The University of Texas - San Antonio

Date: Oct 03 2010
Major: Geography and Geosciences (This Major's Salary over time)
Avoid this college and this city at all costs unless you're a bio-medical/bio-engineering major who doesn't mind a non-existent social life. The educational standards of the college are quite low and the city is a miserable place. Professors range from friendly and helpful to aloof and arrogant. They are one of the better elements of the university, because most of them lean toward the former side, but they're trying to hold together a sinking ship. Bickering and fighting between the departments is common; so is abuse of various departments by the university. Most funding money is channeled into research in a few specific areas (bio-tech and bio-medical) at the expense of all other departments. The students here are broken-spirited, constantly living in fear of how they're going to find a job after graduating from such a piss-poor university. Furthermore, the curriculum here is set up to coincide directly with that of the local community colleges, thus, it is condescending and ridiculous. You're loaded down with an obscene number of basics courses and stopping blocks before you can take any advanced courses that may be of interest to you.

The social scene here, and in the city as a whole, is awful. In short: If you are not a native or a barfly, you have no chance of having a social life. In extended form: The students are very consistently apathetic in regards to meeting new people, and all live in their cliques of very few people and never venture out, and show intense paranoia when dealing with outsiders at anything beyond a casual (chatting for a few minutes outside of class about the material) level. God help you if you want to have a social life and don't want to put in the leg-work of going to the bar and getting drunk 4-5 days per week. It's not going to happen.

The city has a number of bars and clubs, but no 'entertainment' scene beyond that unless you're a sports person. There is no significant arts scene, music scene (independent or mainstream), good locations to hike, or anything else of interest. There is nothing to do but drink. The fractured social network within the university extends out into the city as a whole; there is no sense of community here, just individuals living with a perpetual sense of isolation.

If your hobbies consist of drinking alone, waiting for death to come and ease your boredom, and making an art-form out of mediocrity, this university and this city are for you. If this doesn't appeal to you then, please, pick another college and another city and save yourself some misery.