Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Date: Jul 26 2005
Major: Biology (This Major's Salary over time)
Are you a math and science lover? Then WPI is absolutely the ideal place for you. Students, although frequently overwhelmed with work, are very excited about their majors. It is not uncommon to enter the Campus Center for a slice of pizza and find yourself in a conversation about stem cells or The String Theory. Most professors are highly qualified in their fields. Professors will do almost anything to help their students succeed, including hand our their home phone number and allow you to make up extensive amounts of late work (thank you Physics Department!)Be prepared to do a ton of work in whatever major you enter including term to yearlong projects.

Administration is absolutely fabulous. They will help you with anything you need and I have never had to wait to get into a class.

Extracurricular activities are very easy to get into and very worthwhile. Social life is strained due to the lack of females; quantity and quality. As far as men go "the odds are good, but the goods are odd". Although these statements are true there are always exceptions to the rule; I managed to find a top-notch guy and I must say my boyfriend got pretty lucky himself. If you are a decent looking girl you will find that in most cases you are completely revered. If you are an attractive girl, you will find that the amount of male attention is often overwhelming and you will need to not only watch out for yourself but expect rumors to fly about your level of "sexual activity". If you are a guy, you are in a rather unfortunate situation and will have to try exceedingly hard to get a girl. Many girls will completely ignore you just because they can. If you are an attractive guy; recreational sex will occur but you may find yourself lowering your standards. My advice is to make several visits to your buddies at larger, highly female populated schools such as Umass to get your "quick fix". If you do managed to score a WPI chick you should consider yourself blessed, your degree combined with hers = SERIOUS $$$

If you have any interest in the arts or humanities you will find that WPI has the least challenging humanities courses of any school. I received an A in a course I rarely went to and wrote my final paper for drunk.

There is a huge separation among the student body between the "super geeks" and everyone else. If you are at WPI you are obviously somewhat of a nerd, some people just embrace their nerdiness more than others. The "super geeks" include those who play dungeons and dragons, wear capes and half shirts around campus and participate in Medieval Sword battles in broad daylight. Not to mention, the body odor is reminiscent of a time when people only bathed yearly. The "normal" kids include girls that think they are gods gift to man, football break out into fights with the notorious wrestling team, extremely cliquey sorority girls and arrogant frat boys. Somewhere in the middle there are some fascinating and extremely approachable people who spend their time working, hanging out at off-campus apartment parties, attending the weekly $2 movie and attempting to smoke pot without getting caught by the overbearing RA's.

I am transferring out of WPI after two years. I loved the people, professors and atmosphere but absolutely could not tolerate the academics. Not only am I not completely in love with math and science but also I lack the capabilities to ever excel in these fields. It's extremely fast paced; each course that would normally be a semester at another school is squished into seven weeks. Many students love this fact because they can get a lot of classes out of the way quickly. I found this strangling and causing me to study more than anyone in the entire school.