Trying to write a comprehensive review of any college under one simple topic like “School Overall” is a bit difficult. To do it for Texas A&M is near impossible. But hey, I always liked a challenge. I am going to briefly write about as many aspects of the school that I can think of, but if you want the real in depth and detailed stuff you’ll have to see my reviews in other sections coming soon. This is an “Overall” review just as the topic heading says it is. So lets start with the most important part of any college…

PARTYING
Actually this is about academics, which unfortunately is the most important part of college. Texas A&M is known for having one of the most diversified group of colleges around. You name it; you can major in it. This makes the college great for the drifter types who come into college with little idea about what they want to study. It is also great for those that come to college thinking they want to study something, but realize they don’t once they get there. All of the departments at A&M are respected in their fields. Our prime colleges are Engineering and Agriculture. (Hmmmm…Could that be from the old days of The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas?) I personally am a Management Information Systems major in the business school. (Lowry Mays College of Business, a.k.a. The College of Former Engineering Majors). The business school is very well respected and has excellent job placement, as do most programs at A&M.

Guess what happens when you have 40,000 students on one campus. That’s right…classes get huge. My first class I ever took at A&M had 450 people in it; virtually the size of my High School graduating class. I soon learned that not all of my classes would have that many people, but it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. The class size really depends on which college you’re in, but business and engineering classes are usually the largest from what I understand. (If I’m wrong here, someone let me know.) I have had classes as small as 30, but not too many. Despite the vast numbers, personal attention is usually available. If not from a professor, then a TA or grad student is usually there to help. As with most colleges there are some excellent off-campus tutoring places that can do wonders for your grades. If you attend A&M, I would highly suggest making use of these.

HOUSING
Finding housing at A&M is a rather difficult process. I would suggest trying to get on-campus housing for your first year. This offers a great chance to get to know people, and it’s convenient. It’s especially convenient of you don’t have a car. Where you live on campus will do a lot to define the type of experience you have your freshman year. There are people who leave A&M after their freshman year because they thought the whole school was like the people that they lived with. My recommendation would be the Commons. It has it’s own cafeteria and recreational area, and the dorms are pretty calm during the week. There are some dorms for the honor student types that are all about studying if you are one of those people, but they are hard to get into. I would suggest staying away from FHK and a couple of the northside dorms like Walton unless you are at college strictly for the beer. I am generalizing here, but many of the most immature drunks I know at A&M came from those dorms. My apologies to anyone reading this who lived there, I know not all of you are alcoholics, just many that I’ve met. That’s the reputation that follows those dorms. If you join the Corps, then you don’t really have much choice. You live on campus for four years in the Corps dorms located next to the Commons. A few of these dorms in the Corps area are open to non Corps girls if you ladies feel like living next to about 2,000 guys in uniform. Look at the housing section of reviews for more detailed information.

ATHLETICS
What would Texas A&M be without athletics? Poor. Athletics is a MAJOR part of A&M, mainly football. In about five years, Texas A&M should have the top football facilities in the nation. Of course these facilities are dedicated to less than 5% of the University’s students (the athletes) and the upper crust of TAMU Alumni. The rest of us get to benefit from a hopefully improving football team and lots of construction. Once R.C. Slocum is fired, or uhhhh…”retires” (this is just a hopeful wish and not something likely happening soon unfortunately) we should have a regularly successful football team. We also have brand new basketball facilities and are in the process of building a team. We have some of the best women’s athletics in the country on a regular basis with top ranked basketball, volleyball, and softball teams nearly every year.

Texas A&M’s main rival is t.u. (Some people like to call it U.T. or “The University of Texas”, but this is a severe overstatement and the school doesn’t deserve nearly that much respect.) t.u. students are referred to as t-sips by Aggies. This is one of the great rivalries of college football. I must give credit and thanks though to t.u. for the way they acted and all of the support they gave during the period of the Bonfire tragedy last year. They showed a lot of class and a lot of respect for what we were going through. I am also glad that we beat them in football the following week. (Sorry I just couldn’t hold back a bit of bragging.)

A&M also has a great intramural program with just about every sport you can imagine. They make it really easy for anyone to find a team at their level. hal8991 wrote a good review about TAMU intramurals under that category and I would suggest reading it if you are interested.

STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS
When it comes to student organizations, Texas A&M has them all. There’s an organization for absolutely everyone, and it should be mandatory for all students to get involved with at least one of them. This is how you can really get to know people at A&M. Even with 40,000 students, being in a student organization seems to shrink the school a bit. They are one of the contributing factors to the small school atmosphere that is around A&M. Each semester an open house is held in the MSC to help people find organizations they’re interested in. I would highly suggest at least going to these and putting your name down on the contact list for a few. A&M’s Greek system is somewhat small compared to other schools, so student organizations kind of take the place of fraternities and sororities for most students.

DIVERSITY
This is the main complaint that people have against Texas A&M. It is not exactly the most racially diverse campus in the U.S. There is almost a 1:1 ration of women to men, but the majority of both men and women are white. Some people have the false impression though that Aggies are a bunch of racist rednecks who do everything they can to keep minorities away from their school. I will admit that there does exist the occasional racist at A&M just as there are some at every other school in the nation. There have been many discussions and debates on campus about this reputation and the consensus from the minorities is that they do feel welcome. Most do not sense any feelings of hatred or racism from the majority of the student body. A&M has come a long way in the past few years in multicultural relations and the awareness of diversity on campus. The school may continue to be majority white because of its roots as a farm school, but there does not exist any widespread feeling of racism.

AGGIELAND
Texas A&M is set in beautiful, rustic College Station, TX, and bordered by lovely Bryan, TX, which is to say that it is in the middle of exactly nowhere. You drive down Highway 6 surrounded by fields and farms, then all of a sudden there’s this huge college, and then nothing again. Despite the way it sounds, there are quite a few advantages to this. One is that almost all of the businesses in town cater specifically to college students. The town has grown dramatically in the past few decades so that we have most of the comforts of the “big city”. We have a couple of movie theaters, numerous dance halls, and a wide selection of bars. There are all kinds of places to eat as well from Freebirds ($5 for a burrito the size of your forearm) to the Texan ($100 a plate) and plenty of others in between. The dance halls around town are mainly country and western, there aren’t too many clubs around town. Austin and Houston are only 1½ hours away, so Aggies frequently make these trips on the weekends for whatever excitement they can’t find around College Station.

TRADITIONS
Few people have heard of A&M without hearing about its traditions. The most publicized of these is Bonfire, especially recently. Aggies are very devoted to their traditions and do not like to let them go. The majority are not, however, so ludicrously stupid to continue something in a manner that could once again cause a fatal accident. New precautions in all areas are being taken, and God willing it will continue in the future. Hopefully someday it will be as big as it ever was. I will leave the Bonfire subject at that. Please email me or leave a comment if you have something to say about this.

Aside from bonfire, there are many, many other traditions at A&M. Silver Taps is held on the first Tuesday of the month for any students who died in the previous month. It is a very somber and an incredible experience. A 21-gun salute is given by the Ross Volunteers (A group of Corps members), and taps is played three times for the deceased. Once to the North, the South, and the West. It isn’t played to the east because the Sun will not rise for those Aggies again. The first Silver Taps was held in 1898 for Lawrence Sullivan Ross, and is held next to his statue to this day. Muster is another tradition held on April 21st of each year. There is a main Campus Muster, but Aggies all over the world get together on this day to remember old times and those fellow Aggies who have died during the year. This has been an official tradition since 1922, but has been going on since 1883. Midnight Yell Practice is another of A&M’s most famous traditions held the night before home games at…you guessed it…midnight. About 10,000 or so Aggies gather at Kyle Field to practice the yells that will be done at the next day’s game. The Aggie Yell Leaders tell a few “stories” about the opposing team and usually involve a longhorn somehow as well. Most Aggies’ favorite part of Yell Practice occurs just before the last yell, when the cannon fires and the lights are shut off. This is the signal for everyone to kiss their date if they brought one or find a date if they didn’t. The Aggies will stand through the game the next day. This is the tradition of the 12th Man. A tradition begun when E. King Gill was called out of the stands and suited up for a football game in 1922 but never played.

There are many more traditions at A&M and books have been written that do not even cover them all. Check out the A&M website for more info on Aggie traditions.

http://aggietraditions.tamu.edu/

THE CORPS
Another of A&M’s longstanding traditions is the Corps of Cadets. When the College was first established, it was a military school. It continued being strictly military until the late 60’s, and women were admitted into the Corps in 1974. The Corps has continued on as the leading University ROTC program in the country. There are over 2,000 cadets currently in the Corps. Being in the Corps is similar to being at a military academy. The cadets live together in a set of twelve dorms designated for them on campus, and they wear uniforms to class daily. The Corps is known as the “Keepers of the Spirit” of Texas A&M. Freshmen, known as “fish”, are fully educated and rehearsed in information about the University and it’s traditions so that they can pass this along to the classes behind them. The Corps of Cadets is one of the best leadership training programs anywhere. Each class is trained to be better than the class before them. Cadets graduate with an understanding of what it means to be responsible for other people, how to give orders, and more importantly, how to follow them. Military service is not required of cadets upon graduation, but the Corps still commissions more military officers than any other ROTC program with the exception of the military academies.

THE SPIRIT
A&M is known for its traditions and the school spirit of its students and alumni. A&M is one of the friendliest places I’ve ever been. When I visited in high school, I was amazed at how outgoing many of the people were in saying “Howdy” to me. After four years, things aren’t any different. I am still greeted with a smile and a “Howdy” by at least half the people I see on my way to class. It really gives A&M a small school atmosphere. You would never guess that there were nearly 40,000 students at A&M from walking around campus. Since I’ve been an Aggie, and especially since I’ve worn my Aggie Ring, I have had numerous people randomly introduce themselves to me all over the U.S. In L.A., Florida, and especially Texas, whenever someone has seen my ring they will just walk up and meet me, or I will go introduce myself to them. I just met about four or five Aggies in San Antonio last weekend while I was there for a day. It really is a neat feeling to automatically feel close to people that you’ve just met and share that bond of being an Aggie.

There’s so much more to the Aggie Spirit that I couldn’t possibly explain. This school is truly one of a kind. A&M has managed to hold on to its military roots and yet adapt to the requirements of a large university. Although I feel I’ve done my best to explain a bit about the school, there is so much more that you just can’t understand until you’ve actually been there. There’s an expression that you may have heard Aggies use before and I will repeat it here. “From the outside looking in you can’t understand it. From the inside looking out you can’t explain it.”

This is quite long, so I will try to break it up into different categories sometime in the near future so that I can expand on them.




Recommended: Yes