The University of Massachusetts - Lowell

Date: Jan 20 2005
Major: School of Information (This Major's Salary over time)
I was a high school student within the top 25% of my class with good extracurriculars but was scared into picking an affordable college by my parents. After ruling out UMass Amherst and being to reluctant to look anywhere else, I applied only to UMass Lowell and got in. I will say right off the bat, it was great that the financial aid department gave me about half my tuition right from start. After that, little else impressed me.

The city of Lowell itself is one of the biggest factors in my deciding to leave the university. The crime was high, the city was unpleasant to walk through or even look at. It offered little to do, and to do anything, you needed a car. With that car one could drive the 15minutes to Nashua, NH for malls and such. The only good thing about the city and the University's location is that the two main concert venues are within walking distance and headlining tours often stop at one of those two venues. The commuter rail station to go to Boston was across the city and I, not being able to find/obtain Lowell bus info never took that train in.

I was enrolled in the Business school as an MIS major, but only took liberals arts requirements while I was there. While I can't say the acedemics were terrible, they weren't stellar either. I can't say that most of the teachers felt they actually cared about teaching the subject matter. Many were scarcely available after class, excepting the math department due to the high number of failing grades.

Social life wasn't terrible despite being in Lowell. The music scene on campus was surprisingly vibrant with (usually free) live bands every other night. Living in the freshmen dorm, I was able to meet some people from my floor and became decent friends. It seemed that most people were either a business major, an engineering major or a music major on campus. One of the hampers of the social life was that the campus was separated into sections. East campus was the main residential area, the core of the social life with a student center. North campus was one academic center where most of the non-liberal arts majors were, like business and engineering, which requires a 5-7 minute walk across a bridge over the Merrimack River. Then there was South campus. South campus was where most of the liberal arts classes were, like psych and history. It was a 6-10 minute bus ride from East Campus, near a 30 minute walk. During traffic, the ride to and from was usually slower than walking. Lastly, it seemed Lowell had more ice on vital walkways than anywhere I had seen in the past. And that's coming from a Massachusetts native.

The food wasn't bad, but wasn't great. The hours for the dining hall were something terrible, as well as the on-campus 'convienience' store. I found the food on South campus to be more varied and tasty than the food at East campus. The buildings had a dated sense about them, not in the good way. A lot had been renovated in the 70's and they still look that way. Cumnock Hall was newly renovated, it seemed, for William Bulger's resignation as UMass president. The newest building being the campus rec. center is the exception. Only the oldest building one campus (Coburn on south) had a slight antique charm to it. The computer science building reminded me of Boston City Hall, a large concrete block. Book prices were fair. The newspaper was fresh and funny. The party scene was fairly large, which is good or bad, depending your view. The school network usually worked and was moderately fast.