The State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry

Date: Jul 15 2014
Major: Chemical Engineering (This Major's Salary over time)
ESF has been an interesting experience. I am an older transfer student, so I went in with a "get things done" mentality. The department I am in is extremely challenging, and you have to be mildly insane to even consider it. It is difficult to estimate the importance of the coursework. I have worked a year as an intern, and a lot of it has yet to come of value (also not in the proper engineering industry, but you take what you can get with interning). None-the-less, my knowledge on the theory and application behind everything we learned has been expanded immensely, regardless of whether or not it is useful in the real world.

There seems to be many complaints by the students that goes unnoticed or addressed by the faculty. At risk of sounding overly corny, take your experience at ESF for what it is: a challenge that puts you ahead in many ways other than academically. You will have to learn how to read a text-book. You will also learn how to pull valuable information from it and, god forbid, properly cite it. You will have to learn to answer a problem that may not have a concrete exact solution, and defend it.

The professors are hit or miss when it comes to being helpful. They all have office hours, and tend to be there. They are (usually) more than happy to help. They also tend to be working on extremely interesting research, and are more than happy to fill you in. Also, the TA's are extremely helpful if you don't waste their time.

Once I got around to senior year, the professors, for the most part, literally stopped helping outside of the classroom. There were points where the student body complained about the difficulty level, and how poorly it was taught, and all we got was "you're engineers, you figure it out". While this is not ethical by any means, I will say this. I have received my review for my internship. While the NC State students get moderate to poor reviews, I managed to receive an extremely positive one for being able to work independently and still contribute meaningfully. I pay the appreciation for this response to the difficulty of ESF, and how the faculty and staff refused to hold my hand through any of it. And I say that with absolutely no tongue in cheek what-so-ever. So, yes, the faculty has to focus on research and bringing money into the college. And the students suffer because of it. That is pretty awful, but it prepares for the real world. Down the road, I firmly do believe that this environment will set me much further apart from others. Also, I am extremely happy that it is over.