Texas A&M - S is a senior
Positive Surprise:
++ Managing 68,000 students: Wow, that place has logistics down! Sure, there are registration challenges, full classes, etc., as one would expect at a large state school, but from New Student Conference, Fish Camp, and freshman dorm move-in to senior Aggie Ring Day, the staff and student volunteers make major student events as painless as possible. I was blown away at Ring Day last month - shuttles picked us up a few hundred yards from the designated parking area, dropped us off right where we needed to be, and we were in and out much faster than I ever expected. Everything was clearly marked, and the Aggie Spirit was ubiquitous (if you saw any of George HW Bush’s memorial at A&M last week, know that the school spirit evident that day is always alive and well in Aggieland).
Negative Surprises:
- The University Honors program.
– Dorm: my S was admitted to the honors program as a freshman and was required to live in one of two honors dorms. Some updating had been done in the other honors dorm (which featured the model room we saw on our tour during his NSC), but his was terrible. It looked like it hadn’t been updated since my friends were in college there in the '80s (one of them confirmed it from our pictures of the room). Mildewy smell, nasty cleaned-too-many-times carpet, run-down plumbing, significant water leak damage on the ceiling tiles, etc. I felt so bad for him on move-in day, thinking of his living there all year. He survived, of course, but we expected better.
-- The program itself: very lackluster. Honors students supposedly received priority class registration, but it was more of a detriment in my S's major because of the lock-step nature of his program. He became disenchanted with the program leadership** and required discussion class elements during his freshman year, and the last straw was when he was asked by his discussion group Student Advisor to edit one of his last reflection papers and change some views he expressed that were not consisistent with what the faculty wanted to see (they weren't alarming...just not what everyone else wrote). The assignment was for a completion grade, so my S declined to make the edits. He decided to remove himself from the honors program after freshman year. **The leadership changed at some point after that, so the program may be stronger now.**
Overall, my S has had a great experience. Too bad my D’20 is not interested in attending!