Horrible school; Angelo State is just a extension of high school for San Angelo and West Texas residents. It's a slacker school out in a extremely boring part of the state. The school has really good math and physics departments, but for any other major, there's much better choices to go to school at in Texas. About 20% to 25% of the student body is actually from San Angelo, and most of these kids have the money and grades to go to another university, but they lack the maturity and direction to do so. So at Angelo State they act like they're still in high school and their high school cliques carry over. It's not uncommon to see kids wearing their high school jackets to sophomore level classes. What's pathetic is that some of these kids have enough work ethnic to go to a major university and achieve something, but they're too scared to take that first step and leave San Angelo. That's not really conducive to a university atmosphere.
Overall the student body is not very outgoing. Most of my friends were from DFW, Austin, or San Antonio because the local kids didn't really care to talk to anyone they didn't go to high school with. A lot of the kids in general had absolutely no social skills whatsoever. I had far better conversations with my professors than most of the kids I was in class with.
The school is pretty cliquish and it was difficult to meet people unless you lived next door to them on campus. A lot of the upperclassmen were already married or engaged. The dating scene sucks; a lot of the guys there are obviously trying to get laid and because of it, a lot of the girls freak out over everything. If you ask one of these girls if she needs a homework assignment or if you just say hi to her in the hallway, she automatically assumes you're trying to rape her. Ridiculous. There's not really enough people there to meet and it seemed like most of the kids were no better than trailer park riff-raff anyway.
Also, a lot of the students do not have the motivation to even show up for class, much less do any schoolwork. I would have to show up a minute or two late for a couple of my classes because I didn't want people asking to copy off of my homework.
It also doesn't help that San Angelo is probably one of the most backwards towns in Texas. The town overall isn't very friendly and there's hardly anything to do. The traffic is also terrible. Because San Angelo is kind of poor and 200 miles out in the middle of no where, some of the people I've met there have been pretty strange, to say the least. About the only night life is a handful of crappy bars that want cover charges just to go in and drink domestic beer and they are spread out all over town so it's difficult to bar hop. I lost track of the number of times I spend Friday and Saturday nights working on school work that didn't need to be done yet just to keep from getting bored.
Also, the town itself doesn't care much about Angelo State. More people go to the high school football games on Friday night than the college football games on Saturday. The local newspaper puts greater emphasis on high school sports and most of the businesses support the high schools but could care less about Angelo State. Even the city of San Angelo is unwilling to close down about 1/10th of a mile of road for the school's use. If you're not from the local area, you're really going to feel like an outsider.
All that said, I had some really good professors while I was there. The administration, however, makes some real bonehead moves. They built that huge stadium that doesn't get used enough to justify it's cost and the rest of the school has to suffer because of it. There's not enough computers in the computer labs, and this becomes real evident during finals. The library closes down at 6 PM on Fridays and Saturdays, so you can't really go there to study on the weekends. I also heard that they shut down the student rec center recently for a local arena football team, which has absolutely nothing to do with the university or the students who pay for the rec center.If you're looking for the college experience, you won't find it there. Angelo State is what it is: the 13th grade for San Angelo kids and just a place for West Texas kids to get a degree. Everyone else ends up transferring out. I did and I don't regret it at all. All I regret is going there in the first place.
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