Mankato State University

Date: Oct 30 2015
Major: Civil Engineering (This Major's Salary over time)
My experience was so horrible I could write several pages. I would never recommend anything about the school or surrounding area. Everything from the teachers to the surrounding businesses and part time work has destroyed me as an academic and others around me.

The surrounding businesses will frown upon you for going to school and all but one place I worked would force you to work at least 30 hours a week in between classes and over the weekend. The entire town is a large trap, many students never leave and work in the stores after they graduate, if they do.

The anti-smoking program is incredibly destructive and regular people who smoke are treated like criminals by the school and the majority of its staff. There is no help or civility at all. People will spit in your general direction or start making weird comments to their friends when walking by. Most of the staff will act with great aggression and make an enemy out of you. There were two people who were nice to me and made me feel like I was a person. The other staff treated them very badly and I haven't seen them since.

If you are a young female, run away, this place has more sexual assaults than anything I can think of. My first week here I drove by a group of young males screaming at their female housemate to whore herself out to pay for rent in public. I was studying on a couch in the CSU and a female student staff was arranging a one nighter with one of the freshman males and a sorority girl. Downtown is hooker mania, never go there.

The teachers in a particular department have been cruel and mean to a majority of my friends. I have seen several people work very hard and strive to go above and beyond the standards of the university. They got treated with monstrous bias by not only the teachers, but the TA's who grade their work. If you thought you were safe at least in your own private work?

The first two weeks of my class this semester my instructor berated the students for cheating on their homework. And passed out quizzes and assignment to force confessions. Like it was some sort of academic inquisition. This same instructor made the tests so hard that even if you study in advance you wont have time to finish or properly analyze any of the problems. Worst yet the instructor swapped our class into a room almost half the size and assigned us seating for the tests, which made taking them miserable absolutely miserable. Outside this persons office they were openly talking about a students personal affairs with one of the TA's and why they were cheating. I was in complete shock, door wide open.

Don't even ask me about the computerized test I took. About a half of the class took the computerized part of this 2 hour exam and the computers on one half of the room did not save the excel sheet for some reason. The instructor didn't even consider the large discrepancy and gave them all F's. One student raised the issue and argued successful to let us retake it in 30 mins right after the class. Of course the teacher has hated that person since.

I wish I could cite them all but I am trying to move on to something positive here.

Some good things I can think of about this place is the nearby church, some low salary employees, who are just awesome and even seeing them for 5 mins turns your day around and some of the extracurricular activities that have nothing to do with the academic environment. Also have run into 3 out 10 teachers that are really cool and just know tons about what they do. Very clear instructors and challenging at the same time. I didn't get A's in there classes. I have 3 teachers in my department I think are really good or fair and about another 3 in other departments. These people are complete opposites to their co-workers and deserve to be treated better by the school and the students.

Overall this is a scary place to go to school. Very seriously think it through. Honestly If you could pick up about half the school and move it somewhere else It would be a lot better. I feel very bad for some of the instructors and staff, who have to work with their monstrous co-workers. I couldn't imagine how that would make me feel.