First
and foremost, Creighton is not a university for everyone and
it definitely has its pros and cons, just like every
other school in the nation. Because it is a
private Catholic school the student body is rather homogeneous (white,
midwestern, upper-middle class, Catholic). The vast majority of the
students, however, are very friendly and overall great people. I
think the same could be said for the faculty and
staff. Before I dive into the academics, I'll comment
on the social life here. Omaha itself is not
a bad city. It's not the greatest city either.
If you are an outdoorsy type person who likes
to go hiking, biking, kayaking, etc. you will be sorely
disappointed with Omaha. However, if you enjoy a good
bar/restaurant scene and are a college sports fan, Omaha is
great. The arts and music scene are also undervalued.
With regards to Creighton itself, there are plenty of
opportunities to get involved with here. Intramural sports are especially
popular. Creighton is a greek campus, which I am
not really a fan of personally. I feel like
it sort of divides the social atmosphere of the campus
in half, which is very unfortunate.
As for the academics,
I believe they are top notch in some academic disciplines
and lacking in others. As far as the more
popular premed majors go such as biology and chemistry, they
are both very strong. The faculty are great in
these departments and so are the students. I felt
like I was adequately challenged and prepared for med school
(I was accepted to 3+ med schools after graduation).
Some people complain about how Creighton tries to weed students
out of the premed path early and how it is
very competitive amongst the students. I did not see
that AT ALL. The premed students that I came
into contact with were all super friendly and generally quite
down to earth. I guarantee you that if you go
to any other college and do premed you will not
find it to be any “easier” and/or less “cut throat.”
The premed curriculum and courses are not easy, that
much is definitely true. But Creighton does not actively
try to give premeds bad grades. In fact, I
would argue that the opposite is true in my experiences
and that professors tried to give students the best possible
chance to get a good grade. I believe that
people who can't handle the curriculum here are simply not
cut out to be doctors/dentists/etc. Either they don't have
the intellect or they don't have the work ethic (it's
usually the latter). Not everyone gets a blue ribbon
in the game of life. Not everyone can get
into med/dental school. It's simply not easy. Sorry
about that rant there, I just felt it was necessary
to educate people about this concept. Moving on... the
academics outside of my major (biology) were great overall.
Of course there were a few classes here and there
that had poor professors, but the number of good to
excellent professors in other classes made up for this fact.
Lastly, the campus itself is not the best
ever. It has an odd linear layout with a
smattering of different architecture styles. However, the campus is
very well maintained and feels almost like a botanical garden
in the spring/summer. If I could change this campus
for the better, I would add more green space in
the form of quads and add some entertainment/restaurants/shops near campus.
You basically need to have a car to get
around Omaha, which is disappointing. The campus does continue
to expand under the vision of our president and is
slowly becoming larger and more beautiful as a result.
Overall, I enjoyed my experience at Creighton and would
recommend it to those seriously considering a prehealth profession.