Texas A & M University - College Station

Date: Aug 25 2007
Major: Computer Science (This Major's Salary over time)
I attended Texas A&M for two years before transferring to a liberal arts college to finish my BS. Texas A&M is a great place if you place high value on participating in college rituals and if you like to wear your Christianity on your sleeves.

In spite of the large student body, the social environment is shockingly incestuous. Instead of having lots of dynamics and opposing influences and "types"- Republicans and Democrats, intellectuals and businessmen, engineers and philosophers, artists and marketers- what I found was a bland suburban and small town mentality where people only wanted to get a sheepskin and then get a job and make babies. A&M isn't competitive (i.e., stimulating) at all, and it's racially very homogeneous. It's not preparation for the global world that is the 21st Century. Criticism of ideas and analyzing the world seemed almost discouraged by a strange kind of silence and assent.

Academics were simply not challenging and the students were, on the whole, uninterested in what they were doing. A certain amount of competition is good, and A&M seems to willing to give anyone a "C" just for showing up. It's an inferior learning and social environment. On the plus side, students are willing to help each other more than I expected, and professors are probably more approachable than they might be at some universities.

Finally, College Station is boring and ugly.