The University of Baltimore

The food staff is awful. The food is often poor quality and is supplied by Sodexho, who are known for being awful. The food at the dining hall is hardly suitable for consumption 90% of the time, with your best resort being cereal or toast. There is occasionally something good there, but it's all very subpar for the high price you pay for a meal plan during a semester. At the Commons, the food is slightly better but still often varies in quality. Cheeseburgers are rarely hot or fresh, bread at the sub shop is often stale and smooshed, or cut to be 3 or 4 inches instead of 6. There is a BBQ place on campus which will sometimes have good food and other times have disgusting meat that's full of fat and difficult to stomach. But what's worse than any of this is that the staff is rude. They will argue with you about what you ordered, and they will complain about a customer TO other customers. We once found a dead roach in the french fries at the burger place and the food staff only wrote it off and tried to hush us by giving us a free meal. Nothing ever changed, and the places only became worse.

Many of the classes are not very difficult. You have your share of professors that read off of slides, professors that go off on tangents for the entire glass, and honestly good professors. Unfortunately, many of my classes have fallen into the first two - I've been doing well my entire time here and barely even attend most of my classes outside of when it's absolutely necessary (test or quiz, etc). Some of the teachers are nice and knowledgeable, others act as if their students are a burden on them. Some professors honestly do not know the material and will even admit it, and leave you to fend for yourself. Your mileage may vary on this, of course.

If you want fun, UMBC is not the place to go. There are few events of interest here on campus, and even so, many people here aren't very approachable. You can go off campus to do things, which can be great. There are a lot of places easily accessible to you at this part of Maryland. However, the closest city is Baltimore, and while Baltimore may have a lot to do, it is also a garbage heap of a city that's very dangerous in some parts (check baltimorecrime.blogspot.com to see just what I mean).

To UMBC's credit, the campus is gorgeous. There are ample trees all over the place, a pond (though it has seen better days) and ample wild life - squirrels, geese, birds and even deer. The campus itself is also very safe. Police frequently patrol around the campus and there are two police stations on or around campus (the UMBC police and the Baltimore County police).Overall, however, UMBC is a very mediocre school with poor serving staff. You can get a decent education here, but you'll likely have to do a lot of your own legwork with little help from your professors. I'd recommend looking at other options before you come here.

The good: There is no secret that if you get accepted into, or are currently attending UMBC, you are smarter then the average person. You will be challenged and pushed to the limit.The Bad: the first thing is that if you are looking to enjoy your college experience and have a little social life while studying, it's not going to happen at UMBC. 50% of students commute and the campus is boring as hell during the weekends. the campus is very diverse; however, too much of anything can be a bad thing, so the campus is so diverse till the point it feels like it's segregated because people can find their "group" and hang with them. UMBC is now the most expensive school in the university of maryland system and it is not worth it, go to UMCP. for science majors, i see a lot of kids taking courses three or four times, even the Meyeroff kids are repeating classes two or three times which means their top kids can not get through some of their courses the first time. plus the school encourage you to retake science classes if you get a c which can get expensive. if you are pre-professional, pre-med, pre-nursing, etc....you can forget about getting good help. i know foreigners who didn't live in the US all their lives or just came here for school and had to go through applying and getting info all on their own. i have heard stories from friends who were told they would not become Dr. or whatever. it maybe true but who are they to tell someone that. science classes are pretty big ranging from 150-250+ students. everyone seems to be pre-med although the number of UMBC students who get into med school is rather small. Has the highest drop-out rate in maryland. i had no intentions on attending UMBC but got accepted and said hell with it....big mistake. i am transferring after this semster. one quick personal story...i took genetics, about 230 students give or take. i felt as though i learned nothing and got a C by studying/memorizing old exams...attending class was a waste of time. i got a C in the class and the professor made a mistake giving me a D. i e-mailed him and had him fix the grade....cool. apparently my e-mail never got to him and another student with my last name had took the class 3 times and from the sound of it had failed again. the professor thought it was me and asked me if i was still concidering medical school or am i going into business. he may have been joking but i didn't think that was cool, so i took it as they aim to weed out kids intentionally, or to make more money. anyone who has pass undergrad. and are Dr. or whatever would tell you those courses do not determined rather or not you are going to be good once you are out in the work force. just pick another school. i think there are plenty other schools that can offer a more well rounded experience.