Manhattanville College

Date: May 16 2011
Major: Education (This Major's Salary over time)
First off, it's important for me to note I transferred to UConn Storrs after 2 years at mville. My primary reason for leaving was financial (being from CT), but I was also happy to get out of mville. Having just said that and all the bad grades I gave mville here, you might be wondering why I label this review "positive." I did so because, despite its many shortcomings, there are some very positive features about the college that the mville staff should really enhance.

Also, I don't actually consider myself "bright" intellectually, just "average", but I believe myself to be very hardworking and ambitious, so in my mind that makes up for my middle-of-the-road intelligence as far as this labeling goes.

So anyways with mville, one of the school's absolute best features is its location. When it comes to this aspect, forget competitors like NYU or Fordham that have locations right in the middle of the city, where one could easily feel distracted or even unsafe. mville is located in a beautiful, quiet suburb that's only 45 mins. away from NYC, and just 10 mins. away from White Plains, a small city that offers all the essentials (good but affordable restaurants, half a dozen Wal-mart type stores, big movie theatres, 2 malls, etc.), and transportation to White Plains is everyday of the week for free, and students can go to NYC on the weekend days for free through an Mville shuttle bus. Trust me, you can't get this kind of offer at UConn Storrs where one would want free transportation more so given that school's remote location.

Students on the whole were friendly, I found. Sure, some jerks here and there, and because it's a small school that cliched but true

high school all over again

permeates. For me, I liked that the on-campus party scene wasn't huge because it makes for a less exclusive social environment, and that mville's locations facilitates for great off-campus social events, so I give the Social Life a B+. It's true, however, not much of a social scene exists on campus.

I was an education major there, and the school's known for their education program. It's a great one specifically because it has a nice balance of not being too research-oriented but also not being too much of a "babysitting" major for students, where outside opportunities would just be hand fed to us; because that's not realistic in the workforce. The head of mville's education department seems to get a negative rep, which I find unfair because I always found my interactions with her to be beneficial. Yes, she's pretty blunt in her feedback, and has fairly high objectives, but she's never unfair or unsupportive. Her expectation of students meeting her and other professors half-way in the program and telling them directly if they failed to do so is appropriate, not excessive. So great preparation there if you're an edu. major, and you're likely to find a teaching position upon graduation. That's how good the edu. department/ major is at mville. I did, however, give some low marks to the "department" list because I factored in all the professors I had there, and all the different classes outside of my major that I took, and some teachers there really shouldn't be teaching. Some are pretty apathetic and you don't learn that much, even if you want to. I also compared the teaching services to that of UConn's when giving the grades here, and UConn surprised me with the abundant amount of great profs. they have there, and how accessible they make themselves to a much larger student body. Marks here would have been a bit higher if I did not have UConn to compare it to.