One of the Finest Public Schools In the US
Written: Dec 23 '99
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Excellent school, great academic program, something for everyone
Cons: With 30,000+ students, competition for classes is fierce
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| poseidon's Full Review: University of Wisconsin-Madison |
I graduated in 1990 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in English Literature. I had, for two years, double-majored in English and Journalism. I attended this school in my junior and senior year, having transferred from a different college.
College life in this school is very interesting. I definitely recommend you read my review covering campus life (entitled People's Republic of Madison) at UW before you make your final decision about attending there. It is very important you know some facts before you enroll.
UW is simply one of the finest public schools in the United States. This statement is backed up by several independent-rating sources.
Forget their sports program. The Badgers typically have great athletic teams, both intramural and intercollegiate. If the sport exists, there is a team for it.
I'm talking about the academic quality of the school.
In 1988, when I applied to Wisconsin, it had the #3-ranked School of Journalism in the country -- private and public schools were included in this rating. It was in the top ten ranking for the English Department. It had one of the top-ranked Schools of Pharmacology, School of Law, and School of Nursing. It also has one of the most impressive Engineering programs around.
As far as class selection goes, the school has over 30,000 students. The variety of classes is incredible. The Course Selection Guide is bigger than some phone books around the country.
The problem is, with this many students, you are in competition for the more popular classes. The idea you always need to keep in mind is to be the first in your registration group to sign up for the classes you want. If you wait, you will be lucky if you can even make the stand-by roster. This leads to taking a lot of "elective" courses, rather than courses in your major, and could put you far behind in your quest for a degree.
The professors at UW are second-to-none. In many of the classes I took, they were experts in their field (and many were published in their own trades). I say they were published because almost all my professors (English or otherwise) required you purchase at least one of their books as required reading for their class.
This leads to some interesting situations. Because I was reading works authored by the same person teaching the class, I discovered (Shhhh! Don't tell my parents!) I could skip a lot of classes and still catch the gist of the course itself. I didn't do this with classes I found interesting, rather, it was the classes I didn't enjoy that I skipped.
This also had me thinking about whether we were there to learn a class or to supplement the salary of the professor. I think a quality education is being delivered, and is a great bang for the buck, but I found a huge conflict of interest in forcing students to purchase a book the professor has written.
Graduate students and teaching assistants do teach a lot of courses, depending on with which department you're involved. I found, on the average, my English professors taught the classes themselves, my Journalism professors I rarely saw, and my Science professors I saw half the week. Social Sciences were a toss-up: Some would teach the classes exclusively, some would show up for the first and last class only.
This is a school that believes in Academic Probation. My junior-year roommate was dismissed from the school for failing to maintain a 2.0 average. They give you a semester of probation, and if you don't turn your ship around, they sink you.
My experience with student advising, however, was a disaster. My advisor was very lax in her duties. I was given no direction at all as to which courses I needed to take in order to satisfy my major. I had to read and re-read the department's guidelines myself and keep that in-line with the university's as a whole.
The biggest disaster of all came when I found out too late that a student needed to apply for graduation in order to graduate. Nowhere was this, in 1990, published. Advisors were supposed to inform their students when and how to apply for graduation. While I did graduate on-time, my name wasn't published in the list of graduates in May of 1990 because I missed the deadline. Thus, I had no reason to keep a copy of the graduation ceremony booklet. That was certainly sad.
As far as providing extra-curricular activities, there is absolutely no problem here. For every environmental, social, or political cause, there is an organization to support your views. For every race, creed or religion, you will find an organization to join. Almost every fraternity or sorority with national recognition is represented in Madison.
There are two student newspapers, an ultra-liberal and a liberal one. I wrote for the Wisconsin Badger for my two-year stint at the school. Both are, as far as student newspapers go, excellent. There are a variety of extra-curricular academic activities to engage in.
In conclusion, UW has something to offer everyone. Just about any academic program is represented, and you won't get a better education anywhere, unless you count schools like Harvard or Stanford.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
poseidon
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 - Top 200 |
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Member: Jeffrey Schwartz
Location: Sunrise, FL, USA
Reviews written: 511
Trusted by: 1097 members
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