Tell me about it! As you know I almost went there myself, so while I know everything they tell you to recruit you, I don't have the advantage of the perspective of a new student. Since I'm still considering it for my graduate degree, what do you think?
So far I like it. I have never spent a weekend on campus, so I am not sure what it's like without classes to go to, but there are usually school events going on so it can't be horribly boring. The campus is small and I like that alot (you have seen the campus, correct?). The people here are generally friendly and so are the teachers.
Teachers: understandable? ta's speak (real) english? do they go too fast? too slow?
I so far haven't heard/ran into a teacher that doesn't speak understandable english, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. From what I can see, the class is usually taught at a pretty fast speed, but it's not to terribly fast that it's hard to keep up, but at a good speed to learn things and to get things done in a reasonable amount of time. The teachers seem to actually care about giving us a good education.
Curriculum: How hard does it look to be? Are the curriculums pretty generic or well thought out and specialized for each major? Do you actually learn anything in the classes (might not apply as a freshman Smiley)
Well, I don't know if the curriculum is generic or not. This is my first college experince. But, if I would have to make a guess based off of what I have seen and experinced, I would say that the curriculum is specialized for the specific major. And yes, I have learned alot in my classes so far.
Campus Life: How does the atmosphere feel in general, is the Student Union actively providing lots of fun activities? Interesting lectures/visitors? Campus sponsored events? Are the clubs generally too crowded/vacant?
I really like the atmosphere. It's pretty nice. The Student Union, or whatever it's called, is doing a pretty good job of providing activies for people to take part in. I believe they have
something, maybe not a fun something, but definetly something going on every day. Like last night was Capture The Flag night.
The lectures are only interesting if you like the topic. In my Computer Science class, I really enjoy just learning about programming, so I find everything in there interesting. But in my math class I feel like I want to die every time I go in there.
The only visitors I have seen have been in my CS1 class. In that class all we do is have speakers come, either campus faculty that are in the Computer Science department, or other people from companies. Like last week (it's a once a week class) someone from CAT (Catipillar) came and spoke to us. He had alot of interesting things to say. Even if he was trying to scare us.
I am only in one "club" on campus and that is StuCo. Seeing that it consists of representatives from every club, hall floor, greek house, etc, it is pretty large. Other than that, I haven't been to any other clubs. I would expect them to be small or atleast medium sized due to the fact that UMR is a small campus.
Partying: mostly bar atmosphere? house parties? greek-oriented?
I have never been a huge party person, but my room mate is. And the marjority of parties that I have heard of are greek-oriented parties that are hard to get into. The other type of parties are house parties, but I have heard only little about them.
