South Dakota State University

Date: Jan 26 2004
Major: English (This Major's Salary over time)
Overall a positive experience. It can be easy, as in not challenging. Or it can be hard. Which path you choose depends on you. Many people complain that it's a hick school. That's not the case at all. Those who say that tend to be closeminded city-hicks—sort of ironic I think.

There's a definite community, a small town feel to everything. Chances are that any three or four people will have at least one person in common.

There's a certain amount of anti-intellectualism but that's changing as the enrollment has gone above 10,000. The info given above is not correc by the way.

Faculty are not like you'll find at most major Division I schools. They don't just sit in their offices and do a bunch of research all the time. They mostly teach.

Decisions by the Board of Regents tend to make the lives of faculty miserable. The BoR is doing a good bit of work to make higher education in SD as awful as possible for both student and faculty. Despite this the faculty are approachable and generally dependable. Some are not but I don't fault the whole university for the failings of a few.

Over the past year or two I've seen a really impressive change in the student body particularly freshman and sophmores. Since there's so many more students, there's a much better community. People are more interested in learning, and classes have gotten much more active.

Unfortunately, there's still not many people from other states outside of Minnesota, Iowa, and South Dakota that come to SDSU. If I was from another state, I'd strongly consider going here because you will see things and experience things so different than from where you live. That's both good and bad by the way.

But people work hard, and have strong values. I know that sounds like a cliche, but it's true. It's a lot like the sterotypes. It's not a liberal school, but that doesn't mean people aren't welcome. You can make it exactly like you want. If you want to slack off, you can. But if you want to learn, you will. Nobody is there to hold hand, so what you make of the place is up to you. I think this is the hardest thing to get used to.