Drexel University

Date: Jul 18 2005
Major: Design Arts - Industrial Design/Graphic Design/etc (This Major's Salary over time)
Generally, the only people that seem to think Drexel is a worthwhile school are the people that don’t actually go there, or know anyone who does. I went there for architecture, which I didn’t have too many complaints about during the first year - it’s a lot of work and less than 30 students are accepted, but the small class size and number of hours spent in the studio helps to create a sort of bubble that seems to separate you from the rest of the campus and a lot of the problems students in other majors have. That only applies to the first 2 years, though, then you progress to the night school portion during which you work full time during the day, and take classes at night, and generally adopt the life of a working professional instead of a college student at least 2 years earlier than everyone else does. It all depends on whether you want that or not.

Because of Drexel’s quarter system and co-op setup, you start out taking classes in your major your first term there and you have to follow a fairly rigid sequence. You’re also generally not allowed to take lots of courses outside of your major, aside from general open-to-everyone electives. If you’re undecided about your major, or you want to switch majors, or you want a little while to take lots of different things and feel out what you want to do, Drexel will be sure to make that very, very difficult. Because of that setup I actually transferred majors into something that it turns out I don’t really like any better, and because of the quarter system my credits won’t transfer to another school and I’d have to start all over again.

Drexel is very blatant about (and almost proud of) being first and foremost a business. They only care about getting as many new students as possible; the only thing they seem to do to keep old students around is to screw them over with the quarter system so they can’t transfer elsewhere. CoMAD, on the whole, is pretty decent, but most of the classes that I’ve taken outside of it have been pointless retreads of high school classes. I’ve basically been left on my own with no help to find a co-op job, something I could have easily done at any other school in the summer on my own time.

As far as the social life situation and all that, well, there really isn’t any. Drexel doesn’t have a campus so much as a collection of buildings on a few blocks owned by the university. The dorms are ridiculously expensive and it’ll most likely cost you less to live off campus in an apartment. Most of the students are from the immediate area, and if they don’t live at home and commute, they go home on the weekends. Clubs and organizations and student activities in general are scarce and ignored by the vast majority of the students. If you’re looking for the typical college experience, you won’t find it here. I feel like my time here has been a waste.