The University of Maryland - College Park

Absolute waste of money!! Telecommunications program at UMD is a joke, They can not be less specific or structured. I had way better course structure during my undergrad program. A lot of courses are under grad level and also expensive for the mediocre quality of education and lack of interest from faculty members. The useless management courses are utter useless, they will definitely not help you even remotely in any management sector. Stay away folks from this money minting program at UMD.

I wasted two years at this university obtaining my Masters and would not recommend it to anybody. The faculty are so engrossed in their own personal agendas (including politics) to the degree that half of a 2.5-hour class might be spent debating irrelevant topics like modern day gender as opposed to the subject material, and of course only certain viewpoints in said discussion would be tolerated. Due to this time wasting, I barely learned anything over the course of two years, since what we did cover was so basic that I had already known it from undergrad. Nevertheless, the pace of the department was cutthroat, and you'd always be scrambling frantically to finish one assignment or another, none of which are worth your time anyway. The funding was scarce, and without another part time job (since the university does not allow you time for such a thing), I was only barely able to afford my apartment even in the relatively cheap college park area. Do not go here. Unless you are already of the exact same mind as the teachers, they will belittle you, and even if you are, the education you receive is not worth the time spent attaining it nor the inflated workload.

This university is the epitome of mediocre. How do I know? Well, because that is what one gets when he tries to be a "flagman" in every possible endeavor from sports to high-end science research. It simply does not work that way.

There is a reason why most great universities are small (certainly under 10,000 total people). That reason is that it becomes impossible to manage human organizations effectively once they reach a certain size. This university, as well as many of its individual departments, are well beyond that size. If you want to have a great football team, go ahead and do it. However, your science research will probably suffer, and vice versa. Pick your priorities and follow them. Otherwise, get smaller. But, pardon my delusional thinking, in the age of increasing addiction to "free" government funding getting smaller is simply not the option. And that does not mean just the mandatory "fix" the professors must receive in terms of their raises. Everyone wants to become a Starbucks and no one just wants to remain a cool and eclectic coffee shop with its charm and advantages. This logic works for universities the same way it does for coffee shops.

Speaking of professor's raises, their starting salaries are already 5-6 times that of a typical graduate student. Despite that, they will complain incessantly when some budgetary restriction will be attempted to come down from the "gods" of the state of Maryland. While I am on the subject, the pay for TA and RA here is about 70% that of other comparable universities. In addition, other universities do not charge their graduate students fees every semester. These amount to about $700-800 each semester. In short, the university will attempt to rape you financially at every turn. You are either an "employee" or a "student," depending on which one is better suited for them to charge you more money or pay you less in the first place.

No one here cares about anything except for the immediate thing which could possibly threaten them with reprimanding or put their salary increase under duress. I have met some good people, who, surprisingly, were secretaries. It is still beyond me how they could put up working at a place like this. Either way, they made my short time here slightly brighter.If I could choose all over again, I would have never accepted the offer from this place.

This is the worst program ever, it turned me off to the entire world of academia.
There are a few faculty that genuinely care about the grad students, but most couldn't care less.
Other grad students, again a few are nice but most are awful, good luck finding friendliness or support from ANYONE.

Even the office staff are useless. Example I had a simple question about a form, would have taken 10 seconds to answer, instead was rudely told "I'm eating my lunch come back later!" Most don't respond to e-mails, are not approachable, etc.

Ultimately your experience with the research and academic side will depend on your advisor, and unfortunately I ended up with one of the useless ones.So glad I got out of here when I did. This program is soul-destroying.

The chemical engineering department requires that each phD candidate work a minimum of two and maximum of four (I believe this number fluctuates with the size of the undergraduate class) semesters as a teaching assistant. Teaching assistants do not receive any compensation or any health benefits from the department. I do not currently, nor have I ever, received any funding from this department, though I have paid the University thousands of dollars for 'research credits' (paying for the "opportunity" to work for them for free I suppose). While most of the faculty members are very nice and very helpful on an individual level, I often think the department as whole sees me as a source of free labor. I understand all programs require at least some free labor from their students, but I personally haven't seen any other programs require up to four semesters of unpaid TAing in service of the department.

Hampton university is not a good school at all. If you are planning on going here, please reconsider. This place is VERY disgusting the freshman dorms are dirty and janitors do not clean them. It took the janitors 4 weeks to clean the top floor of the dorm bathroom. Hampton is pretty much just a scam that wants all your money and they tell you it is a good experience and then when you get here they treat you like little kids. Me and my friends were told to " GO TO YOUR ROOMS NOW!!!" by the dorm director because we were supposed to sign in for curfew, the RAs try to act like they are hard and gangster when they are fake and soft. The cafe food is the worst food ever, they cafe workers dont like their jobs and it shows. i found a roach on the floor in the cafe right next to where they were serving food. I dont know about the rest of these reviews but im keeping it real, dont come here at all and i hope the parents of the students considering coming here read this as well. Please take note of all the negative reviews because they are all true. I got sick the first 2 weeks of being at hampton because how dirty this place is. the only good thing about this place is the teacher because they want you to succeed and they care about your education. Im filling out transferring paper after this semester. Some of the students got put on early curfew because of one little noodle in the sink. The administration here is not helpful at all when trying to get financial things together. they give you the run around. Im going to warn you about something else to, during highschool day, the administration doesn't take you into the cafe because they know how bad it is. They also dont take you into any of the dorms because they know the students will chang their minds about comming here. They act all polite when the parents are here but as soon as they leave they treat students like babies. So i advice you if you really want to come to this school, please reconsider or if you dont, you will waste 30,000 dollars because i can guarantee you that you will be transferring after ther first year.

To my suprise, I encountered many episodes of being treated unfairly while at the program. I strongly made a suggestion for the school to adopt a school id number system so that professors cannot grade their students unfairly.

I was shocked at how the professors would treat the students unfairly and also how many members of the university staff would simply not get back to me to address either my concerns or involvement in clubs/groups.I'm not sure whether this had anything to do with being from a different ethnic group, but I believe that it may.

I went to a small, private, highly competitve university as an undergrad. I was absolutely not prepared for the difference between the two schools. At UMD, staff and many of the students have an extremely provincial mindset. They raised the fees thousands of dollars before school began. I absolutely HATE this school. My tuition is a tremendous waste of money. I HATE it.

If you are a kind of person who loves to do research and like courses only for basic understanding of concepts. this is not the place for you. You will waste at least three years doing grad courses and not get sufficient time for research.