The University of Texas - San Antonio

Date: Jun 01 2009
Major: Music - Composition/Theory (This Major's Salary over time)
I don't know how to feel about UTSA sometimes because as a whole the school is just mediocre. I'll try to be as detailed as possible though to givve an idea of how I came to this conclusion.

Good

1. The faculty in my department is wonderful. The music department faculty make staying at least somewhat feasible. They are very kind, approachable, and willing to help to students with just about anything. There are some bad seeds here and there but that's at any school.

2. The faculty outside my department may not be as overwhelming amazing but they try. I have taken many electives because I am a B.A. in music and not a B.M. so from what i have observed you should use ratemyprofessor.com like the holy bible. Seriously it has saved me many times from really crappy teachers.

3. The campus is all in one area. One the things i hated about UT Austin was its split campus. At UTSA everything nice and cozy.

4. It is very easy to succeed here if youput your mind to it. I mean really easy. Most of the student body is lazy and apathetic. Very few students actually study and go to class. This apathy makes it easy for more motivated students to be big fish on campus.

5. The housing is not nearly as bad as it seems. Many UTSA students complain about their housing but unless they live at chisolm, the only dorms, they really have no idea what the college experience means. That's a good thing. I hate dorms so i applied for the Oaks, on campus apartments, and although they suck compared to real apartments at least they aren't dorms.

6. The students here are nice for the most part. There is a a decent amount of minorities but it is still pretty small. It isn't hard to make friends in class.

Bad

1. The weather here sucks. In the morning it's cold so one would think to wear a coat… for an hour. As soon as ten o clock hits the weather rises like 20 degrees and it is hot until after dark. The weather changes here way too much between the extremes.

2. The insides of the buildings need maintenance quite badly. Seriously they smell musty and the bathrooms have maintenance issues as well. The classrooms are cramped in some departments and too open in others which make for uneven classroom assignments. Every building on campus has classrooms because there just aren't enough buildings to facilitate new rooms

3. The students here are lazy as hell. I hate it most in my department cuase i spend so much time here. No one sounds like they practice at all. I have never heard of anyone going to a good grad school and I'm not shocked at all about it. Our department is filled music education majors mostly so if you are interested in performance look elsewhere. The faculty tries hard but i don't anyone really understands that practicing is important in music.

4. It's not just music ,though. It's in all departments. I hate that no one cares because it becomes a virus for everyone on campus. No one goes to events but whenever i say the school stinks all people can do is say that the future will get better. I doubt that if no one does anything to impact change on the school.

5. It is way to hard to makes friends here. The school is a commuter school so making friends for on campus kids is diffiult ebough as is. Most people hook up wiht high school friends thoguh and never move out of their bubble. And the university is not helping with this matter. I mean they try but not really. There are some events on campus but due to the high percentage of off campus commuters no one goes. Also there are way too many CAP people. The CAP program needs to be desttroyed because it is ruining all of the other UT schools.

6. I feel underprepared academically for grad school. I mean the faculty contains great teachers but i can tell that because of the mediocre student body that they make their curriculums more streamlined for the less motivated students.

In conclusion…if you aren't interested in art,music, or engineering and science then do not come here. The Liberal arts here suck and they always lose many of their upper division classes due to missing faculty or classroom space. The only reason I am staying is because of the Honors college and the music department. Otherwise i would have left long ago.