Philadelphia University

First off, my ratings were an average of my views, and my roomates views. I am an animation major, he is an architect major. My first semester i had a great design teacher, who was very knowledgable, and from university of the arts. I had an incredible amount of work, more than the architects, but i learned as much as physically possible within the 14 weeks. I have had previous art experience, and was hoping to be challenged in my major. Yet being an computer animation major, i dont start classes on the computer until junior year, and by then, i will have had only 7 art classes and 13 liberal arts classes. My gpa was ruined when i recieved a C+ in Calc 1 my first semester, which the requirement for my major is only precalc, so i skipped finite, precalc, and intro to calc, and by second semester i will have taked calc 2, so there is no reason i should have to be in that class, considering i never took calc in high school. Then i met with the poorly designed animation department, who none of which know exactly what is going on, and just put the animation majors into the same first year courses as fashion design. If you are a design student and you want to learn design, and be challenged with hard workers, this is not the place for you, the students complain whenever a little bit of work is given, and the school favors athletes. An athelete in my hall had shot a girl with a paintball gun, was caught with cocaine in his room, and trashed the halls, and his punishment was to be moved to a different hall. Most of the design students are not artists, they "like to shop" so they majored in fashion. And the animation majors "like to play video games" so they thought it would be cool to make them. --- That was all my view of it. But my roomate is very happy here, he is an architect and has alot of work, which he likes because he is learning. The good thing about architect major is that people drop out and get failed out if they cannot handle the work, if you want to major in architecture this is a fine school

1st Year Male -- Class 2010

Campus Aesthetics: A, Social Life: F

If you're going into the field of architecture be prepared to have no life. You do about 1 project every 1.5-1.7 weeks. A project usually consists of a ton of work followed by the professor pointing out everything you do wrong for 5-10 minutes straight depending on his time left in class. Now, it's pretty hilarious when he's picking on everyone else, but if you're going to do architecture make sure you can handle a little bit of vocal harassment. SOOOO the first project for a first year student is a shoe model. This includes takeing a shoe, and making 15-20 perfect sketches every 3/4s inch or so. You take the sketches and figure out on your own how to transfer the sketches to the 1/8 inch cardboard. you then have to take the cardboard and since my shoe was 13 inches long, I had to make a 13 inch shoe out of 1/8 inch perfectly cut slices. That's 104 slices. They make you do the first one in a night or 2 so you will stay up all night. You wont sleep. Then the next day they gave us 5 days to do 3 more shoes with different orientations and make 3 20x30 boards with all of the sketches drawn and inked. It's a tough major and many of you guys I assume will cry often.

As for advice, use the tutoring staff. They're good people and are a lot of help. Like my calc teacher speaks so-so english and always stands right in front of what he's writing. So all I have to do is walk into this room at 12ish and write my name on a paper to show that the tutor lady is getting people.All in all, even though the Design class is really really tough they do teach you a lot about art. Like they'll find a mistake and say its like that for the purpose of the design. You then have to figure out what a good excuse is for that. Not an excuse as in the knife slipped and I cut the board to far, but a very creative excuse that I can't think of right now.

1st Year Male -- Class 2011

Innovation: A+, Social Life: C-

I've been meaning to write a review about this institution, and I think it's about time. I have been here for almost four years. I was fashion design for 2.5 years, fashion merchandising for a semester, then finally, management. I enjoyed my freshman year at Philly U. I made a lot of friends from Ronson. The design classes were a bit tedious and the cost of supplies were outrageous. The gen ed. classes usually give the students more work than the classes pertaining to their major. Some teachers are unfair and rather demanding, giving out essays after essays. Make sure you know who to take for what class. You can easily avoid the poor professors that way. That's my best advice. Anyway, there are some awesome down-to-earth professors at Philly U. I will miss them when I transfer out this semester. T

he campus is so-so. There is major construction going on near Common Thread. There's also a major road that separates the campus, no big deal though. I enjoy going to the Student Center to play pool, Search Hall to work on my assignments, and the Library for quiet study (and magazine reading) time.

The campus is far from center city. You must take a bus or train to get downtown. The best way to find a friend who has a car. Public transportation is rather unreliable and expensive.

The food is okay. There is nothing to rant or rave about it. I prefer a cafeteria that has a new menu each week than other schools that has franchises like Taco Bell.

As for the students, a vast majority are not bright. They are not very knowledgeable about current issues and only concern about their group of friends, homework, iPods. No one cares about anything that is going on in the world. Some girls are rather stuck-up, superficial and spoiled here. You know, the one's with the designer purses?

The Ram Van is a hassle. It should be convenient but they often miss stops and takes about 30 minutes for the shuttle to reach to SLH.

This school is renowned for their design and textile programs. So if you are thinking about major in design, come here. For business and other majors, it is so-so. This is why I am transferring out. There are thousands of better colleges for business out there.Overall, I would not recommend Philadelphia University. The faculty is great, but the type of students are poor. The campus and cafeteria food is okay. The coursework can be too much at times, depending on the professor. Get used to staying on campus, because everything is a far reach from here.

4th Year Female -- Class 2006

Faculty Accessibility: A, Social Life: D