absent-​minded 14 yo?
–The aforementioned iPads handed out to students are a complete waste of time. They make you take a training session and put all this emphasis on how ‘modern” and ‘with it’ the school is, y’know, saving trees and going digital… but Ooopsy-​Daisy! None of the textbooks are available on the iPad! All the tools are mostly useless and could be easier accessed on one’s laptop at home. It seems more like a sales gimmick than an actual useful tool
(Note, this is the first semester they handed out the iPads to students — in the future, I’m sure they will eventually scan their poorly written textbooks to the iPad and make them available. BUT, it should not be overlooked that this means they were dispersed to students BEFORE they were ready to be useful in any way — a lazy shortcut that reeks of incompetence. This actually is a running trend with the SI and how it conducts operations)
–While the instructors themselves were pretty good (as in they seemed to know the material) there was a lot of embarrassingly unprofessional miscommunication between the administration/​head of the program and the instructors doing the teaching. While giving examples would only confuse a person who wasn’t privy to the curriculum, let’s just say it felt like there was a severe lack of organization and proper planning that one would expect from a professional institution.
–Like a few other negative reviews noted, the administration of this school is abysmal. .
–If you do part time in the evenings (most people trying to hold down a job) be prepared for tiny class sizes. While on the one hand this is good (more attention from the instructor) on the other hand it limits networking opportunities and this material is not quantum-​physics — you don’t need that most personal attention to understand it unless you’re kind of dumb.
I finished my first and last semester at this place with an A in all my classes and it wasn’t because I had a chance to drill the teacher for hours about the intricacies of the material.
–I feel like the SI is trying to ‘cash in’ on the personal training bubble by building a pretty impressive gym and a pretty UN-​impressive program that they still charge A LOT for.
For $ 20k+ you get a certificate. A degree will cost you $ 30k+
I can tell you right now, don’t be sold by the flashy gimmicks and the promotional material.
They are not worth the money.
Ultimately, even a degree from SI will not magically get you high-​paying jobs.
SI is not Harvard Law or Columbia — they are not ‘world recognized’ and if anyone DOES recognize them, it’s for their massage therapy program.
So if you are looking for a PERSONAL TRAINING school, I advise you look around some more and find an alternative.
I did, and while I don’t want to mention names here to avoid seeming like I’m a promoter for the competition, this other school will save me $ 15K, offer much better networking opportunities and the same high-​level instructors without the low-​level snake-​oil-​salesman tactics of the Swedish Institute.
You’ve been warned.

Think twice before attending, there are better options.
Everyone seems to love it in the beginning but just wait till you need to deal with the administration in any capacity. Then your nightmare begins.
Worst school ever. Administration/​Registration/​Financial Aid is plagued with incompetence and lack of quality.
It is a joke that they are even an NY accredited school. It was like this when I attended in 2000 and apparently is still the same in 2015.
BTW: All the instructors were amazing! The experience when you are a student in class is great until you have ANY interaction with the drunk monkeys that consistently exist in any department of the administration.
(No insult intended to drunk monkeys.)

I am contemplating enrolling in a massage therapy program, and I signed up on the internet to get information on Swedish Institute. For the past week, the school has robo-​called me constantly, morning, noon, and night, non stop. I went into their office on 26^th Street and asked them to stop calling, and the receptionist agreed to put me on the «Do Not Call» list, but the calls continue. This is harassment. Not the way to «sell» potential students on the benefits of the program. Have pretty much decided on a different school at this point. Reeks of desperation. Too bad, because this reflects badly on graduates of the Institute.

The CEO Peter Neigler is an idiot. Doesn’t know anything about massage, personal training or any of the arts. It’s all about money to them. Don’t go there. The reputation of this school has gone down alot in the past few years.

I completed the massage therapy program at the Swedish Institute. The administrative staff are complete baffoons. It took me three semesters to get any financial aid reimbursments, kept loosing my hire paperwork when I worked as a in class assistant, LOST my diploma, and then 7 months after completion told me I owed 2700.00 because a grant was revoked AFTER I had an exit meeting with financial aid. I continue to have problems making this payment with them (not cashing checks, not charging me when I signed up for auto pay) so I go in every month and give them a CASH payment.
That said the headaches are offset by the AMAZING instructors. If you REALLY pay attention you will leave the school with the tools to be come an excellent massage therapist (there’s a lot of bad therapists out there). I’ve taken many continuing ed courses outside of NYS and I can say as a SI grad you will have a lot more knowledge than a lot of other working therapists out there.
The program is expensive for what it is but I made back what I paid for the program in about 6 months. A year and a half later I am now working for myself soley in private practice.

This is the best school in the country for massage therapy. NY State has higher standards than any other state for massage therapy, but the Swedish Institute has even higher standards. You leave with a health sciences degree, a good understanding of the business and how to run your own, and the best skills you can get. It’s a difficult program but it is absolutely worth it. You will feel confident doing spa work, medical massage, or starting your own business massaging whomever you want. I am from MA, and I wanted to go to the best school no matter how far away it was. I was willing to go to CA, but this is the best and brightest. I am so happy to have an education from here. I’m prepared for anywhere I want to go in the country. And, the teachers are great!

i was a student there! I TOTALLY DISAGREE WITH THE BAD REVIEW.
i can proudly say that this school is the best thing that happened to me.
i knew it was not going to be easy, I WAS NOT LOOKING FOR MICKEY MOUSE SCHOOL, and the full time program is very intense, plus if you become a student there you know what you will be going through.
it is true that the hands-​on classes seem less than the sciences but all you have to do is practice. besides telling you where the muscle is and how to work it then is up to you!
you do need all that scientific information for the state license exam (plus i found it interesting). and the eastern studies were amazing!
the teachers were the best people in the world! fully committed and amazing! i also met hundreds of great students all kinds of ages and from all over the world.
i have to agree with the comment about the student clinic though. as a student i felt EXACTLY as the bad comment. very unorganized, messy and almost useless (to the students) (it’s basically money-​sucking machine).
the main thing is that if you do it right you can have a serious change in your life. this school changed and helped me in so many levels.
i would recommend it to anyone who is really a caregiver and wants to learn about the human body in all its functions.

their student massage clinics suck. yeah i know you get what you pay for, and their packages here are intended to allow the students to practice… i simply did not realize how bad they would be, and it’s definitely not worth my going way out of my way (from brooklyn to the west side) for on a weekend afternoon (i had signed up for weekly sessions at the stress reduction clinic). also, i found the place to be very disorganized and unprofessional in general. the last student massage i got (shiatsu) was bad enough– the student was obviously very nervous (shaking and sweating profusely) and didn’t seem to know what he was doing at all, but i did not have time to change before going in and showed up in a skirt. i figured they would have shorts to offer or a towel to cover me with, as most massage places do, but the guy didn’t have anything. his supervisor came in during the middle of my massage and saw me in a very compromising position in my small undies, and handed him a towel to cover me with. then she actually admonished me for it when the massage was finished and i came out to the reception area– as if i had come in trying to seduce my masseuse or something. i found that incredibly rude since i was the one who was uncomfortable in the first place. anyway… don’t bother. get a decent tui na massage instead– there are plenty of good cheap places around.