The University of Vermont

Date: Nov 09 2011
Major: Other (This Major's Salary over time)
I transferred to UVM from Emmanuel College in Boston. I'm from NH, so after being in Boston for the year I wanted to be in a setting that was more familiar to me and had a nature setting, so naturally I picked Vermont. To begin UVM is extremely expensive and I disregarded everyone who was telling me that because I thought UVM would be worth it. I was wrong. As a transfer I got stuck in the shoe box dorms on central campus that are literally the size of shoe boxes. Everyone else I knew lived in the nicest dorms I had ever seen, they looked like hotel rooms. Most of those kids were freshman… and I was a sophomore who should have had better housing. The people in my dorm weren't very friendly and there was no common meeting place where we could meet each other or hang out, like a lounge of kitchen. My roommate was an insomniac who was very nice, but I literally could never sleep because she was always awake with the light on in our miniature room. It was impossible to change roommates because frankly they didn't care how your living situation was and I tried everything even going to a consular and getting moved out sooner because it was effecting my academics. But there was nothing to be done.

The food is kind of terrible. I'm a vegetarian and thought that such an "earth friendly" school would have choices for people who are making a stand against the food industry. Wrong. Not to add that the "point" system is wayyyy over priced. The food has jacked up prices for mediocre quality, and then each point has a value of 1$ but you're really paying about $1.75 per dollar.

Also, the student body was lacking a lot. Again, I thought there would be down to earth kids who wanted to be outside, go for hikes and hang out and do fun natural things. Wasn't that way. Most kids spent there days smoking a lot. Thats fine with me… but really… there more to life then sitting in the green and smoking with some random people your making fake connections with, because the weed is "soooo dankkk". There were a lot of stuck up kids who were very privileged to be there but couldn't see that. Everyone loves snowboarding and skiing which is great, I do too, but a season pass is very expensive and once again the rich kids can afford that and if you can't you will miss out. There was no diversity. Everyone was white and from MA/NJ/NY. There was an overwhelming sense of white privilege. I went to private school, so I'm use to those types of kids, but I thought people would grow out of ignorance in college… but I was wrong.

Party Scene kinda sucked. House parties were your only options. If you like dancing in an over crowded dirty basement this is the place for you. Parties also get broken up pretty early so basically on the weekend, the whole college is roaming around on the streets of burlington looking for the maybe 5 parties happening that weekend. There are some bars down town… but still…

It would have been better if kids were able to get out of Burlington more often and into Vermont, but theres no public transportation to do so in Vermont, so good luck if you don't have a car. Getting to and from the school can be hard if you live far away. Greyhound is wayy over priced and so is the airport.

The best thing about UVM was the view. Lake Champlain is amazing and the mountains are breath taking.

Academics were okay. They had my major, Community Entrepreneurship which was a plus, but in all honesty, if your from out of state. Don't go here. You're state school will probably be much better. In my Race and Relations class I had a professor who had been pulled out of retirement of 10 years to teach the class. He was very smart, but didn't know anything about technology in the classroom today. He couldn't use the microphone or projector, which made everyone angry and the 200 students would get a little out of control. It was not the professors fault, the was the Universities. He would always ramble on about how much money he was getting paid, (not enough for the bullshit he had to put up with with the students and the University) how much money we were paying for the class, and then how many hundreds of dollars the University was making off of us being there. It was a rip off. I was grateful for the professor because he made me really thing about the school and its marketing techniques and scamming it's students.

On a more positive note, I had plenty of friend who loved it there, but they were those kids who were white and lived very privileged lives and basically went there to snowboard, because there parents could afford for them to do that.

If you are a socially conscious person and is looking to make a difference, don't go here. I'd say you might have a better chance at UNH.

After one month of being at UVM I left. It was the best decsion I've made in my life so far. I still have student loans… but I'm glad I got the hell out of there before I actually went insane or worse an alcoholic so I could blur the life I was living. I saw though the bullshit the school pretends to be about. Another review said everyone was like robots, and I felt that exact way when I was there. I felt like I was in the conveyer belt in mass production and then was going to be thrown out as a depressed American who drank too much in college and now has a shitty typical American life. But, hey at least I would have been able to say I went to UVM because like they say it is, "a good school".