The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

UNC is not some stellar higher education "best buy." The campus is like a bubble, with each student led to believe that reality lies within the confines of the campus walls. Students overall were extremely cliquish, and I felt like it was high school nightmarishly revisited. It doesn't matter how much someone tries to get involved on campus. Everyone is stigmatized there as belonging to one certain social group or another. I might as well have walked to class with a sign around my kneck stating, "I DON'T AGREE WITH YOUR WORLD VIEWS, I WON'T ALTER MY WAY OF LIFE TO BE YOUR FRIEND, AND YES I CAN'T WAIT TO TRANSFER OUT!" Just because you get into UNC doesn't mean ANYTHING... I met lots of kids who didn't know how to finish a complete sentence at orientation (which by the way is a complete foreshadowing event of the hell to come: no organization, no friendliness, just a lame excuse for wasted pot-heads to reunite with their highschool buddies while the other chosen few walk around depressed about the year to come)! The dorms suck, the food sucks, but hey if you work hard and do well in class you can always live off of your pride and reward yourself for sifting through the bs and coming out the other end. I had one amazing English prof. who ended up leaving the school to teach elsewhere due to the lack of support at the University. Although I did extremely well academically there, it was purely due to my effort, not because the professors presented the material in such an earnest and engaging fashion. I basically went to school there my freshman year for pratically nothing with scholarships and am now taking out exorbiant loan amounts to transfer to a private school up in New York City at NYU where I can only hope I can observe the real world, become a cultured person and learn from a community able to embrace change and accept differences.

1st Year Female -- Class 2005

Collaboration/Competitive: C, Education Quality: F

Like the many reviews before me, I expected UNC-CH to be this intellectually stimulating, life-changing experience—whoops, silly me, all those wonderful statistics apply to the graduate school only. Most of my classes were huge and taught by foreign TA’s, and let’s face it, if you are not in law or in the hard sciences, you are looked down upon. I chose Chapel Hill over my second choice, Elon, primarily because of “reputation.” What a mistake! I’ve visited friends at Elon and they have all had great experiences. Their work load is much more challenging and exciting, they know all their professors (in fact, most have their home numbers and addresses), they have strong alum, and their reputation is sky-rocketing-- I plan on transfering to Elon or another small, private (maybe Davidson) as soon as I can!!! My advice, strongly think about attending large universities-- it's not worth it!!!

1st Year Male -- Class 2006

Collaboration/Competitive: A-, Faculty Accessibility: F