Okay,
so I read another review talking about how campus life
sucks and the students are arrogant and unapproachable. That
is all true. However, if you are only interested in
the academics - I still recommend you DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY. The school stressed how low
cost it is - HA! PLEASE. First of
all, the instate tuition is comparable to out-of-state in most
cases. Second of all, you are forced to pay
$500 for health insurance every semester that doesn't cover ANYTHING.
I don't know if all of the faculty got degrees
from “degree mills”, or were simply the bottom of their
classes. I can name TWO professors I took the
entire time that were at all competent, and it's interesting
that they had both just transferred from other schools.
Given the culture of mediocrity and the low level of
expectations, I do not expect them to remain competent for
long. So-called “experts” in their field often had not
studied the field at all. One particular professor bragged
about being an “expert” in Southern Literature, and when I
asked about her credentials she got extremely uncomfortable and finally
admitted that her “research” involved a weekend at a conference
every year.
The teachers are rude and interrupt
students. Oftentimes I would be interrupted in the middle
of a sentence, the professor would “guess” at me saying
one thing when I was saying another, and to make
matters worth the comment that they guessed would NEVER have
been considered correct by anybody who knows anything about the
literature.
You are not graded on merit, you are graded
on how much you can boost the professor's ego.
If you write a paper supporting an argument and the
professor does not agree, you are given an F.
Of course, they do not give you their opinion before
you write the paper, so you're just screwed. The
arguments in papers don't have to be SOUND, they have
to be what the professor thinks.
In one case I
was told to rewrite a paper and given specific instructions.
When I followed the specific instructions, I was still
given an F. When I approached the dean of
the department about it, he informed me that “instructions are
not meant to be taken literally."
WHAT PLANET DO THESE PEOPLE LIVE ON? Never in my LIFE have I
been given instructions and then informed that I didn't have
to follow them.
You are graded on how much the
teacher likes you - and if you are gifted and
they feel threatened by your intelligence? Forget it.
I have a genius level IQ, and considering I was
an arts major I thought that my work would be
graded on merit. It seems that, if a teacher
feels you call their credentials into question, you are automatically
failed.
I should mention that I never challenged anyone's credentials
until I had to fight my grades. The question,
“where did you study?” seems to be enough to piss
them off.
If you're disabled and not white or are
any kind of religious minority, don't even try. Their
“disability services” were so awful that I had to call
in an outside agency, and when I did the agency
told me they often have to deal with disabled students
who do not get accommodations given to them by the
Americans with Disabilities Act. I would receive emails from
disability services, who would then deny sending them the emails,
and when I forwarded THEIR OWN EMAILS TO THEM to
prove they had in fact sent them - I did
not receive a response.
It is of note that I
received a FULL refund of my last semester there.
I made enough noise that they finally realized they may
have a lawsuit on their hands.
Religious minorities are treated
like crap, by both faculty and students. At best
you are treated as a curiosity and people ask nosy
questions and then try to convert you. I am
white, so I cannot speak to minority experience from anything
personal, but the minorities I have spoken to have told
me it's the same with them. Additionally, being a
minority seems to make them not take you seriously!
I have never in my entire life witnessed the kind
of small-mindedness I did in Boise, Idaho.