The College of Charleston

Date: May 16 2012
Major: Communications (This Major's Salary over time)
This review will be from the perspective of an adult transfer, so it may or may not be helpful to the average student. It had been a dream to attend CofC for many years, and I finally got the opportunity this past spring semester. BUT…not without a challenge. I became a fan of the College on Facebook (I am not a huge FB fan, by the way) after applying last year so that I could keep up with the goings-on of the school. I read the countless testimonies of traditional students fresh out of high school being accepted within 1 to 2 weeks of applying. In the meantime, I had to beg the transfer department to accept me. Supposedly they were waiting on a transcript, which was in-house the whole time. It took 3 months for me to get accepted! Might I add that once this little transcript error was discovered, not a single apology was offered. AND, I still had to wait the normal number of weeks for my application to be processed because their rule is that it will be processed within a certain number of weeks AFTER all requirements are in. Wow! No bending whatsoever, even though it was their fault.

Some departments do not have an option to leave a voice message nor do they answer the phone. So email is the only means of communicating. That's fine except the senders are usually rude. My thing is this: if you?re going to be rude, don?t be a coward about it by hiding safely behind technology. They do not even address you by name or close the email properly. They just jump straight in with snippy angry comments. Of course, they never sign their name either and since you are emailing a department; i.e., financial aid, registrar, etc., there? no way of knowing who you are dealing with. I was all but told by an advisor that CofC was not for people like me (adult transfers who worked fulltime). So I was discouraged from the very beginning. Then, I was assigned a department advisor and she was very encouraging and told me that we could make things work for me, even if I was a non-traditional student. (So, not everyone has the same mentality, thank goodness!)

I am a native South Carolinian and have lived in Charleston for several years, although it is not home. In general, Charleston is very traditional (aka backwards thinking, prejudiced with a smile) and it took years for me to get use to how unwelcoming people are here once they realize you are not Charlestonian (trust me, they know you're not "one of them" after you speak two words). They call it "traditional and historical" but it is just another way of saying you don?t belong (even other Southerners) if you are not from here. Well, CofC carries that same Charlestonian spirit. I even had a faculty member admit (before I even said my reason for leaving. Oh yeah, I can?t wait to transfer for fall) that the college is not friendly to non-traditional students. There is so much opportunity for broadening the college?s horizons and taking advantage of the adult transfer market by offering more evening and online courses. I realize the school wants to maintain its reputation as a traditional school; however, it is stupid when it does so by outright excluding certain groups. The "young people" may want to go to college with their own age group and I can totally understand them not wanting a campus full of 30 + year olds as their peers. But other colleges have a way of catering to all groups while still maintaining the youthfulness of a traditional setting. I think CofC needs to stop being snooty and get with the program. The "good ol boys" days are over!