Liberty University

Date: Aug 19 2007
Major: Religion/Religious (This Major's Salary over time)
Liberty is a great school to find friends and forge long-term relationships. However, it suffers in the area of academics, mainly because a number of the professors are teaching there based on who they knew beforehand, not because of how good a professor they are. There are some fantastic professors, and there are some really bad ones, and many of the bad ones are either related to someone on the Board of Trustees or well-known for other reasons. This attitude is noticeable among the student body as well, and as someone who didn't have a Christian family background, I endured some really ignorant people who thought they were all that because of who they were related to.

Having said all that, I made some of the best friends of my life at LU and I had a blast. They are still my best friends. The rules were restrictive at points, but having transferred from a large public univ where a girl got raped down the hall, another girl overdosed, and people puked in front of my door regularly, I was happy to feel safe there.

To parents who send their kids to LU to 'straighten them out' or keep them in line: THIS DOES NOT WORK. Sending them to LU just makes them find ways to rebel more, and as an 22-year-old student seeing how a bunch of 18-year-olds act for the first time away from a very sheltered home, well, it's not pretty. The LU culture has a very false face of godliness, and it's just whitewash. There are honest, dedicated students there, and some great people trying to minister, but there were an awful lot of students who went there because their parents made them go, and they found ways to get around everything and could put on a fancy face on Sundays. This might not be so prominent in a smaller Christian school, but LU is really too big to really keep this in check.

I would not have traded my experience at Liberty, but it does have problems, and many of the problems are too subtle for visitors to notice.