Temple University

This school is taking advantage of its graduate students, assign you unfair amount of teaching tasks and tutoring hours, exhausting your energy so you have little time focusing on your studies and researches. They are not willing to pay for your extra work but just iterating "this is your duty", "see, we have not used up your 20 hour duty". I know friends from two big universities in this city and they only have 6 to 8 hours work load for a full teaching assistant. Expect to work much more if you come to Temple!For graduate students it is the researches that matter, but obviously those in charge do not care. This is a vicious circle. The school is not nice to the graduate students, then graduate students would not be nice to the undergrads, and the education quality suffers.

There's a reason the chair of the department has been tossed around like a hot potato (we're about to have our 4th chair in 11 years). No one would want to be responsible for this mess.

The ONLY redeeming quality of Temple speech is that the supervisors in the school clinic are outstanding. Ann, Patti, Kim, Frannie, and Paula are great clinicians who really know their stuff and you will learn tremendous amounts from them. If you end up here, spend your effort learning from them until you get your field placements. But really, seriously, don't go here. I can't believe I picked this awful, awful place over Penn State.

Initially, everything went smoothly. Applying was easy, no one inexplicably lost my GRE scores, transcripts, or recommendations, and my acceptance was prompt. I was awarded two fellowships without having to apply for them; apparently consideration is automatic based on the recommendation of the faculty. If only the other schools I was accepted to had this level of efficiency, I wouldn't be in the mess I am now!

Once I placed my enrollment deposit, however, everyone went silent. Temple does not provide a packet of information to graduate students, as other universities do, so I had no idea which forms I needed to fill out. I called the graduate secretary and asked about forms in general, and later specifically about housing, but I was told both times that the deadlines were still far off and I would be receiving something in the mail shortly.

Despite this, I found out only a few weeks later that the housing deadline had passed and housing assignments were already being distributed. Great, so now I don't have on-campus housing. Because of this, I had to take an overpriced off-campus apartment with three roommates, when I explicitly stated that I wanted a single room. The roommates are quiet, at least, but they just as easily could have been party animals.

The next hurdle was registering for classes - I emailed, phoned, mailed, and eventually started showing up in person (despite a 2 hour commute each way) pleading with anyone I could find in the CIS department to register me for classes. It wasn't until one day before the semester began that I actually succeeded, and only then after delivering an ultimatum that I would leave the program if I were not registered by 5 PM that day.

I do not have any specific gripe with classes, as they vary just as with other universities. In general, they are far too easy, but I expected that when I chose Temple as a safety school. That I am not being challenged as much as I wished to be while going for my doctorate is the fault of other institutions, not Temple.

My greatest complaint is with the surrounding area. First, there are no real restaurants anywhere near campus. Unless you like eating the food on campus, which is generally bad and always unhealthy, or going to KFC or McDonalds every day, there are no options. Don't think about going to a supermarket, either - there's only one within 20 miles of campus, and it's located in a very bad area - but then, almost all of northern Philadelphia is a very bad area. Step two blocks off of campus in any direction and there's broken glass and spilled trash all over the place. The houses outside of campus are all falling apart and their inhabitants seem to sit on their porches and shout at anyone who passes by all day long.Not only would I not recommend this university to anyone else, but I am transferring out of it myself as soon as I can, even if it means losing an entire year of credit!

http://astro.temple.edu/~reagle/I would NOT go there if I had to do it over.