The University of Vermont

Date: Jul 28 2010
Major: PreMed and Medical (This Major's Salary over time)
If you are a well-rounded, prospective college student who is looking at attending UVM, I would advise you not to.

My experience was miserable. My first year of college was spent at a university where from the outside, everything's perfect. Well manicured and marketed, UVM looks like paradise from the outside. But everything not shown on the shiny pamphlets they send home after you apply is downright ugly. Not only is the campus not shown to the public sparse and hardly well maintained, the freshman dorms (Chittenden/Buckham/Wills) are in horrible condition and look like you are living in some kind of urban housing project. I'm pretty sure none of the freshman dorms have been changed in anyway since like 1960-70.

My major, Medical Laboratory Science, was actually excellent. The staff there were incredibly helpful, friendly and passionate about helping students succeed. Freshman advisor Erica Caloiero will personally schedule time management sessions with individual students, and it is really helpful. The course load is incredibly difficult, or at least it was for me, but there seemed to be big rewards- internships at a nearby hospital, whathaveyou. But that's where my praise for UVM stops.

This school completely under-funds it's art program. They stopped letting incoming students declare art minors because the classes were filling so fast that art majors couldn't even take a SINGLE art class. The art teachers here are also completely apathetic, snotty and self serving. One of my drawing teachers would routinely show up 10 minutes late to class. The other, a sculpture teacher, would let certain students (her favorites) bend the rules as to what materials they could use to build their structures, while the rest of us had to take buses downtown to Recycle North to scrounge around for used materials.. all in the name of being GREEN. We were supposed to glue on USED NAILS, because we couldn't use new ones.. after all, that's a waste! Well, the joke was on her, because after trying to meet the 10 different criteria for our sculptures, a lot of people glued on dog hair, egg shells, hay and what have you. And at the end? They all threw their sculptures away. That, Miss Warren, is a WASTE.

As for the food here, it absolutely sucks. I loved being an independent college student, finding my own way at school, blah blah blah, but every single weekend I was calling home, begging them to send me real food. The dining hall near central campus smells like butt outside, and the food has a similar taste. all of the good places to eat (marketplace, ben & jerry's, new world tortilla) close ridiculously early and aren't even worth trekking through the snow in the dead of winter. stock up on canned soup. honestly, i left home a little overweight for my liking, lost 9 lbs, and came back in the spring severely anemic (so that's why I was getting so dizzy!) I am convinced that there is not a single non-mushy tomato, non-wilting piece of lettuce (or one that doesn't have dirt caked on to it) or non-mealy apple at this school. good luck with the red meat, too. Even the things you'd never expect the school to screw up really were terrible. Couscous salad? Sounds delicious! Tastes like chemicals. I tried fettucine primavera at the marketplace once.. i was taking a risk. I took one bite and threw it out. I hate, hate, hate wasting food, but when the salad has been sitting in a bag for 3 weeks, the pasta sauces have the consistency of elmer's glue and the pizza has so much grease that you should really be eating it over a bowl, what else are you to do?

The people at UVM also kinda suck. I appreciate their individuality.. or should I say, collective individuality. Everyone here has the same hipster attitude, wearing their grungy flannels and their boat shoes. The only thing is, these aren't real hippies. These are the kids from Mass/CT who are mooching off their parents trust funds and smoking up on the weekends. They are self-entitled, egocentric, and snobby to the extreme. Burlington is freezing, and so is the student body.