Appalachian State University

Date: Mar 04 2018
Major: English (This Major's Salary over time)
Everyone's situation is different, and I blame myself for attending this school (and not transferring). I'm perfectly fine with where I am in life, so no sour grapes. But I owe absolutely nothing I've done post-collegiately to this place, and I wish I had gone somewhere with more emphasis on academics and career-building.

If you consider your absolute ceiling 2.5 children, a golden retriever, and a stable sales job in Raleigh or Charlotte, then App may be the school for you. That's what the two or three most successful people I know from App are up to a decade later. If you have any interest in leaving North Carolina and/or pursuing bigger goals, then a degree from here will not do you any favors.

I don't know what it's like now. But when I graduated, I planned to move to a major city. A week after I graduated, I popped into the alumni center to ask about any alumni network there. I was looked at like a crazy person. On the few occasions I met with someone in career services as a student, I was made to feel like I was wasting their time for bothering. Nothing was provided for me that I couldn't have just Googled. This is stuff that is supposed to be "normal" at large universities. There's just really not much learning done outside of the classroom, and I feel that this is reflected in both career services and the reach of any alumni network (or lack thereof).

As for the classes themselves… I was challenged so much more in high school AP and IB classes. I really enjoyed the content of most classes in my major, and I had a few top notch professors. But everything was still very easy. I had extremely "country" classmates (especially freshman and sophomore years) who couldn't even speak or write proper English. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but those people were not helpful at all to have as peers. Pretty much all group work I did throughout college was absolute hell. Most people were not motivated at all.

I knew maybe 4-5 people in my entire four years who did summer internships. Almost every single person I knew graduated and either moved back in with their parents to job hunt, or stayed in Boone working hourly restaurant/retail jobs. Again, not that there's anything wrong with that. But based on my friends' experiences at other schools, that is not normal.

Some positive things I can say… The people were friendly, and it was a nice collegiate atmosphere. The campus is also very pretty. The surrounding outdoors opportunities are really good by East Coast standards. And if small-time D1 football is your thing, then you're in luck. Because that's what the entire county revolves around during the fall.

With the right amount of effort and independent legwork, you can do well here. As I wrote earlier, I'm perfectly pleased with where I am in life. If you're motivated though, I just don't see the point in putting yourself in a position where you don't have the real-world resources a university is supposed to have. If anything in my review speaks to you, then I'd seriously recommend going to a school where the long-term expectation is better than making $50k/yr in NC for your entire life.

If you're like I was (enticed by scholarship money), think long and hard about whether you want to be a big fish in a small pond here. If I had to do it all over again, I would have gone somewhere better.