The Stevens Institute of Technology

Date: Aug 29 2004
Major: Computer Science (This Major's Salary over time)
I find a select few professors to work overtime on really helping the students to understand the material, but most of them don't seem to care one way or the other about the student body and seem only there to do their research. The student body itself is full of repressed conservative technocrats (although, these days the Business and Technology Dept. is picking up more speed, and it attracts more of your every day NJ high school kid who plays sports and showers.) who feel that they are the smartest kids they have ever met and that's probably reinforced by the lacking social life in which they never get to meet anyone else except through IM and online dating services. Some of the Resisdent Assistants don't even talk to their students, but will just e-mail them complaints and are too socially awkward to actually carry a discussion with about most things outside of technology. I definatley have learned a lot about the formal aspects of Computer programming since I started there, but I have also lost most of my passion for the field.

The school is very military orientated. Most students are doing research that is in some way connected to the army, NSA, navy, air force or another Dept. of Defense branch. The campus is right off the Hudson river across from NYC, but this is just far enough to not be able to venture out there when the work mounts up, and it will. The workload is high, but most of it is extrememly dull and boring. The professors are all extremely knowledgeable but seem too wrapped up in themselves to care about advising the student body or teaching them the material. Also, I have been there for 5 years and the faculty is so large that I don't even know the professors I'm taking this last semester here because there are SO many adjuncts floating around.

Over all, the experience has been positive, but only because I have totally rearranged my standards and realized what I want out of life and that this is not it. My negativity has been fostered by feeling as though I was going there for my parents more than myself, and in one important aspect I have to say that Stevens taught me how the 9-5 drag of life feels and thus made me so frustrated that upon graduating I have decided to persue another field. It is definatley a CAREER ORIENTATED system, and if this is what you want, then go for it. Just don't expect to be hacking away at cool shit or ever touch a line of kernel code unless you do it yourself.