I think QA is one of the easiest IT jobs around and it seems like these dhoti's are able to some how find you a job. Personally speaking, if this Indian lady can guarantee you a job after training (with $1,000 fee), and if you reside in LA and don't want to move then then it is cheap. Corporate training cost runs in 10k-20k per week. And believe me if you go on your own, it will cost at-least 2500/week. So believe me, $1,000 for 4 weeks of training is cheap. But make sure, you learn and take time in what they teach you.. here are fyi.. since you're new to IT. There are 2 types of QA testing 1) UI Testing (Manually and Automated), 2) API Testing (mostly for Enterprise Application like J2EE or .Net). 1. UI Testing some major tools are silk runner, TestPartner, QA Director, JsUnit etc, 2. API, junit and few more. With this, you should also ask these Indian trainer for Profiling and/or Optimizer tools, because it goes well with QA duties. Well I hope this helps you make better decision and good luck. ps: its good to try learning or at-least be able to read and know VB, SQL and JAVA.