Wichita State University

Date: Feb 11 2007
Major: History/Histories (art history/etc.) (This Major's Salary over time)
Great people (students, faculty, staff) and good academics. A little too much attention is paid to athletics, but I guess that's probably the same anywhere.

The state of campus maintenance is very bad. New buildings are being built while old ones are falling apart and ignored, and the parking situation (particularly due to construction) is terrible. Some of the buildings have mold, rodents, or insect pests in them, and others have leaky rooves and elevators that routinely break down. Some of the buildings also have little or no accessibility for wheelchairs. On the other hand, the university is excellent about clearing snow and ice from streets and sidewalks (better than the City of Wichita).

For prospective Computer Science majors (my major was CS before I changed to History: the CS department is forced to hold many of its classes and labs in classrooms without any IT equipment, and what equipment is available in other rooms is often unreliable and outdated. It's extremely difficult to succeed in the early (100-300 level) CS courses in this environment. There are also a lot of unspoken prerequisites for the program that you have to be aware of. I know students who've had a lot of difficulty because you're expected to be competent with UNIX without ever having had instruction in its use. And if you're not a math genius, you're out of luck.

The Financial Aid office is generally friendly, but every semester something with my financial aid has gone wrong and it seems like no one wants to find out what's going on unless you pester them constantly about it.

If you're planning on working on campus while going to school, be aware that's it's hard to get a campus job, and that preference seem to be given to international students. Also, a lot of the departments are very bad about getting back to you regarding applications.