Grove City College

Date: Nov 20 2005
Major: History/Histories (art history/etc.) (This Major's Salary over time)
Life at Grove City can vary greatly…and it really helps if you know what you're getting into before you decide to go there.

The academics are HARD. If you had a well-rounded education when you were in high school, you should be OK, but if you didn't, then I would strongly advise you do not come here, because your QPA will get absolutely massacred. What seems to make the academics hard is not the classes you take to fulfill your major…it's the huge number of general requirements classes there are. General requirements for all students include six Humanities classes, two science classes, one Science/Religion crossover course, two full years of a foriegn language, and two math/reasoning classes. The administration and professors seem to tax you equally as hard on all classes…so therefore, your major QPA will tend to be much better than your general requirements QPA. I once had a science prof for a general requirements physics that tested and graded as if it was a 400 level advanced physics class. In my experience, all general requirements did to me was pull my QPA down. If you go here, I warn you now, you will be taking general requirements into your junior year, and DO NOT blow off general requirements classes…more times than not, they're harder than the classes for your major!

A good deal of the people here are strong fundamentalist, Jerry Falwell fundamentalist Christian types. If you're not one, you can get through here in one piece, as long as you have enough sense to lay low and keep your mouth shut. Not everybody here is a Rick Santorum conservative…some people tend to be more open minded that others. If you are open minded, try to find some other open minded people, and remember to keep your mouth shut when you have to. As for the surrounding city, there isn't much…but you can always pay Victor Lee a visit in his nearby Chinese place. If you aren't used to cold weather, you had better get used to it now, because the winters are cold and downright Siberia-like here. Buildings tend to be far apart on the campus, so remember to wear four layers as you take a long walk across the campus when its five below zero. As for public transportation, there is a limited amount of that. There is a bus that comes straight into Grove City from Pittsburgh once a weekday in the early evening…so you can either get a trip back in the afternoon, or a trip down in the evening…but you won't be able to get that up and back all in one day. There is also a Greyhound bus terminal in Mercer, which is only about ten miles away, so you can get to Pittsburgh and Erie that way, it arrives there twice a day, and it operates on all days of the week.

Social life is very lacking at Grove City, and its weakest point. The campus is very homogeneous…if you want to find many viewpoints in one place, it ain't gonna be here. There is often little to do here, especially so in the dead of winter. Most of the students tend to be narrow-minded on many things, so be warned…some of them are in the "I am right, you are wrong, and that's just the way it is" camp. But, if you are not an extreme conservative, you can still make it here…just so long as you lay low, find people like you, and shut your mouth.