I am currently a sophomore at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. After a year of schooling here, I have mixed feeling about this university. Here's some general information to start with.

I am an undergrad student majoring in Business and Economics. I live in Boreman Hall South, which is one of the fine residence halls on the downtown campus here at WVU. I have a single 12' by 9' room which is fairly comfortable for a such a small area. There are about 25-30 other students living here on my floor. We have 3 bathrooms with 3 toilet stalls, 4 sinks and 3 shower stalls in each. All the rooms in the residence halls are wired via ethernet to WVU's T3 server for super fast internet connection.

Air conditioning is basically non-existent in the dorms here at WVU. If you are lucky enough to live in Arnold Hall or one of the Towers at the Evansdale Residential Complex, than you have the luxury of air conditioning. With Fall temperatures that range anywhere from 65 to 90 degrees during the day time, a window fan is essential. Temperatures inside the individual dorm rooms can reach well over 70 degrees, which for many is not very comfortable.

You are provided with some type of heating in your room. In Boreman we have old steam wall heaters. Some of the newer dorms like Stalnaker, Evansdale and Arnold Hall have newer heaters with actual settings on them. I haven't really used the heater that much in my year and a half here. In fact, I've found in the winter time that if you keep your windows closed it stays quite warm in the room.

It can get quite cold here in Morgantown, considering we get most of our weather out of Pittsburgh. It snowed on October 6th last year and one day during the Spring Semester it snowed 7 inches in 2 hours and they had to shut down school for the day.

Now onto the academics here at WVU. West Virginia University offers many courses of study, the most prominent being Pre-Business and Economics, Journalism and Pre-Medical. WVU has the only law school in the state of West Virginia. I am currently in the Pre-Business and Economics program here at WVU, so I can't tell you much about the other courses of study.

I have taken several interesting classes, ranging from Astronomy to Business Administration. I have yet to come across a poor professor at this university. Even in my lecture classes of 300 or more students, the professors have made every effort to meet students on an individual basis. The professors here try to help the students in every way possible. They are very responsive, answering questions over the phone, via email and personal meetings in their on campus offices.

The advising staff here at WVU is also quite helpful. When you enroll here you are assigned an academic advisor based on your last name. This advisor is there to help you get through your four undergraduate years here at WVU. You can schedule appointments with your advisor, or just walk in and see them. They help you with your schedule and your academic planning. Your advisor will make suggestions on how you can improve your schedule, but the final decision is always up to you.

Now on to the campus. West Virginia University has two different campuses, with the downtown campus being the main undergraduate campus. The Downtown campus houses the school of journalism and the college of business and economics as well as the school of mineral sciences. Most of the classes offered on the downtown campus are undergraduate courses, but the college of business and economics is also a graduate school for those looking to pursue a career in business, marketing, economics or accounting.

The Evansdale campus is built on top of Morgantown about a mile and a half away from the downtown campus. You can access the Evansdale campus via car, bus, walking or you can take the PRT, WVU's Personal Rapid Transit system. Modeled after the monorail at Disney World, the PRT consists of several small tram cars on a track that carry students from the downtown campus to the Evansdale campus and back. The Evansdale campus house the Evansdale Residential Complex, where many undergraduate students live.

You can also find the school of engineering and the school of medicine on the Evansdale campus. These schools offer mostly graduate courses. The Robert C. Byrd hospital is also on the Evansdale campus along with the Colosseum and Mountaineer Field. It also features the newest addition to WVU, the new student recreation center, which houses the largest weight room in division I! The rec center also has an olympic sized swimming pool, a clover shaped hot tub that fits 64 people, plenty of basketball and raquetball courts and a multi purpose area.

The only thing about WVU that I do not like is the city of Morgantown. There is next to nothing to do here unless you like to go out and party and drink every night. There are plenty of bars and places for students to go and have a good time, but if you are not into that kind of thing you won't have much fun up here. There are a lot of students, especially incoming freshmen, that go out and party every night and come back to the dorms at 4 am acting rowdy and just downright stupid. The funny thing is you won't see half of these students back for the 2nd semester.

The one place in Morgantown where you can have a lot of fun at is the Student Union, called the Mountain Lair. The Mountainlair currently houses a movie theater, multi-lane bowling alley, an arcade, a cafeteria, a convenience store, a commons area for students to study and hang out, a Sbarro's restaurant and a Billiard hall with a bar and grill. The Mountain Lair can be a lot of fun!

This gives me a chance to tell you about a nationally recognized program here at WVU called WVU Up All Night. The University keeps the Mt. Lair open till 2 am on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights and offers half price "Astro" Bowling and Billiards along with free movie showings, comedy shows and free food. The program is designed to give students an alternative to going out and drinking on the weekends and it is a very good time.

Well, that about sums up my opinion on West Virginia University. I really love the academics up here, but I don't really care to much for the actual town. If you are considering going into the fields of Business, Medicine, Law or Journalism, then West Virginia is a good place to keep in mind when you begin to look at colleges. I am currently paying in-state tuition, which costs me about 4000 dollars a semester plus books and spending money. Out of state tuition is only 2 or 3 thousand dollars more and several states around WV, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky, offer plans where students that live out of state receive the in-state rate.



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