The University of Massachusetts - Amherst

Do not go to umass Amherst! 1: they over-admit their students so they can get more money, but they do not have enough housing or dining to support them (many students don't get housing let alone where they want to live and dining halls run out of food and give tiny portions, not enough food for a college student). 2: they say one thing in an email when it is not the truth. Being academically dismissed, a student is told in numerous emails that they have to take off a semester but then can re-enroll. It turns out that the student is permanently dismissed from the university. 3: financial aid can be taken from you at any time; I had $900 taken off my financial aid from a semester that was already over and we had already paid the tuition but we were forced to pay even more money after the fact. 4: The university is terrible at mental health help. All they do is have the same four workshops and offer ?15 free therapy sessions? (which you only get 3 and they are only 15 minutes long) but do not offer actual useful mental health help for struggling students. 5: their websites are outdated, impossible to navigate, and often contradict themselves, leading to misinformation. I have so many other complaints I could give about the university and I?m sure many other students do too.

2nd Year Female -- Class 1924

Scholastic Success: B-, Useful Schoolwork: F

Because UWW is online, Professor Hendra in Leadership, ignored most students most of the class then came back at the end with senseless derogatory comments: Right after the deadline for a refund. The students, including myself, tried to help him, so we could log in and have a class at all. Worse yet is that instead of resolving issues,the administration stick together no matter what and the students are the paying enemies.

1st Year Female -- Class 1922

Welcome to UMass Amherst, where bureaucracy is king. Just like in the real world, you exist as a number in a system. Nobody will care about you, nobody will look out for you, and nobody will help you unless you absolutely hound them. Getting any kind of staff/faculty assistance is an absolute chore. I was required to meet with an advisor every semester prior to registering for my classes, but appointments fill up weeks before registration opens. Upon getting a meeting (if you are so lucky), you're likely to get a completely unhelpful summation of what you need to take. Do not expect helpful answers to any actual questions like "will X fulfill Y requirement". The answer you receive will be along the lines of "talk to X person" who will, in all likelihood, tell you to talk to another Y person. Professors, advisors, and other staff members are some of the least communicative I've ever encountered. If you do receive a response, it will likely not be for several days (even for time-sensitive issues), and it often took me two or three emails (sometimes to people over the head of the person I was trying to contact) to get a response. You literally have to raise hell to get any help.

Add to this the rigidity that comes with a bureaucracy-driven college, and you have a recipe for madness. Do you want a double major? I'll answer that for you - no, you don't. Your secondary major will treat you like a second class citizen, and will outright refuse you entry into classes that you need to graduate, with the excuse that "preference is given to primary majors" or "this is class is for primary majors ONLY". I'm a senior. I was still not given priority for several upper level classes that I needed to complete my secondary major (which I had already invested 3 years in).

Res-Life is a complete joke, and I say this as a former-RA. Their so caught up with their political-correctness nonsense (we actually got a handout with an entire page of non-standard pronouns. AN. ENTIRE. PAGE. Ridiculous stuff like xhe and xi that reads like satire rather than an actual attempt to be inclusive) that they don't actually give a damn about student happiness or well-being (unless you're a flight/suicide risk, of course).

It just seems like every single thing at this university is horribly mismanaged, to the point of it being a common joke among the students. Administration acts like they want to cut down on drinking culture, going so far as to ban 'pong' of any form (whether or not alcohol is involved, and yes, you can get written up for it), yet they completely section off the entire parking lot for tailgating before football games (forcing those who pay for parking to park elsewhere), which becomes an unsupervised underage drinking fest. It's fun, don't get me wrong, but completely hypocritical and absurd.

3rd Year Male -- Class 2017

Social Life: A+, Faculty Accessibility: F