Western Oregon University

Date: May 03 2013
Major: Biology (This Major's Salary over time)
My first year was great. The first semester of my sophomore year, I jumped into the Zoology program, which is not very expansive, but I still went with it. Then Public Safety started getting after me and my boyfriend for no particular reason. We were sleeping in his room when they came up and banged on our door until we answered, in front of the whole hall. They accused us of smoking in the room and put us on a "watch list" and that's a direct quote. All of the complaints that we brought to Housing and Public Safety leaders were called unimportant and left under a pile of paper. I literally saw the housing offical in my dorm get it off of the floor. The PS officers got after us so much over the next few weeks that we broke our housing contracts and got an apartment. The Public safety officers that I high-fived my freshman year reported us to the police on "suspicious activity" with no probable cause or reason.

Then I took a medical withdrawal for the combination of averse affects from new medication and depression after the death of a family member during my sophomore year winter term. They took away my financial aid (NOT in the papers I signed) and did not allow me to renew my PPlus loan for the spring term. While I was trying to finagle payment stuff with the extremely unhelpful, transfer-your-call-7-times financial aid office, they charged me for the summer classes that I registered before the hassles happened. So I tried to drop them during the drop period. They didn't let me and upheld the charges months before summer term even started, and I never knew why, because it was within the no-penalty drop period and all they told me was that it was an error on my part. After not accepting any loan option I presented, I was forced to drop out.

I want everyone possible to know that this school is not worth it. It is very easy to get into, few students actually care about their education, and you are a number to the offices. Out-of-state students like myself pay almost 3 TIMES the tuition as of last year. If ANYTHING gets complicated during your time at WOU, there will be more hassle and lost money than it's worth for a mediocre education. You had better hope for a PERFECT 4 years, or you may find yourself with me and about 50% of people who leave or don't graduate from this university (4-year grad rate at 14%).