Westfield State University

Date: Jun 16 2010
Major: Biology (This Major's Salary over time)
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.