Like many other students, I was drawn into the college after a tour of the beautiful campus and the offer of a huge scholarship, and I honestly did enjoy my first two weeks at the school. However, things quickly went downhill from there.Positive things first:
1- I really did love the majority of the professors in the science department. If you put the effort in to your education, they will do what they can to help you.
2- The campus is gorgeous.
Now for the negative aspects:
1- I was followed (on numerous occasions) by groups of people from the surrounding neighborhood yelling obscenities at me and threatening my life. Better yet, the wonderful campus security officers showed up 20 minutes after they were called (it takes 5 minutes to walk from one side of campus to the other).
2- The 50k you pay each year doesn't go into your education at all. Unless you are studying to be a groundskeeper. The groundskeepers are pros at spray painting the grass and placing sprinklers in the middle of the pathways.
3- The campus may look gorgeous from the outside, but upon walking in any building you will quickly realize the school is stuck in the past. Things are falling apart, and the technology is pathetic.
4- Even with a huge scholarship, attending the school is ridiculously expensive. Thus, there are a huge majority of very rich kids on the campus that bring with them a stuck-up attitude. I don't think I have ever been surrounded by so many unfriendly people in my life.
5- While the school prides itself in its many traditions, they are way overdone. You may not be a number to the faculty, but you will have a number added to the end of your name (class year) which pretty much determines your abilities and intelligence in the eyes of many. You better be able to deal with the color purple, because you will quite literally see it everywhere. The freshman writing program will load you with work, but never teach you to write while the core program will just plain waste your time.
6- The school is not picky at all about who it accepts. The only thing it really cares about is money. Thus you will end up in class with people who live in a parallel universe and were left behind way back in elementary school.Basically, the purple bubble is a very negative place that doesn't foster academic excellence. Of all the people I met there, 5-10 of them actually loved the school while the other 99% were looking into transferring. Personally, transferring was the best decision I have ever made and I would never go back.
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