Roger Williams University

Please heed my warnings. For those who do not want to read all of this, DO NOT GO HERE. That being said I'll explain to you every detail about this University. Simple question, you're a young adult right? You want to go to college and have fun? Meet new people? Party? Go out and have a great time? Guess what, this University is probably the most anti party University in New England. Let's get some facts straight, fraternities+Sororities, does RWU have them? Nope. How about a football team at least? Nope. Right off the bat this school has no base for fun but hey on campus parties exist right? Well let's break it down even more. This school supposedly has 6k students. Take away the commuters that number dwindles down to about 4,500. I'd estimate about 500 to 1000 kids go home every weekend. That leaves us with 3,500. This school has 2 off campus housing options. An old former hotel called baypoint and an apartment complex called Almeida. In total about 1500 kids combined live in these places. You're left with 2,000 kids and the worst dorm parties imaginable. Even if you get something remotely decent going guess what? Public Safety or your RA is gonna end that so fast. As a freshman you better pray you live in Cedar. It is the only traditional building with multiple floors and halls. Willow are scattered town houses and you will make no friends living there. Stonewall is where the honors kids live and is more quiet than a morgue. Housing is nothing to write home about, small dorms with no notable amenities or options. Now that you know the social life sucks and the dorms aren't great, you still want to go here? Well I thought you'd say that. Let's delve deeper here. People brag about the food here but on campus you are limited to 3 options for food. All campus based. No Chipotle, McDonalds none of that. The food at upper commons is always cold buffet food, dry chicken, awful pizza and annoying supposedly healthy choices. Lower commons serves made to order food which is decent but has nothing great to it and it closes at 2 on weekends. Law school food is ok but realistically no one eats there. So the social life, dorms and food sucks. Oh man what about the academics, are they at least top notch? No sir. You will pay 50k+ a year to get a whatever education. The school shafts you by making you take two writing classes, a math class and 5 "Core" classes on top of your major and minor. Your advisors will intentionally trick you into taking classes you don't need. As a business major you don't need to take Writing 200, guess what. Your advisor won't tell you that. The core classes are a concoction of bullshit. Philosophy, Anthropology, Biology, History, Art. You won't ever need any of that stuff for your job but they don't care. As business major you have to take business core classes on top of your major just to really add to the cesspool of garbage. Professors are nothing special. Typical lecture on, 3 tests and a couple papers type. They won't go out of their way to help you and they don't really love teaching here. No way it can't be all that bad is what you're thinking. I'm a junior and I will tell you as a straight white guy who came here with money and hopes. It really is that bad. This school isn't BC or UConn. No one outside RI or MA knows about it. The kids here hate their lives and spend mommy and daddies money on weed and just smoke all day to get by. People here are pretentious D-bags. The school has a rep for being rich white underachievers and it is exactly that. They've started admitted every minority who applies in order to take more pics for pamphlets. I studied abroad last semester in Italy, best decision I made. Anything to get away from the cold depressing campus. Sadly I'm back and faced with reality. People boast how beautiful the campus is but that's only in the summer and early fall and the last week of the semester. The cold wind is gonna whip against your body when you make the dreaded walk to your mediocre classes. Sports here? D3 but should be D17. No one goes to any of the games because the school would be defeated by any varsity team at a high school. What more do you need? I'm not a negative person. I came to this school hoping to find a great group of friends and make memories. Excluding going abroad(which is the only thing that can save you) and freshman year this school has been a terrible time. This is coming from a guy who you can probably relate to. I don't want to see you end up pissing away 4 years for 50k+ a year. If you want to know about off campus housing. It's simple. Almeida is an apartment complex with a kitchen and bathroom but if you have no car you'll have to take the shuttle which is never on time. Oh and there's no food so you'll have to buy your own groceries. Pretty much only sophomores live there and throw the worst paries imaginable. Baypoint. A hotel that is really a motel 6. Slightly bigger beds. Made to order food for lunch which is decent and a dingy gym that you can struggle to make do with. Again only sophomores live there. There isn't much more to say adminstration won't even respond to your emails and changing your major is awful here so it's not recommended. So now do the right thing. Don't sell yourself short. You're better than this.

3rd Year Male -- Class 1921

Perceived Campus Safety: A-, Surrounding City: D

If I were speaking to a friend who was interested on going to Roger Williams University, I wouldn't let them go. The school is "fine" in my opinion. You'll like it if you fit the profile of: extremely white, stereotypically preppy, a guy who wears bright colored pants and padagonia on the regular (I'm not kidding... It's most of the campus), drives an Audi or BTW casually at age 20... Need I go on. If I could describe the school in two words, it would be- WHITE and CLIQUEY. It's not normal and it's stifling. If you're a person of color, they will be taking pictures of you and posting it for ads for the school like a zoo animal- be aware of this. Typically, 60% of a class will have dropped out or transferred by their sophmore year. Frats dont exist. Sororoties dont exist. And it's 1/2 an hour from providence and around 35ish minutes from Newport (note- you're not allowed a car on campus until Sophmore year- good luck going out). The campus is pretty during the off season (Summer/Spring). But most of the time you'll be there, it's beyond cold. The winter wind whips you in the face 24/7 from October-Mid March. They sell you the school's pretty campus when you visit, but will you actually be going to school there in July? Nope. Now imagine going to the beach in December- not fun. The acceptance rate is almost at 80% because over 1/2 of each class leaves due to social issues, mental health or the cost. The school is expensive and the debt is not worth the education. I graduated from RWU without student loans, but I would never go into debt for this school. You'll get a better education (and probably just an overall better college experience) at URI or PC. Most of the student body struggles with depression and the counseling center is packed 24/7. I graduated in Psychology and the department was decent. I took some interesting classes and I though the program was fine, nothing too too special. The professors can either be very nice and helpful or they have a bit of a power complex. I've met a coupld gems throught different departments but honestly they're far and few in between. Also, (I can't stress this enough) the school does not help you get an internship and you will be alone trying to find a job. They help you set up a linkedin and how to make a professional resume, how to talk in an interview.... Hopefully most of you can do this on your own. But when it comes to connections and opportunities- I havent seen many. They have a career fair that you're forced to go to but the employers there wont apply to you unless you're buisness, marketing, engineering, management, or (sometimes) teaching. Your social life won't be much until you turn 21 and can go to the two bars in town. The off campus parties are underwhelming and fairly difficult to get into. And when you do get in, the Bristol PD will shut that down within an hour- you can count on that. I met some good people during my time at RWU and got a decenf education, but would I do it again? Absolutely not. Some people do like it at RWU, but like I said, they're a very specific type of person (see above).

4th Year Female -- Class 2018

Campus Aesthetics: A, Scholastic Success: F