Temple University

Date: Jun 21 2012
Major: Other (This Major's Salary over time)
I'm conflicted over Temple's location. On one hand, it's amazing because you're a few subway stops away from world-class museums, performing arts, historical sites, and shopping, but unfortunately, Temple is an island—campus itself is safe and welcoming, but the area around it, is improving, but far from ideal. Unfortunately, the Philly subway system is really sketchy past 9 pm, so this has limitted my ability to explore downtown at night. Anyone who warns you to "never leave campus" doesn't have a grasp on reality, but some of the blocks where students rent apartments are positively decrepit not well-lit. I've walked on campus alone at 2 am and felt relatively safe, however, it is imperative to be alert and I ould not advise doing the same off-campus. There is a supermarket and two Rite-Aids literally 20 yards from campus—the value of these are not to be underestimated. I know many students at more suburban or rural colleges who constantly find themselves with a food shortage in their dorm because they lack nearby stores. There's many wonderful restaurants and food trucks on and around Temple's campus—everything from Korean to French to Carribbean is right here.

I've really enjoyed the academics at Temple. Some people advised me to attend a small, liberal arts college, but I've been pleasantly surprised with the academics here. Believe it or not, every single professor I had this year was excellent. It helped that I'm in the humanities (there's few required required courses only taught by one prof, so you have a lot of liberty to choose who you want). Some of my friends in the sciences have had positively sadistic professors, but in any field, there's always a few good ones. It's great being in Philadelphia, because sometimes professors assign fieldwork in the city or may take your class to a museum. Temple has almost every class you could imagine, from glassblowing to Vietanmese to hydrology to Renaissance music performance. One downfall is that it is extremely difficult to major in or even take classes in totally different fields. I know people at other colleges combining interests like Flute Performance and Chemistry, but stringent requirements here make that a rarity. I'm in the Honors Program and it's great having the benefit of priority registration and access to small class sizes. However, I do feel that the Honors Program is limitting, in that you have to have at least 10 honors courses. If you're in a major with few free credits, then you basically have to take all your upper level coureses through honors, meaning you can't dabble in areas of your discipline that you're interested in. Oh yeah: Temple has tons of grants for undergraduate research ($2,500+)

Now for the absolutely worst part of Temple: the bureaucracy. I was investigating an accelerated degree program, fast forward four months, and suddenly all traces of the program disappeared. I emailed some staff members to find out if it was still available, no response. Someone finally got back to me only to deny that the program was ever existant. I was ready to give up, then a month later, someone told me "Hey, it's available and accepting applications!" It turns out that the program was suspended. Miscommunication here is rampant. If you attend Temple, you must be proactive and willing to fact check any information a staff member gives you. It's also important to know that getting a work study is very difficult. Temple rarely updates the job bank online—I applied for one position only to receive an email "sorry, we filled that April last year!" Your best bet in terms of finding a job is to subscribe to as many Listservs as possible—that's where the /available/ jobs can be found.

If you're shy and/or have limitted time to devote to making friends (i.e. you have tons of obligations and can't devote hours each day going to events/"hanging out" in hopes of hitting it off), Temple isn't the most conducive atmosphere to build relationships. I was sick of my small high school, seeing the same people everday, but I didn't realize that by being with the same folks in English, math, and art, you have a high likelihood of developing friendships, whereas at Temple, you'll most likely have different people in each class (less exposure=less opportunities to connect). I equated 30,000 students with much more friends than one might have at, say, a college of 2,000, but I feel rather isolated here, like 90% of the time I'm surrounded by strangers. Walking around campus, it's rare that I run into a friend or even a classmate.

So…living on campus. The dorms here are actually really nice, aside from Peabody. I lived in 1300. It's a beautiful, modern suite/apartment building, private bathrooms=yay! I do think it is more difficult to make friends in suite-style housing. If you hit it off with your suite-mates, awesome! But if you don't, well everyone else is hanging out in their own suite, sorry. I didn't realize how much of a party school Temple was until I attended; definitely, the majority of the school is out getting drunk on Friday nights. Temple's food is all over the spectrum. At the beginning of the year, it was phenomenal: made-to-order stirfrys, cheesecake, delicious pizza. However, as you approach a break, the food goes sharply down hill, and by the last month, pasta is hard, entrees are cold, salad is wilted.