The University of Texas - Austin

Date: Jun 21 2004
Major: Political Science (This Major's Salary over time)
If you aren't 110% certain what you want to do and study in college, don't come to this huge school as a freshman. No matter what you think you can handle, the size of the school is overwhelming and you have to be here to experience it. The business schools and engineering departments are great and I highly reccomend toughing out the schoolwork in those departments as you will ultimately benefit. The overall attrition rate is very high and though I finished my BA with great grades, UT was ultimately a miserable waste of four years time and money for me. I came away with a useless liberal arts diploma but learned a lot about self-reliance and persevring despite a pathetic academic bureucracy. In the process, I taught myself a infalliable jump shot.

The administration is extremely unflexible if you want to change majors and the best programs are very selective to those with excellent high school records or great undergraduate grades. One semester's academic blemish can, and will, wreck your opportunities here. A significant number of people are fed into the broader liberal arts departments like Psychology, English, History or Poli. Sci., which are basically "High School Part II" academic experiences that can more easily be bought at your local commuter school like UT-Arlington. Even as an upper-classmen you will still have classes with 200+ people in such majors and the professors are, for the most part, aloof and uninterested in dealing with undergrads.

As far as the social life goes, most people tend to congregate with their friends from high school or go Greek. If you have different really special and specific interests/hobbies there are clubs around for you. Annoyingly, a lot of people on this campus tend to be very political and constantly voicing their opinions so if you are just a suburban-type with no specific passions then good luck finding your niche. UT would seem like a very dating friendly place as well but a lot of the students seem to be very pretentious and cliquey.

On one of the few more positive notes, there are some great recreation facilities for the student body if you are into fitness activities. The San Jacinto track is almost always, a great place to run. Avoid it in late summer though as it heats up like an oven! Gregory Gym and the Rec Center have great set-ups to keep you busy. The school tends to whore itself out to youth sports camps and other groups in the summer and winter breaks so you might have trouble getting to use the pool and basketball courts.