Brandeis University

Brandeis was the biggest mistake of my life. During my one year there, I met probably one person who legitimately liked it there. Everyone at Brandeis is either there because they're on full tuition scholarship, or because they didn't get in anywhere else. The administration doesn't hesitate to make it known that they do not care about any of their students. Actually no, they care about the rich jewish students and forget about everyone else. They claim to be a secular school but everyone is constantly trying to shove their beliefs down your throat. One time I said I was pro-palestine and someone said I was anti-semitic. Another time, someone said to me "Jews are the only group of people who are still oppressed in today's world". I mean if that doesn't show you the kind of ignorance on this campus, I don't know what will. The school always raves about its library but all that's in there is a greek zoo. You step foot inside and all you can hear is dumb fraternity boys and sorority girls yelling. And the librarians have no problem with this, HOWEVER when a group of African American students sat silently in peace to hold up names of the loved ones their community had lost, the librarians decided the best course of action was to call the POLICE on them. Brandeis claims to be all about social justice, "social justice rah rah rah, we think everyone is equal but we hate palestinians and black people and students and women. go israel!!!" When an employee of the student run coffee house, chums, broke the fire code, instead of firing him/her and giving everyone else extra fire safety training before opening the place back up, the administration decided it was best to shut the whole thing down and fire all the work-study employed students. Two days later, they shut down the women's resource center to create a prayer space. The same week, they changed meal plans so that they were more expensive and you got less meals and less points, and they became mandatory for everyone, even in dorms with kitchens. Because brandeis doesn't care about you, they just care about your $6K. When an extremely wealthy, jewish, white supremacist student intentionally put a black student's life in danger by writing about her activist twitter comments on his white supremacy promoting website and making public her Facebook, phone number, email address, school address, etc- knowing that she would be receiving death threats, rape threats and the like- you know what the school did? NOTHING. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. moving onto student life- if you LOVED high school and if you LOVE cliques, Brandeis is the place for you. in fact, you'll probably feel like you never left middle school! The sorority girls, the frat boys, the a cappella groups, the orthodox jews, the basketball players, soccer players, etc etc etc. Everyone on this campus is part of a clique, and they don't associate with anyone else. And if you're not part of a clique you're probably slightly more sane than the rest, but you'll feel pretty damn alone. the school is so small that you know at least 18 things about every single student there, everyone knows everyone's business and gossip spreads like wildfire. So if you like EVERYONE around you to know your personal life, definitely go to Brandeis. all in all Brandeis is really, really horrible but if you like being somewhere where mortifying stuff happens every day and you can't do anything about it (like a girl gets raped by a fellow student and the admin does nothing), go there. give them all your money (and I mean ALL, they will milk you until your entire extended family is bankrupt). but wait if you're super rich and jewish you will love brandeis

1st Year Female -- Class 2018

Education Quality: A+, Individual Value: F

Imagine reliving your preppy Jewish high school in the NY metro area for four years (including some people you never, ever wanted to see again), but you're in a de-industrialized little town outside of Boston where all the shops and bars are boarding up downtown and 80s hairstyles remain the norm. You have to go into Boston for a night out. You're required to pay $3,000 for meal plans that can't be used Friday - Sunday because all the campus food establishments close down for to Shabbat and union contracts.

The students themselves aren't particularly attractive, athletic, or articulate - the one thing they really have going for them is academics but even then, I still feel like I'm the only one who knows the material now that I'm in 100-level humanities classes, and that their views on most topics are about as developed as your average Reddit user.

They can't hold a normal conversation about anything non-academic and you constantly feel like you're walking on eggshells trying not to hurt their feelings. These were the isolated, bullied loners in high school who thought the mainstream well was poison, and suddenly realized in college they weren't the smartest people on the planet after all; so they overcompensate by trying to reach outside their natural limits, trying to be "cool" by listening to music nobody else does, bringing each other down and judging each other based on their own, unattainable standards and pretending to be someone they're not, only to avoid putting the effort into actually getting a life and going out on the weekends like normal college students. The academics are good, but it is really NOT worth the stress you have to endure.

3rd Year Male -- Class 2016

Faculty Accessibility: A, Collaboration/Competitive: F