University Buffalo

Date: Sep 15 2004
Major: Political Science (This Major's Salary over time)
In retrospect, I liked this school. Although there are about a billion people attending, the political science department is pretty small and close. I never had any trouble talking to one of my professors there and they actually seemed to enjoy having people come to office hours or talk before/after class.

My major problem is that when I was there (under Greiner), a LOT of the money seemed to be going towards athletics (especially football and scholarships), while they were not replacing retiring/moving professors. Case in point, 20 years before I attended, there were 30 full-time political science professors. When I was there, it was about 20, while the number of students in the program had increased. There was also a buying freeze at the library. But I think at least some of this is being changed with the new president.

In economics and math, it seemed like I had trouble getting a TA or professor who spoke English. My economics professor spoke English, but you could hardly understand the TA for that course or my calculus professor. I ended up resigning from calculus as I had trouble understanding him (and this was at the section of the curriculum that I already knew) and took Intermediate Algebra/Trig instead with a professor who, although not a native speaker, was pretty easy to understand.

Although a lot of people say UB is a whole ton of lecture classes, I didn't see this. Yes, you're in a big lecture hall for classes like World Civ., but my Geology class had a lot of people, but it didn't feel like it (especially Geology 102, although I think there were fewer people). If you have a problem learning in big classes, just sit towards the front and you won't know there's a ton of people behind you. Most of the lecture classes are like the 101 classes where everyone just takes them because they have to, but in all honesty, it's not that bad and it's only for the first class in the sequence (except for World Civ).

I didn't live on campus so it did feel a little hard to get involved with an activity, although I did do pep band my first semester and symphonic band the second. But I did have some friends who got very involved on campus and loved being there, so it depends on the individual (I'm not a normally outgoing person anyway).

The professors I had were great - all the ones in the political science department were wonderful people who taught well and you could tell they loved what they were doing. My Geology 101 and 102 professors were also wonderful - especially Prof. Baker who made you love the subject and found ways to keep it interesting (like taking us to the football field and some of the labs he designed). Also wanted to note my professor for Linguistics 101 was wonderful - I don't know where she gets her energy, but she always made sure to walk around the big lecture room so it didn't feel so large and impersonal.

For price, you really can't beat it. I had a challenge scholarship, which basically had the same perks as being an honor student, but I didn't have to do the work. This cut my tuition in half. My main pet peeve was the technology fee - between $600 and $700 a semester. Enough for me to buy a really awesome computer a year, or a cheapie one a semester. And that did I get for the technology fee? Well, some of my professors used the computers in class, I'd play on the internet when I wasn't in class, and it had unlimited printed in the computer lab. (Although I must admit, unlimited printing is a nice perk. ;)

Parking really isn't as bad as everyone says. I was there at 9 most mornings and could always find a spot. You can always find parking at any time of the day - it's just if you want to be in one of the lots right in front of the buildings that you might have trouble. But I noticed starting around 11AM or so, cars would start lining up waiting for people to leave (to follow them to their cars and take the parking space), so it wasn't this total free-for-all. I arrived about 45 minutes before class each day and NEVER had to wait longer than 20 minutes for parking - and yes, I had began my day at noon sometimes.

The scheduling, at least when I was there, was pretty good. It wasn't too hard to create a schedule that wouldn't have 8AM classes (most of the time I started at 930) or one that doesn't have just 10 minutes between classes, if that's what you want. I also spent my entire first year as a theatre major and only took one class that wasn't towards my major that year. But it was easy for me to transfer to political science and I could have even finished a semester early (and they say the norm. for undergrad is becoming 5 years! Ha!) It's not that hard to find classes that count both towards your gen ed classes and towards your major - and yes, you can count classes twice. A big key is visiting your advisor - mine was great and reassured me more than once that I was ok to graduate on time!

I loved the newspapers/magazines the school had. The Spectrum's April Fools edition was wonderful and I always had a good time reading Generation. I really missed my weekly fix of Generation when I moved to a different school for graduate school!