St Mary's University

Date: Mar 29 2011
Major: Undecided (This Major's Salary over time)
I was an incoming freshman into this college and it was hyped up to be a lot of things it was not. First off the education is in severe need of reform. The classes offered are very limited and there aren't a lot of diverse class opportunities for the general education requirements. One class in particular First year experience is a complete joke of a class and has no business being included in the curriculum. It is designed to introduce you to the background and values of the college which essentially turns it into a religion class with most of the work being done through writing and essays. I did experience some good classes and those were a result of good professors. However I questioned the value of the education i was getting when i learned my math teacher for college algebra didn't even have a math degree!

The graduating class is traditionally very small and I would imagine their retention rate is terrible. If I had to guess I would say at least half of the freshman class left after the first semester. I heard a statistic that was very believable that over 80% of the students at this college were athletes, which i learned after i attended. This isn't surprising because any student with a real goal for an education wouldn't consider this school. I'm not saying the athletes are dumb..just the education is fairly worthless.

Also there are no campus activities, nor is there any support for the few activities that take place, the student body is very individualized.

The cafeteria but bluntly..sucks. This is not just because of cafeteria food but how the variety of the food, the preparedness, and taste does have influence. The drink machine would run out almost daily, there was a lot of food wasted. Most people ate pizza or cereal for lunch because what they were serving wasn't worth eating.Dinner was just as bad and it was almost a guarantee that once a week you were having breakfast for dinner. Breakfast is the exact same everyday with no diversity: eggs, bacon or sausage and hash browns or pancakes, with yogurt. The pancakes/waffles were hard as a rock very stale, they were only edible with globs of syrup to soften them up.

Finally the sports programs…are AWFUL DO NOT GO HERE FOR SPORTS!!!!!! I am speaking from primarily a football point of view however I have heard similar stories multiple times from other athletes. The facilities are terrible, your high school facilities are more then likely SIGNIFICANTLY better then this place. The fields are torn up and you're essentially playing on dirt which was a constant hazard. The athletic director preaches championship caliber teams and having a championship attitude and tired of being laughed at for being horrible,(essentially said that) however its hard to take him serious when the 4 seniors and(only 1 stayed for the entire 4 years) the juniors are telling us he's been saying that since they were there. They promote coaches from within and coaches that were former players. Those players and coaches never won and frankly don't know how to win, they are teaching athletes ways to loose. There are a few good position coaches however the heads of the group are just bad. The coaches are hardly people to look up to and really your not sure what personality your going to get on any given day. The talent is there however the teams will(in my opinion) be forever bad due to bad coaching. until they start an entire rebuilding process starting at the very top and headed down. Honestly from what i've experienced jv high school coaching staffs would be equivalent to the quality you will receive if you go here.

If you have any other option it will probably be better then this college. There are good people at this college however they are a handful, and in the end its not worth going to this college.