The University of New Haven

Date: Apr 22 2009
Major: Chemistry (This Major's Salary over time)
I am a forensic science and chemistry manjor. This school is good for certain majors, such as forensic science, fire protection, crimal justice, dental hygine, and marine biology. That being said, the funding for each deparment is broken up disproportionately. The music program only gets the basement of Dodds and the engineering program only gets one floor of Buckman. Some of the teachers are very helpful and will go out of their way to help you succeed. Others are very rude and condescending. The CLR is very helpful for English and compostion, but is not so helpful for math. There are rarely enough tutors in there, or each one is trying to help about five students. There is very little help for the students in higher math classes, such as calc 3 or diff eqs. Another problem is that many of the professors here barely speak English. This makes understanding them very hard, and most students just end up saying "uh huh…" to whatever the teacher says.

The dorms are terrible. There are 3 kids to a room in the freshman buildings. The students that live in Botwinik are in suites of two rooms and are thus living six to a suite. This is a TERRIBLE idea. As the year has progressed, the residents are having more and more arguments. The RA's can do very little about the situation and tell the students

oh, just bond and become friends.

Obviously six people being forced to live together like caged rats are not going to get along nor is bonding going to help. Another problem is that you can hear everything that goes on in the room above yours. For example the room above me plays rock band and the double bass pedals for drums constantly. The only way to block this out is by putting in earplugs or turning music up to high on your laptop or ipod.

About the social life, this school does have cliques. The friends you make the first week or so are going to be your friends, but you can make new ones. Most of the people I have met and are friends with, I have met in class. But to make friends, you just need to actually leave your room and do something. There isn't much to do on campus, but there is a (unreliable) shuttle to the mall and stores along Boston Post. CT Transit can take you all around, but it is kind of sketchy and the service ends at 11PM.

Overall, this school is good for certain majors. Don't believe what they say on the tours, ask to speak to a student in the major you are going into because they can tell you how the program is. If you are going for general majors, there are better schools and you should try to go to them.