The University of Massachusetts - Lowell

Date: Jan 05 2012
Major: Music - Performance (This Major's Salary over time)
If you love music please spare your soul and stay away from this place. Almost everyone in my freshman music theory class had already taken the course, but this school demands you do it again in an ongoing effort to take your money. My theory teacher spent each day drawing out two scales for 50 minutes, and maybe turning them into triads… my aural skills teacher was a depressed and spiteful man. The school placed these classes at 8 am and grade by attendance, despite the fact that no one had the slightest musical opinion by the time they traveled the 30-40 minutes it takes to get there, in order to weed out student by student.. and many had already taken the exact same courses. I lucked out with my performance group, however most people had instructors that seemed very demotivating. I heard a story of one making a guitarist cry in the middle of a session. If you play a drum kit then your practice room is a closet shared with one or two other people, and its not very inspiring at all. Even though everyone on my floor (10th floor, Fox Hall) is a musician i have never played music with any of them for fun. Not only does the school make that completely inconvenient to do, but no one seems to enjoy actually playing music with each other. The private lessons are decent, about as good as any other private lesson i could've taken outside of school. My writing teacher was as quiet as a mouse in a room with an extremely loud air conditioner and giant computer monitors block your view every day, even though we never used them. I truly enjoyed one class, Intro to European Art Music, taught by the only person there I feel comfortable calling a professor, Dr. Tim Crain. He basically took every other subject i was taking and taught them all better in a simultaneous fashion. Good Man. if you are sharing a dorm room with 3 to 4 people then you might as well share an apartment, because it costs as much, and their housing is a terrible experience. The food will literally make you sick to your stomach. You will find nothing to do in Lowell. Going to Umass Lowell was the single most depressing experience i've ever dealt with. They are clearly spending all of the money they get on propaganda and more buildings to house more people in order to take their money. This place is more of a scam than a university. If your interest is music then STAY THE HELL OUT OF UMASS LOWELL.