The University of Maryland - College Park

This place is an average university at best. The only positives possibly are the sportsteams. One forth of the student body consists of a lot of rich kids from New York or New Jersey who are so stuck up and snobby that they are impossible to get along with. As far as the other in state students go, one word "cliqueish". That's right most of the in-state kids tend to hang out with the same group of kids they hung out during high school. Yes some of you might of heard that this school is quite diverse, however the different ethnic groups band together, so what you see around campus are huge cliques of Asians, groups of African Americas, groups of Hispanics to add with the white cliques.

If you're a commuter, you're in for a world of pain, because it sucks, the parking here fills up quickly and is too far away from most of the academic buildings.

On-campus ousing sucks too, that is if you are lucky to get get a dorm since there is a horrible housing crunch. If you get a dorm, you'll get a cramped room that you'll be sharing with possibly 2 other kids. If you're not lucky enough to find on-campus housing, welcome to the hell that is off-campus housing. And yes it is hell, most of the landlords in the vicinity of College Park charge outrageous prices renting out run-down ghetto townhouses and apartments that are falling apart and located in the ghetto. Yes many of you may have already heard about the infamous dilapadated roach infested Knox boxes. People still end up renting these dilapidated places out because simply they have no where else to go to live.

The town of College Park is a dangerous ghetto. It is a rundown crime infested suburb of Washington DC. Just about other every day on the student paper, there is an article about a student or students being robbed a gun point or assualted. And no we're not talking about isolated incidents happening late at night. We're talking about kids being carjacked in broad daylight. Yes it's happened last year in Lot 1. There's been incidents of kids being mugged at 4 in the afternoon! Go look it up in the paper if you dont believe me. This place is not a college town. There's nothing to do here besides the 3 bars on Route 1, everything is just a ghetto. If you're here, use common sense, cuz there's always groups of shady people on the streets to who knows what.

As far the academics goes, I didn't study particularly hard and managed to earn a decent GPA. Do not expect to receive a whole lot of personal attention from your professors, because in a school of over 30,000, it would be impossible. You should try a smaller school if you seek special attention from your professors as you are just a number in a class of 150-200 students.

What's great about the administration is that they keep on raising the tuition year after year, which they keep blaming on the budget cuts. Other in state schools such as UMBC and Towson have fared well even with the budget cuts, but not UMCP, simply because this school's administration spends money like it was raining from the sky.

If you're a science student like myself, you might want to check out UMBC, where my friends go to and it is pretty strong in the sciences. I've visited my friends there and noticed everything that was wrong with this school wasn't the case there. They were actually well lit at night to the point where you'd be able to walk around at 2am without fear of being mugged. And their campus looks top notch in terms of aesthetics. Seriously if you're here on a guided tour, DON'T believe all the hype the tour guides tell you, that is their job to hype up the school. Like I've said before talk to real students first.