North Carolina State University - Raleigh

NC State is a university focused more on athletics than education. Additionally NC State has cost creep that continues to rise each academic year, yet nothing improves. There are many hidden costs attending NC State because of ridiculous student fees. The education quality is not very challenging or collaborative. In fact there is a division in campus culture between liberal arts and sciences. Many classes are divided to meet the needs of engineers or liberal arts majors. As for transfer credits you will find that those hard earned credits do not go far in out of state colleges. Nearly 70% of my NC State credits were accepted as low level credits at Texas Tech, UCLA, Arizona State and other colleges. The advantage of attending NC State is appropriate for a student seeking a degree that wishes to stay in North Carolina.

Alumnus Male -- Class 2000

I grew up in a neighboring state and was excited to attend NCSU due to my college visits and research; however, after being there for 2 years, I chose to transfer down to UNCW, admittedly due to its location and nicer campus even though it had no real athletic experience like State. Even so, I actually felt more challenged and personally valued, in addition to enjoying the diversity and beauty of the campus, both of which were sorely missing at NCSU. While I loved living in Raleigh and attending the football games, the students basically are either very technical and scientific nerd-types, rural small-town ten cent millionaires, or frat/sorority private school kids. As such, that affects the quality of your courses unless you happen to luck up and there are more nerds than the latter two, which is rarely the case in the first two years. It was slightly better with the business courses I took, but I preferred them at UNCW by far. Truly, I was surprised at the difference in the two schools as I myself had presumed State would be more rigorous and I found the opposite, at least in the business classes. I am now in my MBA program at UNC (Not e to out-of-staters:State considers UNC its main rival while UNC considers Duke so) and found my UNCW courses and professors were far more similar, had more of a global worldview, and prepared me for life beyond North Carolina, which State seems much more centered on doing. I'm not sure if that is a negative or not -- after all, it is NC State -- but the huge impersonal campus and the demographic of a fairly close-minded student body made it an unappealing choice for me, and I was eager to transfer. I did love the partying and campus fun at State, but when I was ready to literally get down to business, it was definitely lacking.

2nd Year Female -- Class 2012

Surrounding City: A+, Individual Value: F