The University of South Carolina - Columbia

Politics, politics, politics. Undergrads are stupid. They can't even write a sentence or subtract and think they shouldn't have to be able to do so. Assistantship money doesn't provide for necessities like heat and health care. I have no respect for most of the faculty. I think I need to get a PhD from a different university so people don't think that this place is the best I can do. If I was a hiring manager and someone applied for a job with only this university on his/her resume, there is no way he/she would get a job working for me. Run quickly in the other direction.

when you are told "oh come, we can get funding for you" then run! If you're told "we're sorry we have no funding" then thats the real truth but hey, run the more.

These are the first set of Americans I would see that do not honour their words.
It's a bunch of lies and pretences, they really don't have the funds and still ask you to come in with a guarantee of funding.

The staff isn't friendly, everyday I wonder what I chose to come here, I would have been better off with my other options. This school makes you regret taking the vital decision of coming to school in the US. Its a shame!You walk through the school and that's walking through the down town of Columbia, there is practically no where to go, nothing to do, the environment is just condusive to kill your hopes and aspirations.

I was supposed to work with one professor...did the whole e-mail, phone call, writing sample, transcript, test score thing; he was not on campus when I visited. He agreed to work with me but then decided that, instead of research, I would spend time ONLY doing things for what he was going to publish, totally blew off appointments and was unwilling to explain or teach at all. I now have an excellent advisor, one of only 2 people at the university that I've found who can teach, but he has no funding and isn't doing anything close to what I came here for. Virtually none of the teachers here know how to teach. One even told us that he didn't like to teach and didn't want to be there but they were making him. The department treats the TA's horribly. They recently increased the workload 50% with no additional compensation and punished anyone who complained with even more work and less funding. The undergraduates here are really very stupid. Maybe 10% are college quality students but they all expect good grades and get them. Grade inflation is rampant at the undergraduate level. If I was a hiring manager and the only education on the resume was an undergraduate degree from this college, I wouldn't hire the person no matter the GPA. Money at the university is spent to build more buildings and sports stadiums(taking away student parking for which they charge and which there isn't enough of as it is). Meanwhile they've taken all the journals out of the library. They don't spend money on the students. I actually ended up getting very sick for weeks after going to health services for a physical. The board of health closed down one of the cafeterias last fall. I hope to be out of here very soon. I don't know where I'll go but not here. If you are considering a graduate program here, run away while you still can.

USC is a "university" thrown together in downtown Columbia- you cannot tell which is a college building, and which is a meat market or industrial building. The aesthetics are terrible, and the campus is entirely unattractive. Now for the bad things about USC: The IM sports program is a joke- nobody plays IM's and the organization of it is terrible. There is no one place in Columbia for students- some schools like UF and UG have like 80-90% students in some areas living off-campus; this place is completely cold and ghetto with no student areas at all. This entire city is ghetto for that matter, probably 50-70% black and ghetto. No sense of school spirit, the air quality is horrible here, and the buildings/facilities are old and crumbling. The professors are a bunch of researchers paid to teach in their spare time, and almost none of them care if their students pass or fail. I made a HUGE mistake coming here; they offered a large grad school scholarship and now I see why- you could not pay me to come back to this place ever again. Overall a terrible experience. Nothing to do in the city at all.

IF you have a choice between USC and an another school--GO TO THE OTHER ONE!! First, I came with under a grant which I was SUPPOSED to have for my entire program. Not only did they cut, but they cut mid way through my firste year here.

Morover, there is nothing here. This school will bleed you dry (emotionally, financially, socially). The tuition might be low, but they fee you to death in "optional fees", ie they gouge students for everything here from a glass of water to copies at computer labs. The school has zero money for programs or resource--it is really pathtetally desperate around here. Budget cuts abound. The university is closing down labs and resources, which, of course, makes much harder to for students to research/learn. The campus is full of lazy, whiny, students, most of whom will never have an original idea in their entire life. Most students care for NOTHING other than what goes on inside their collegiate world.