I just went to RAD and was so disappointed with the sociology department… I mean that everything in Reed is perfect for me but I really want to go to a school with strong sociology department.
IN has a pretty good department for social science but a lot of people tell me that UCSD is a better school to go.
I don’t know what to choose. I still love Reed but I think that I would transfer to another school for my sophomore year.
What do you guys think?
Sociology at Reed is awful. One of the three professors has anger issues; he flips out against his students in class. One time he screamed at me because I was sitting in a classroom where he was teaching a class in 10 minutes. Another professor is coming back after a long sabbatical (is that person really interested in teaching?), and the chair of the department, from my experience, is bland. The /good/ professors are all ‘visiting’. Compound this with the fact that there are few courses offered, and the fact that the department champions intellectual elitism by refusing to allow students to transfer sociology coursework from abroad (apparently we have the best coursework in sociology in the world). What rubbish.
Also consider the fact that the sociology studied is almost entirely American sociology. It surprised me that British sociologists were not even mentioned in the introductory sociology curriculum; in high school, my study of sociology began with studying, other than Marx and Weber, sociologists like Talcott Parsons and Ann Oakley, alongside American sociologists like George Herbert Mead and C. Wright Mills. The fact that the curriculum here only address American sociologists was very off-putting. What is more, the fact that freshmen aren’t allowed to take intro soc… just … idk.
But yeah, just don’t come if you want to study sociology. You will be disappointed. Anthro/poli sci/econ/history are great, though.