The University of Central Missouri (StudentsReview)

How this student rated the school

Educational Quality	B	Faculty Accessibility	B+
Useful Schoolwork	A	Excess Competition	B
Academic Success	B+	Creativity/ Innovation	B+
Individual Value	F	University Resource Use	A+
Campus Aesthetics/ Beauty	A	Friendliness	F
Campus Maintenance	B+	Social Life	A
Surrounding City	A-	Extra Curriculars	A
Safety	A+

Describes the student body as: Friendly, Approachable Describes the faculty as: Friendly, Helpful

Male

ACT:28

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Lowest Rating Individual Value	F

Highest Rating University Resource Use	A+

He cares more about Friendliness than the average student.

Date: May 17 2008
Major: Computer Science (This Major's Salary over time)
My 4 years at CMSU were a very mixed bag.

1.) The students and faculty were generally nice and accessible, but in certain degree areas quality faculty was quite lacking. I was a Computer Information Systems major (graduated), and only two or three CIS professors could speak English with any degree of accuracy or knew their subject matter at all.

2.) The entire college is very poorly managed and there is no effective horizontal communication between departments. You can go to five different people and they will tell you completely different things about the same subject. Support staff, in general, are very rude to students and will often flat-out lie to them to try and avoid addressing their concern, and the support staff will put up as much red tape as necessary to avoid addressing student complaints about anything. Examples of issues I have dealt with:

It took 4 months worth of meetings with the Dean of my college to persuade her to give me back attendance points deducted from a professor who, by his own admission, had no attendance policy for the class. (yes, it's exactly as you've read it)

An Academic Advisor prepared my senior-year schedule incorrectly resulting in my inability to take two classes concurrently resulting in my graduation being delayed.

In my final semester, the support staff gave me "no credit" for a class that I had received the highest grade. The professor himself told them that they entered the grade wrong, and they refused to change it. Only after a heated meeting with the Vice President of CMSU did I get the school to honor my grade and let me graduate.

I would also like to share my experiences in the Honors College Program at CMSU. Some things to understand for future students:

They tell you that you can do "whatever you want" with your Honors Project, but depending on your major, that is simply a lie. The Honors College Chair wouldn't let me do anything related to CIS or Computer Science and that's my major. He shot down every single idea I threw at him and ultimately basically told me I was going to do a project that would benefit the university's admissions department. Essentially, I discovered the "do the project you've always wanted to do" talk was a complete lie.

Being in the Honors College enables you to take different classes for certain aspects of your Gen Eds, for example, "Sci-Fi Literature" instead of "American Literature" for your English requirement. While this sounds good and fine, if you ever decide to drop out of the Honors College Program, they make you re-take those requirements with ones the "regular" students have to take. They are completely inflexible and unbending in this policy; for instance, I took a senior-level history class to fulfill my "cultural interaction" requirement, and the college made me take a freshman music appreciation class as a senior. This is the kind of inflexibility this college is renowned for practicing against students, and the logic in making a senior take a class like this when they've already taken a senior-level class for the requirement just shows how much more this university cares about student's money than actual education. And, no, the Honors College doesn't make students aware of this policy in advance in any way.

Some may read this last point and say "well duh", but my problem is: the class you originally took in place of the requirement, which is approved by the Honors College for fulfilling the requirement, is suddenly not good enough when you drop out of the program. By making you re-take the requirement with a different class, they are admitting that the "honors" class didn't teach you the "required" material. As one can see, a logical fallacy occurs when you try to say they make students re-take the requirement to "learn" the "required material". They wouldn't have learned the "required material" in the first place if they had just taken the "honors" substitute class. Therefore, the motive is purely financial, which I would consider a negative to make a student take a pointless music appreciation class as a senior when they've already taken a senior-level history class for the same requirement.

In short, assuming that this university will be reasonable involving student issues or will employ common sense is a major mistake. Even when you present empirical data proving to someone that you are completely correct and the college is completely in the wrong, they will somehow discover a way not to acknowledge it.

Responses

I have decided to get into UCMO for my Major's degree in CS. What are my chances of getting a placement from the university placement program in a good reputed company?

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