Calvin College

Date: Feb 21 2011
Major: Unknown (This Major's Salary over time)
Overall, I'm not too thrilled with my time here at Calvin. I am a Freshman in my second semester here and I've already started looking towards a transfer.

Academically this school is great. Classes are small so it's easy to learn, be noticed, and communicate with your professor. The workloads are pretty demanding but not overkill so you feel like you're being smothered and stressed out. In general the professors are kind, helpful, have a good knowledge of their courses, keep things interesting, and are happy to meet one on one with any students.

Campus wise it is beautiful. The school must be rolling in dough because they're constantly renovating and adding new buildings. The whole campus is pretty concentrated into a single area making it easy to get from place to place fast even by walking. It takes me no more than 5 minutes to get across campus from class to class.

The problems, in my opinion, is not with the staff and administration but more with the students. First of all, most of the kids here are from Michigan and more specifically the Grand Rapids area. There are a few private, christian, high schools that act as feeder schools into Calvin that send 100s of their graduating class to Calvin so a lot of the kids coming in are already in cliques. Floor community is pretty good and you spend a lot of time with the guys/girls on your floor. Party wise don't expect much. There are no fraternities or sororities and being that you have to live in the dorms your first two years all the parties are house parties held off-campus by the upperclassmen. You're going to have to know someone if you wanna go out. The school also cracks down on drinking pretty hard and you don't get too many warnings before they just ask you to leave the school. There is no drinking in the dorms. Alcohol, right down to the paraphernalia, is forbidden on-campus. The chicks are decent and there are a few gems, being that it is dominantly dutch there are a lot of blonds. As a Christian college a lot of the kids can be pretty closed-minded and look down on you pretty heavily if you're not into the whole going-to-church or having-high-morals thing.

Academically I want to say but the whole social scene has just been driving me away. Whether I'll stay to give it at least another year is undecided, but if I do get accepted to where I want to transfer it's unlikely I'd be content staying here.