The
first year is great - everyone welcomes you, takes care
of you, and makes you think its a great university
- then they abandon you. you're left to a
bureaucratic mess and getting help is a struggle. Drop-in
adviser hours are a joke - you have to shove
people out of the way as soon as it opens
to get a spot. Meetings with your major adviser
take 1 month + to get. They claim you
have meetings with advisers regularly and get help, but I've
never been offered any help or “check ups”. The
biology major is totally confusing, as good luck getting someone
to help you out. I'm a bright, determined
student and even I can't graduate in four years. First,
you can't get classes. You have to show up
to every section of the lower division courses and try
to fight your way in. Good luck even getting
on the wait list for some upper divs. If
you could get into every class, you might be able
to graduate in four, but don't count on it.
Second, the quarter goes by so fast that even if
you just miss a week of school for the flu
you can get so far behind that you have to
retake the quarter. Using office hours to catch up
is impossible - usually a professor has two hours of
office time for 300+ students, so there's really no time
for one on one interaction.
If you ever
get into academic trouble (I missed a quarter from being
sick) all you get is threatening letters demanding you see
an adviser, but by the the third week of the
quarter they have literally no appointments left, so you have
to battle it out in the rush on the biosci
advising office. After trying to get in so many times,
I finally pushed people out of the way, rushed to
the front desk, and filled out the “before we meet
with you” form with brief nonsense. I managed to
get in that time.
When you visit UC Davis they
show you the first year dorms, brag about their student
services, and are friendlier than the people at Disneyland.
And sure first year goes great but then they just
forget about you. They don't even have adequate student
housing, so you have to rent in Davis where there's
no renter protection besides the overflowing small claims court.
It becomes a commuter school after first year. On
campus apartments are ridiculously expensive and impossible to get into.
You have to be married, have a kid, or
know someone who's in already and sublet from them.
Basically,
you're on your own. You have to fight for
every ounce of attention you get. The university just
doesn't care about you, and wouldn't have time to deal
with you if they wanted to. The people that
work there are friendly but have no substance - the
majority will just smile at you and then not help
you.
If this was the end of my first year,
this would be a glowing review. But by now
I'm sick of the smiley staff and how determined they
are at being unhelpful. I'm tired of having to
cover rent for a roommate who won't pay because most
apartments only take one rent check. I'm tired of
dealing with security issues with my roommate's crazy boyfriend because
the campus offers no student housing. I'm angry at
how behind I got after one quarter and how now
one can be bothered to help me. I'm sick
of lectures with 300+ people that move so fast there's
no room to breath or be interested in the material.
And I'm sick of biking in Davis!
It's either raining sideways or 100 degrees out. Bike-town
my bum.
So basically, if you don't
mind spending five years in school, never get sick, never
have an issue, and don't ever need or want advising,
go for it. If you're a normal human, pay for
a private school. By the time you graduate at
UC Davis, you will have paid enough for a small
private school with a modest scholarship or financial aid.
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