I
came to this school because of money. I will admit
this school does have pros and cons. However for me
the cons far outweighed the pros. Pros:
They
did give me a lot of money. I practically went
for free. My parents always told me that they weren't
going to pay for my college but they ended up
paying what I needed after financial aid because it was
so little.
Also, the campus is really nice. That's
the other thing that made me decide to go there.
There is a beautiful park right across the street from
the campus that students go to a lot and some
club sports practice there. The park is huge and there
are a lot of hiking trails that you can go
on.
Cons:
The campus is a little isolated. Yes
it is beautiful, but it's closed off from everything. This
is also partly to do with the whole city of
Westfield itself, not just the campus. Westfield is a run
down city with not much to do. There is literally
one bar that some of the upper classmen go to
but that's about it. If you want things to do,
you need to go to Springfield which is about twenty
minutes away and honestly a little shady after dark. This
is also a problem because freshmen can't have cars so
unless you make friends with someone who has one, you're
pretty much stuck on campus all the time which is
not fun. At the very beginning of the semester, the
school had events every night that the students went to
and it was alot of fun. But very quickly after
that, there were never any events and occasionally when there
were, no one went because they student body had no
spirit.
I found that it was a lot like high
school all over again. Mostly because most of the students
who go there came from the surrounding high schools and
they all commute. So everyone knows each other already. It
was difficult for me to make friends there. Most of
the student body likes to stay in their rooms every
weekend and drink by themselves. No one opened their doors
ever. I never met the people who lived across the
hall from me for the entire year.
The social
scene is a little underground. There are some occasional parties,
but they aren't open by any means. You need to
know people to get in. Some people go to off
campus parties too, but again you usually have to ending
walking 2 miles at three in the morning back to
campus.
The academics are alright. They do have a
good education program and a criminal justice program. Pretty much
any liberal arts program is alright. If you want science
though, this place is not good for that. As a
bio major, I found that the program is extremely small.
There aren't that many students, professors, and laboratories. Most of
the bio majors are doubling majoring with education, and the
quality of the program reflects on that. Not that teaching
biology is in any way not a quality career choice,
it's just that if you want to actually get into
a research or medical career, you will have a harder
time. I met a few people, as well as myself,
who wanted to go to grad school or med school,
and transferred to a university that does research and has
a better reputation for sciences.
I thought that the
students there were uncommonly dull. I got good grades in
all of my classes without trying. Yet, the class average
was barely above failing. In any given class, most of
my peers were failing. I wouldn't mind so much except
for the college catered to these students who were failing
instead of the ones who were passing. Instead of “weeding
out” students who couldn't handle the work, professors slowed down
and went over stuff for the students who were failing
leaving people like me bored to tears. I'm not saying
these students shouldn't be given extra help, but there
is a time and a place. There are office hours
and a tutoring center. But I feel that the class
should not be slowed down.
I came home every
single weekend towards the end of the semester. I hated
it there. One weekend when I didn't come home, my
roommate and I watched movies for two days because we
had nothing else to do.
Also, another thing I
didn't like was the food. Towards the end of the
semester, I lost weight because I would rather just not
eat than go to the Dining Commons. There was a
Subway on campus which I went to a lot instead.
Also, when I did go the DC, I had to
plan it out not to eat at prime times, like
noon or 6 because there would be no food and
no place to sit. People are really unfriendly there and
most people would eat by themselves.
The library was
alright. It probably could have been a little bigger. It
definitely needed more computers and tables. It was hard enough
to find somewhere to sit on a normal day. Around
finals just forget it.
Res Life staff was terrible
and power hungry. My friends lived above the RD of
their building and constantly got yelled at for making noise
in the middle of day. The reason was the they
were disrupting everyone but in reality they were just disrupting
the RD because everyone else was really loud but they
just didn't live above the RD and so he didn't
care. Also, someone else I knew had a roommate that
kept blatantly stealing their stuff and it took ResLife and
entire semester to move her even despite formal complaints and
reports every day. And after that, they just put the
person that was stealing in another dorm. Even though the
handbook says that you will be suspended from housing if
you do stuff like steal. Since nothing changed about the
girl who was stealing, when she was placed in a
new room all she did was steal stuff again from
her new roommate and ResLife still didn't do anything about
it.
I can go on and on about the
cons of the school. Overall, unfriendly people, mediocre academics, not
so great living situations. My advice is, if you live
around the area and want to commute somewhere a step
up from a community college, then you can go here.
Otherwise, it's not worth it to go all the way
out there for school.