Eastern Connecticut State University

Date: Jun 20 2011
Major: Education (This Major's Salary over time)
I went to Eastern Connecticut State University as a freshman for the Fall 2010 semester wanting to love it. I already liked my roommates a lot, and had some friends from high school also attending the school, so I was not worried about making friends. Besides, I am an overall outgoing and friendly person, so I felt that I could make the best of my experience. As time went on, I realized that, although I had friends at Eastern, they all went home on the weekends, mostly because there was nothing to do on campus. If you are looking for events, CAB puts on some okay ones, but usually they are pretty boring. Students try to avoid these by getting drunk. If you don't drink, you are out of luck, because that is the ONLY way people have fun on this campus. But, if you DO drink, you will probably be written up by RAs on power trips, trolling the dorms looking for a group of six or seven kids to bust with alcohol.

As classes started, I assumed they were slow moving because it was just the first few weeks. As time went on and there was still hardly any work, and I was being praised for work that would have received a "C" at best in my high school, I began to realize that ECSU was not the place for me.

I began my transfer process in November of my freshman semester, and I am SO happy to be leaving. As a student who does not drink, I cannot wait to have activities on campus to participate in, and a student body that stays on campus. Plus, I will finally be getting the academic quality I expected from an institution of higher learning.

If you are choosing Eastern for budget reasons, pick a different CSU school. Eastern does not give you the education you want for your money.

Besides the actual school, Willimantic, the surrounding town, is nothing short of miserable. In my first few months of school we got several alerts of students getting mugged when going off campus. If you do venture off campus during the day, you will find people talking to themselves, police all over the street trying to keep the peace, and, whether the town wants to admit it or not, drug use is still rampant.

Do yourself a favor and choose a different school. Central, Western and Southern are all better options than Eastern. Half the people I know from Eastern are transferring (most of them to UConn) and the other half are only staying because they are too lazy to go to a place that expects any more from them, or too afraid to go farther from home.