Notre Dame College

Note: This is from my personal experiences and perspectives on this institution. Some of it may be a bit biased and offensive depending on who you are and how you may view this institution.

First, I would like to say that I do agree a lot with what most of the other negative reviewers have stated about this school such as the academics, students, campus, etc.

With that said, here is my take on this institution:

What I like about this school is that the classes are small and very fucking easy to pass for the most part! Especially because there are a lot of bullshit requirement classes to take regardless of your major. The only challenging factors to really take into consideration would the subjects and instructors. For instance, I'm not a math person, so for me, the math classes were very hard, but most of the other classes were super easy for me! As long as you have common sense and put at least 1% effort into your academics, you will be fine depending on your class and instructor. I've easily gotten As and Bs in classes where I barely did anything, didn't even read the books (or just barely skimmed through the material - usually just to answer homework questions) and I could easily B.S. high quality papers and just always did all of my homework and turned it in on time. You could easily pass most of your classes by just showing up (which you get credit for) and just doing the homework pretty much. But there are other classes that are ridiculously hard and the instructors do a very poor job of teaching them and would center the class around comprehensive exams without giving any additional credit to help your grade; but that could be anywhere I guess. But, what I like about the classes other than their easiness is that they are small, so the instructor will get to know you pretty well on a more personal level. The Moodle and E-mail system is very good too because you can easily access information from your classes such as homework that is posted and needs to be submitted on Moodle and you can easily contact other students, instructors, and staff if needed. Although, not all faculty get with the program because some never use Moodle or the school's E-mail and are difficult to get a hold of, and they may not give you adequate feedback on how you are doing in the class. Another thing that I really dislike about the classes is how non-interacting or engaging most of them are. A lot of classes just have instructors lecturing and asking questions about the material and often times when questions are asked, nobody ever responds or even seems to know or care about what is going on in the class. When it comes to group/class work, often times almost everybody seems to not even want to work with or help one-another and act like it's a chore to do. Moving on from that…The Academic Support Center is a very helpful program at this school for students who have learning differences. But the ASC is only helpful when you really need help and they are seriously lacking help and tutors for certain majors such as Psychology and Information Systems. They do a good job helping tutor students on difficult subjects for homework, projects, or preparing for exams - that of which they provide good accommodations for. They also provide good workshops and meetings for students who ACTUALLY NEED THEM!!! I say this because, the ASC, along with the rest of the college at times, can get extremely irritating when they treat you like a five year old by trying to get you to go to some of their events; especially if you truly don't need them because you are doing very well in your classes and you know how to take care of yourself and manage your time; and other times, the activities they try to make you to go to are really lame, boring, and pointless depending on who you are. Meaning that if you like the other students and going to some of the places they go to, you may love it. But, if you want to go to a real party or just do something fun with the people you actually care about on your own time and not have to deal with the lameness factor, then you should stay away from these events. (Trust me!) Some people will still try to talk you into going somewhere by saying it will be super fun and helpful for you somehow, even though 90% of these events are just common sense topics like how to manage your time even when your time is well-managed and you have better things to do than play bingo and eat junk food with people that you know you have almost nothing in common with and will never be friends with them in the first place. There is also the Dwyer Center which is like the ASC, except you don't need to have a disability to use their services and they will not get on your nerves like the ASC can. Now, let's talk about the people for a bit. The people here are VERY cliquey!!! A vast majority of this school is athletes. Hell, most of the people I've had classes with have even clearly stated that they only came to NDC to play their sport(s). So, if you are that kind of person, than you might love it here. Although, I've heard from some athletes that the sports aren't all that great and even other athletes have trouble meeting people here. So yeah, people like myself who don't care for sports have found it nearly impossible to approach or talk to most of the people here. All freshman year, I literally had no friends at all and could barely talk to anybody about anything except a class we were in; which after about five minutes of conversation, the other person just decides to leave and shows zero interest of really becoming friends with me or anything. At first, I thought it was just me because I was never really an outgoing kind of person and because I didn't play a sport. But when I finally did meet some people at this school who I managed to actually become friends with, even they were constantly complaining about how fucking cliquey, self-absorbed, and unapproachable a lot of the people are at this school which says A LOT!!! It REALLY does feel like being in high school all over again. There's absolutely nothing to do and nowhere to go here. There's a small cafe to hang out in which again, is just cliquey people who you can barely approach and most of them look very bored and miserable there. The library is a complete joke because it is very small and boring with lots of outdated books. The dorms are okay I guess, but they are very strict and there is almost zero social activity such as parties or meeting any new and interesting people, so you may find yourself being very bored and miserable there. The food ranges from adequate to terrible. It's not very fresh and is really just one step above shitty high school cafeteria food. The cafeteria itself is okay, I just hate AGAIN… how cliquey it is because everyone sits with their own groups and if you don't know anybody, you will be sitting completely alone or with some people you have nothing to talk about so it sucks either way. Changing subject to something more positive: One thing I also actually like about this school is that while this is a Catholic institution, a good amount of the people here aren't even Catholic/Christian or even really religious to begin with - or at least they don't make a big deal about it. The school requires you to take two Theology classes as part of their long list of requirements, but that's about it. They don't ever make you pray in class, they don't ever really try to shove their religious views down your throat, or try to mix their beliefs in with non-theology classes in ridiculous ways. So I do like that they acknowledge that there is diversity at this school. The school really just has this general goal of aspiring to make all of its students become responsible and professional which they believe is part of their Catholic mission or something which makes sense to me. Otherwise though, the school and some of the students and staff do tend to take itself/themselves way too seriously and always go on about how NDC is this super special and unique place that is worth the money which that couldn't be further from the truth. NDC is OKAY at best. It definitely has some positive aspects to it such as the ASC and Dwyer center and career services. As well as the fact that most of the classes are very easy and smaller. And if you are an athlete, you may love it here. But the negatives really do outweigh the positives for me. I'm only here for the academics and the support they provide for it and have been lucky enough to actually make some friends.