Clark University

Date: Jul 17 2012
Major: Physics (This Major's Salary over time)
Me: rising junior, physics major

The positive

I've had loads of fun at Clark. Its a small campus so you really end up knowing almost everyone on campus and having a ton of friends. Unfortunately I feel that I'm not making a connections that might help me later on in life so don't expect to do a lot of networking when your here. On a side note if you don't like to drink or smoke weed you'll have a hard time here. I myself don't smoke but most weekends if you want to do something around campus it will involve drinking and\or smoking.

The physics major is nice and small and there's pretty much zero competition for getting funding for summer research and keeping gpa afloat. All the professors (with the exception of one) are nice, knowledgeable, and willing to help. Unless you have the knack for physics though you will have to put the time in to study. I've always seen myself as a bottom of the top kind of guy ie little work in decent gpa out but I've seen lots of physics majors with less natural talent work three times as hard as I do and fail. Overall the other physics students are great guys (and one or two girls) who are friendly nice and intelligent.

Outside of the physics department I've had a few interesting professors but I found the math department to be exceptionally bland and some of the professors conceited and only moderately helpful. The perspectives while a nice idea are hard to fill with good classes and really just end up being a waste of time. So happy I'm down to all physics and math now save foreign language, but then again I'm a physicist so others might have more fun in those classes.

The student body is generally very nice and approachable, as a freshman I hung out with under and upper classmen alike. There are certain groups that do have private parties but generally you can walk into almost any house and know someone there who can grab you a free cup. The sports teams often get little love but the majority of the people on them are cool. There's a few more girls here then guys which is always good for the fellas. A joke here is that you have to put your "clark goggles" on because the girls aren't that pretty but I have to disagree and while Clark my not get too many models but a lot of the girls are really cute.

The negative

Now for the bad part. The campus is NOT SAFE AT ALL. You always hear about bad stuff happening around campus and you think it won't happen to you but it eventually will. I went here for two years without incident but I've been robbed twice at gunpoint in the last month by crackheads the second one being a home invasion. University police, while nice is understaffed and impotent. Both times I was robbed I was within eye shot of the up office. While rare, students have and do get raped. The campus is open which lets all sorts of hobos and crack addicts come onto campus and beg for money and/or publicly masturbate in restrooms (yes this has happened). Clark prides itself as being integrated with the community but a large percentage of the community consists of violent criminals and the school should be ashamed of the amount of weekly incident reports they send out (reports that they often sugar coat). I've been to many schools that always have a proctor checking ids at the entrance to the dorms and these schools are located in much nicer and safer areas then Worcester. Almost anybody can waltz right in to the dorms so lock your doors. I was seriously considering switching schools but I like the research I'm doing too much to leave.

There isn't a hell of a lot to do in Worcester either if you don't have a car. The only thing near campus worth checking out it the hookah lounge and bars but neither are anything special. The palladium is about a mile or two down main but you definitely want to take a cab or car. They also only really play hardcore and metal which I personally like but know many people do not (It also may be shutting down).

Overall Clark is an awesome school in the the wrong place. Location, location, location, is something Clark just doesn't understand and its really a shame the school isn't in a better location. Its location is literally the only strike Clark has against it but its one that is so prominent it kills the school. I will not be hanging around for grad school (especially seeing how poor a deal it is for science grads).

Worcester sucks, and with the exception of a few diamonds in the rough, the locals in the area are impoverished, raving, crack heads with guns who pray on innocent unarmed students.