The University of Cincinnati

To start off with, do NOT judge this university by the pictures on the website and brochers. They are totally misleading. When I arrived at this university I expected to find the charming, quaint school I saw on the website. What I actually found was a run down excuse for a college that was in the worst possible area of town possible. However, I decided to give the school a shot. Needless to say I was in for a huge letdown. Whatever you do, do NOT live in the campis dormitories. The building that I was in (Calhoun) looks like it has not been updated since the 50's or 60's. The massive 13 story hall feels more like a homeless shelter than a residence facility. The halls are long, drafty and without any carpeting or decorations. There are way too many people crammed in on one floor. In fact, they had turned the floor lounges into dorm rooms because of huge amounts of people staying on each floor. They turned a girls floor lounge into a mens dorm room, so that that the men and women on the floor had to use the same bathroom...a very uncomfortable situation! Dont get me started on the rooms...new furniture and internet access aside, they were nothing to write home about. Small, cramped, stuffy with hardly any room to walk. The bathrooms had to be the worst restroom facilities I have ever used in my life. The urinals frequently flooded, often shutting down the bathroom completely, forcing us to go down a flight of stairs and share with another floor. The cleaning company only worked weekdays, which means that after they were done cleaning on friday, the bathrooms would not be cleaned until monday. On weekend nights drunk people would vomit in the toilets, clogging them. Since the cleaning people didnt work weekends, that meant that the entire floor had to put up with vomit-clogged toilets for almost three days(and this did not just happen once, it was a reccurring problem). Only about half of the showers had pressure and there were never, ever any paper towels. My RA made absolute no effort to get to know anybody on the floor, let residents drink in their rooms, and condoned residents hanging pornography on their outside doors as well as the hall walls(on picture which got put up had a women deficating on herself, which the RA found humerous). Residents played their boomboxes 24/7 with no regard to their neighbors, and firealarms were constantly pulled in the middle of the night(one night we had 4 alarms in one night, and it was freezing raining!). I thought that Calhoun had to be the worst residence hall ever, until I visited a friend in Dabney. Wow was I surprised. Dark hallways, unsecured entrances, rooms that looked like they hadn't been renovated since the Reagan era. The school itself is nothing to brag about either. Half of my teachers did not speak English properly or didn't even have their masters yet. The campus was always under construction with many buildings replaced by white-bubble looking things. And don't even think about walking around campus after sunset. There are so many homeless people who will hassel you for your last penny that it's not worth taking a step out of your dorm. The campus is located in an incredibly poor part of the town with the only things within walking distance being fast food restaurants and drug stores(and you're taking a HUGE risk walking to those by yourself at night). The campus basically is dead by 5 p.m. So if you're a resident there's nothing really to do but sit in your dorm. I came to this school because I was accepted to CCM, which is a very prestigous music and theater school. However I found the students to be incredibly snobby, stuck up and conceited. This college is not worth half of the $$$ it charges. Take my advice, if your want to go to a college in Ohio take your money elsewhere. After two grueling quarters at this "college" I dropped out and transferred to Youngstown State University. Let me tell you that the differences were night and day. If you want a real college experience, avoid UC like the plague.

1st Year Male -- Class 2005

Education Quality: B, Individual Value: F