After doing extensive research and talking with many instructors and dive shop owners, as well as based on my own personal experience, I can highly, highly recommend RAID as well. On top of everything people have said, it seems to me RAID instructors tend to update their knowledge and materials quite regularly, while the same culture doesn't show as much in most others, in my personal experience - none other. Even instructors of one of the other highly recommended agencies TDI don't always know or understand their agencies' most updated standards (an issue I've seen with the majority of their instructors for some reason. I don't doubt their technical knowledge, it's just they're saying TDI's standard is what it's patently not on the website, even when they directly linked the website to me, so I'm not so sure about their reading comprehension either... It's specifically a TDI instructors' issue that I haven't seen so consistently in any other agency. Is it because TDI recently changed their standards or something? ok sorry for my rant...)