Albion College

Date: May 06 2005
Major: Anthropology (This Major's Salary over time)
TOUR OTHER SCHOOLS!!!! Check out your program, don't decide based soley on cost - Albion's tuition goes up EVERY YEAR, but your aid DOES NOT.

The off campus program opportunities are great, but they get you coming and going money wise.

The biggest cause of my frustration with Albion is the administration, no Emergency Contraception, and the apparent idiocy of a large majority of the students on campus. Students are stuck in the mentality that they are still in highschool, still being forced to take classes and do what mommy and daddy tell them. They DON'T think for themselves. They resent when they are expected to give effort.

I have been impressed by the independent research projects by students. FURSCA (Foundation for Undergratuate, Research Creativity, and Scholarship) is an undergraduate research grant type thingy that gives you money to do independent research. They even PAY you to do it over the summer. Its a great opportunity to get work done on your thesis or explore other fields of interest. Most students who do FURSCA projects present at this thing called the Elkin Issac Symposium, which is a day of students presenting their research in 15 minute presentations. That is my favorite day of the year because I get to see how intelligent and impressive my colleagues are.

I think a lot of them (not all) are actually pretty intelligent (academically) but play dumb for whatever reason.

Frats and Greek life are big on this campus, by my standards. The greeks might tell you otherwise. Boozing it up is big because theres nothing to do in town. A lot of studnets go to other schools like Western, State, or U of Mich. on the weekends to booze it up at the big schools.

The Coffeehouse is amazing (its a student run coffee shop open in the mornings and nights on wednesday (party night), friday, and saturday, actually the hours are changing for next year, so I don't know). They have really cheap, GOOD coffee and other fancy pants drinks, plus, a great atmosphere, always have good music on and host GREAT bands at night. Open mic nights are fun too, but even if theres nothing going on, its a great place to hang out with your friends. They have board games and lots of comfortable couches.

Uhm, what else?

Oh, science/pre-med is HUGE here. A large portion of the freshmen class comes in as pre-med. A lot of them ultimately switch to something else, but the sciences constitute the largest percentage of majors (I'm pretty sure).

I'm familiar with the Anthro/Soc, History, and Political Science departments. I'm reasonably satisfied with them. I love the professors and my classes, but I wish there was greater variety.

The school does NOT pay its professors enough. This is a major debate on campus right now. There are a lot of administrative politics to play around with.

The school is pretty. I personally think that landscaping could do with a bit of work, but its obviously not a priority.

They definitely encourage you to live on campus or in campus housing (near by apartment complex that the school owns, or annexes). This is a major complaint amonst students because it makes it very hard to get off-board, which sucks.

The board (meal plan) sucks. There are only 2 options: unlimited and 5 meals a week. unlimited comes out to approx $7/meal if you eat 3x/day 7days/week. The food is not terrible but it could be A LOT better. The variety sucks, but its getting better since more studnets are complaining. Its relatively vegitarian/vegan friendly, it's making an effort.