(UTexas-Austin) When I got admitted to UT, I was honestly psyched

How this student rated the school

Educational Quality	F	Faculty Accessibility	D-
Useful Schoolwork	F	Excess Competition	F
Academic Success	F	Creativity/ Innovation	F
Individual Value	F	University Resource Use	C+
Campus Aesthetics/ Beauty	A-	Friendliness	D
Campus Maintenance	A	Social Life	F
Surrounding City	B+	Extra Curriculars	F
Safety	A

Describes the student body as: Arrogant, Broken Spirit, Snooty, Closeminded Describes the faculty as: Arrogant, Condescending, Unhelpful, Self Absorbed

Male

SAT2210

Bright

Lowest Rating Educational Quality	F

Highest Rating Campus Maintenance	A

He cares more about Social Life than the average student.

Date: May 28 2010
Major: Chemistry (This Major's Salary over time)
When I got admitted to UT, I was honestly psyched. It was only when reality set in and I saw the pathetic bureaucracy and incompetence I was up against that I realized what a terrible mistake I had made. It's not just that the university is incredibly impersonal—It's the fact that you're paying tuition (albeit at a cheap, instate rate) to attend a university that honestly doesn't give a flying f*** about you. From day one, you are literally treated like a number. Your teachers won't know your name. Even if you go to office hours, they won't remember you. And mind you, most professors' office hours are a complete brown-nosing waste of time and effort. The truth is that most professors could care less about your performance in class—The priorities at UT are football, graduate studies, overall image, and undergraduates, in that order. The classes are more or less designed to weed hapless undergraduates out of their majors, and going to lecture is in most cases a waste of time. You have to learn everything on your own, and the TAs are too overwhelmed or don't speak good enough English to help.

Of course, there are good, I daresay exceptional, professors at the University, but they are far and few between and the university doesn't really care all that much about keeping them. After all, UT is cutting back on academic funding while raising Mack Brown's salary and building scoreboards the size of Canada. Hell, the education board there was very close to raising the size of foreign language classrooms to 80 students from 25.

As for the students themselves, this was arguably the worst part of my experience at UT. The campus is thoroughly divided and racially segregated. Honors kids (Plan II, Liberal Arts Honors, etc.) tend to not hang out with the rest of the population, and members of Greek life (which obnoxiously dominates the campus social scene) tend to be rather cliquish and standoffish. Students are incredibly arrogant and competitive and always try to shove their GPAs in your face. Focus of the students and faculty is on gaming the system and getting the highest grade with the least effort, which in most cases means learning remarkably little. The intellectuality of students there is truly a joke—On several occasions, my train of thought was interrupted by students next to me in the library bragging about how hammered they were the last week.

Austin itself is a cool and eclectic city; however, like others have said, the homeless people berating you does get annoying after a while. Really, if I were you, I would avoid going to any school in Texas. UT seems to only further the stereotype that Texans are a bunch of conservative, backwater idiots.

I ended up transferring out after a year to a small liberal arts college, which I'm getting at basically the same price as what UT swindled me for. Sure, private colleges are expensive, but there are lots of grants and scholarships available. Don't let price deter you; there are better options.

Responses

Agreed!! so where did u end up transferring to ?
Rice ?

Completely, 100% agreed. UT may have been a good choice at one time but it's only getting worse with relentless terrible budgeting decisions. I also transferred to a small liberal arts college that gave me work/study after two years at UT.

Interesting, I would what UT has going for it, is the city and the architecture of the campus… people were nice, but there was just something about it that I couldn't communicate that rubbed me the wrong way. I am planning to transfer to a small college in Corpus to get a Theater degree and hopefully from there will I be able to choose my ideal college.

I'm not sure what you were expecting. This sounds like anyone's experience at a state school. If you weren't happy with any of these things, maybe you should have done some research in the first place. I went to a (different) state school and can relate with everything you wrote, but I wasn't upset with it. That's just how large public universities are…

The staff and faculty at UT are deplorable fools.

I agree, the students are terrible. They are snide and hypocritical. The majority of them are socially retarded buffoons. In some of my classes they tried to sabotage my work and tried to have me weeded out of my major by whining like toddlers about petty issues. Avoid UT Austin at all costs not every state college has such socially retarded students and faculty.

I consider the students at UT to be one of its greatest assets. In the few years I was there I formed a strong friedship with a few and associated with many great students. Many of the students there were accepted to schools that might be considered more prestigious (Rice, Georgetown, Wash U-St. Louis) but they chose UT.

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