The University of Kansas

Date: Mar 16 2011
Major: Psychology (This Major's Salary over time)
I loved attending KU the past four years. While there are definite negatives, the positive do outweigh the negatives. For instance, the school is large with 30,000 students, which means the faculty has less time to spend with an individual student. They are unhelpful, often arrogant, and take effort to seek out. The class sizes can be large (Budig offers 300 person and 1000 person lecture halls). But, any student who enrolls in this university should be aware that because this is such a large school, you may need to fight a little harder to access your professors. If you don't know that going in, that's too bad.

Lawrence is really a wonderful college town. It's is fairly well laid out and I feel relatively safe walking around. I will caution that walking at night as a woman is never 100% safe, particularly in the student ghetto, but no matter where you go, that's an issue. Lawrence offers plenty of good food, shopping, and walking. We have a few lakes surrounding the town that are really fun in the summer.

KU itself is great. I have loved my time here. Making friends can be tough, but it is easy to find your niche. I don't think people are cliquey or focused on high school, but there is a large population of Johnson County students who are trying to escape the "bubble". If you avoid most of them, you'll be fine at KU.

From personal experience, the psychology program at KU is great. I didn't have any trouble getting into graduate school and at many programs, the amount of coursework that was required by KU was exemplary. The core classes will absolutely prepare you well for graduate study. Many of the psych classes are also incredibly fun, like Dr. Ilardi's Abnormal Psych and Dr. Pressman's Health Psychology and Positive Psychology. Working in research labs was something I did and would recommend every psych student do. I didn't have trouble contacting professors and getting a spot in their research team. Usually one e-mail did the trick. Clinical experience was also easy to find. Between community agencies like DCCA, Willow Domestic Violence Center, Headquarters, etc, you will find plenty of volunteer/paid work in the field.

I absolutely and unequivocally recommend KU. I loved my years here.