Pointers If Considering The University of Tampa-Freshman or Transfers

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Tampa
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  1. Don’t bother attending if you aren’t going to study Business, Criminology, BioChemistry/Chemistry, Nursing, or Athletic Training. Those are the areas of study that are actually accredited at the university and the only ones worth pursuing, just in case you end up wanting to transfer or want to get into a decent graduate school (if going for undergrad).

  2. The University of Tampa is more like high school without rules. It truly is an environment full of primarily white privileged kids from New Jersey who don’t want to do any work and just lay by the pool and drink all day/night. Yet still manage to pass their classes and graduate.

  3. The curriculum is not rigorous. It is very easy for students to get in (meaning they do not care how low your gpa is) as long as you have money or are approved for financial aid. I mistakenly stayed for an entire four years and I certainly do not feel competitive in the field that I studied (Public Health) and have yet to find a job that will pay me competitive wage/salary since graduating in 2011.

  4. The professors are either burnt out or short term. A lot of the professors are adjunct and teach at the local community college as well. The education I received was sub par in comparison to other students in my field around the US and abroad. When I was a junior, I attended a month long internship in Berlin (that I set up myself, no thanks to any of the advisors at the school) where I met several people who were far more educated than myself in only their first year of schooling.

  5. The school truly only cares about money. Every year, fees went up and they made it very difficult for students to find affordable housing or affordable meal plans. They required students to enroll in more expensive meal plans if you lived on campus full time and made it damn near impossible to get into some of the more affordable dorms and placed students in some of the most expensive ones, despite expressing a need for more affordable housing multiple times. I graduated with over 100,000 dollars in student debt and I still had “scholarships and grants” applied towards my tuition. The financial aid office is nice but certainly not helpful.

  6. Retention rate of freshman is very low despite advertisement. Tour guides are quick to mislead parents and students taking a tour of the school about graduation rates, available scholarships, and the amount of student activities available.

  7. The reputation of University of Tampa is either very poor or non existent. I found this to be the case on numerous occasions just job searching. Now I don’t even put my education and where I received it on any job applications because not only can I not get an appropriately paid job in my field but I’m embarrassed to have even gone to this school.

I highly advise anyone considering this school to research heavily on alum experiences and endowment compared to other universities.

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I could not agree more with every point you made here. I transferred to FSU after attending UT for a year and I am so so happy with my decision. So many people as freshman transfer out, and that does mean a lot. It is also very much like another 4 years of high school, and there is pretty much no diversity. For the one year I was there, I definitely did not get my moneys worth for the ridiculous amount I have to pay.

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Also I want to add that in my one year of being there I did go through 3 advisors, and this staff was not helpful at all (especially with transferring). I had no clue my advisors changed, as they didnt notify me of this at all. I would email one with important questions and not hear back from them for days, only to see on spartan web that my advisor was changed.

The last thing I want to add in here is that the Wifi is almost non-existent. No matter how many times I contacted the office about the internet being down once a day, they acted like they were going to make it better but it only stayed the same.

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Tampa is kind of an outlier in our process but for a private school, it seems to be very inexpensive and on paper looks good.

From these threads, it looks like you get what you pay for. We went to the open house last week and they definitely do a good job of marketing. There was a sorority party with DJ going on at the pool in center of campus during open house day. LOL… Lots of screaming girls in bikini’s… I’m not kidding. Coincidence?

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I would just like to add to this thread as a current UT student. I absolutely hate this school. I am from the North, not New Jersey. This school definitely attracts the Northern racists and hillbillys. There is not much to do in the Tampa area, and I have been to every museum 3x this semester. The public transportation system is an absolute joke, and I feel trapped on campus. I consider myself a smart person and only attended UT because of the amount of merit I was given. My classes are far too easy and I spent most of my days bored. After visiting home and a local college I felt like I was severely missing out on my college experience. Therapy services that are on campus are always booked out at least 3 weeks. The resources on campus they advertise are non existent or are “being updated” (bicycle rental etc). On campus events are non existent and most students go to the club as an extracurricular. This is only my opinion but I know many who are also transferring after this semester or planning to after the spring. It’s more than homesickness