Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Date: Aug 31 2007
Major: Architecture (This Major's Salary over time)
I ended up transferring the heck out of this school, thank goodness. They wanted to expel me for having a seizure disorder. They had warned me after my first semester that it might "affect my work"—even though I had a 3.5 GPA when I was hospitalized during finals that first semester as well!!--and that they would have to look at whether or not I could continue there if I had anymore. Needless to say, it was extremely stressful trying to control something uncontrollable. I ended up starting to cut classes and my GPA dropped to a 1.6. I ended up having a seizure in the first half of my second year in the lobby of the architecture building, and I was called to the dean's office for him to chastise me for having a seizure in front of a special visitor who was passing through the lobby when the paramedics came. He said I had made the school "look bad" and that if it happened again, I would be put on involuntary leave!!! Anyway, it was a big mess and I had to get a lawyer to sort them out. When threatened with a lawsuit, they let me back in, but I didn't want to go back there. I had proven my point. There was one professor in the architecture dept., Professor Bell, who I really liked. He knew what was going on with my situation and helped me stay in school because he was on the academic board and kept me on even though my grades were so low. He ended up writing me a recommendation letter after I'd left RPI to attend community college to get my grades back up. I ended up being waitlisted at Harvard and accepted into Barnard, Union, and Skidmore. Who needs RPI? I have friends from RPI who have said they will never donate a penny to that school even if they become billionaires, because the school cares more about how it looks to the media than it does about taking care of it's students. I'm not the only horror story…

Plus, my friends from RPI are working alongside kids who went to cheap state schools and they have the same pay or more than my RPI friends but don't have any of the debt.