The University of Connecticut

Date: Nov 08 2011
Major: Neuroscience/Cognitive Science (This Major's Salary over time)
The University of Connecticut is a public university that serves over 16,000 undergraduate students. That is one of the biggest problems with this college. There is a huge difference between taking a course in a lecture hall of 400 and a class room of 20. Some professors have tried to make attempts to make these lectures "feel" smaller by incorporating "discussion based" assignments that "apply" the information "presented" in class in a creative fashion so students can exercise the upper levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. This for the most part from my experience has been not executed properly. I have found that courses that incorporate a lab (biology, in/org/biochem, physics) generally are poorly organized as most of the labs are presented out of line with the course material. Either you are scrambling to get to learn information that was intended to be presented later in the semester for a lab in the beginning of the semester or just the opposite. This is very frustrating as you can imagine.

There really is not a supportive atmosphere here. You are on your own and thats fine to an extent. Professors are generally available but most are busy with research and are not interested in dealing with some pesky undergrads.

I transferred to this college (only because of financial reasons, you will find that a lot of students are here only because of that) after spending time at a local community college. This college is the exact opposite of what I need as a student (ie small class sizes, interactive student population, professors who are willing to give a sh*t if you seek for their guidance/direction/support, a bit of action off-campus, labs that correspond with lecture material, assignments that are not busywork, PROPER assessment of student learning which is generally lacking at this place).

There is something to say about how

college is what you make of it

College is difficult. You have to be disciplined. Just because you have a good memory does not equate to success academically at the colligate level as many high school kids find out their first semester. You must create your own opportunities for your own success. That is what I go by anyway.

I have found that students do not enjoy venturing out of their comfort zone when it comes to social piece of college (which is about as important as the academic). Once a student gets into a dorm and meets a few people in their dorm or friends of friends from high school, thats about it. The fast pace nature of this college also contributes to this. Social life revolves around alcohol in college especially at the University of Connecticut. So if your not into drinking, or don't like socializing with people who are, you will probably not like this place. Even if you choose to join clubs it will take a semester or two before you get a group of friends going this route.

To be quite honest the only reason why anyone outside of Connecticut knows about this university is because of the basketball teams. And I will have to say, getting tickets to men's basketball is done by a lottery system. So all of the families and "students" applying to this college (New Jersey, Mass) because of the opportunity to be at the games (just keep that in mind). The current president Susan is very goal oriented and is trying her best to make the college have a billion dollar endowment. Which it should.

The administration and just about every office on campus is, well lets be nice DIFFICULT to work with. I am not going to go any further with this. If you go here you will know what I mean…

I will say I have not really been impressed with this college. I was not when I was applying to schools and after spending a year here out of force I will say that I still do not like this place. I would transfer out of this college but many schools do not accept or even consider reviewing transfer applications from people who have more than 60, if your very very lucky, 75 credits.

I work way to hard to be dealing with this stuff…