Concordia University - Ann Arbor

Date: Oct 25 2005
Major: Philosophy (This Major's Salary over time)
I am a Gifted student with good ACT and SAT scores, Always looking to learn and be challenged. I sit with the history channel on in thebackground just in case there's something interesting I didn't know about. I love learning, building, and creating. My grades fatered in middle and high school when the Giftedprogram atthose schools was "restructured" orjust discontinued, otherwise I was a straight A to AB student for my entire education.

Concordia is definetly a religious school and as such, accoplishes that goal with some success. It has recently become more secularized and less doctrinally oriented as it tries to lure as many new students as possible, mostly with sports scholarships asacademics and arts suffer. The School can't decide if it's a private school or a public university and so takes on the failings of both.

The Faculty and staff are patronizing, but that may just be my view as a "Gifted" individual. This school has no reason to expect exceptional students to be attracted to this school, and thus has extremely little to appeal to this demographic.

For average students this school isn't too bad. It truthfully boasts small class size and good one on one intearction with professors. The campus is absolutely beautiful on the edges of the Huron River. The president is very active in the school's extracurricular activities, and can often be found burning the midnightoil in his central campus office.

The poilies of many of the teachers reflect little on mastering the subjects being taught, but rather encourage the "mass production" aspect of public schooling. Whether you're in an Art History, Philosophy, or Science class, you're writing three papers and a research project, all under the euphemisitc guise of being "interdisciplinary". This allows an easy way to determine the expectations of most classes, and a dedicated average student should be able to get A's quite easily. This however leaves the truly dedicated wanting, resenting all the "busy work" which seems to be the standard.

There are some exceptional classes though, as there would be anywhere, because of a few individual teachers (the performing arts come to mind) but that does little to make up for the rest.