UNCW concerns

I’ve been seriously considering UNCW in the past few weeks. I’ve been looking at reviews and some common things I see are that:

  1. The Greek society (which I have no interest in) is a big part of the college life
  2. UNCW students tend to be generally not that bright
  3. UNCW students tend to be strongly Christian and Non-Christians tend to not have a very good time (Which, as a Atheist, is troubling)
  4. UNCW students tend to be shallow and fake

@LBad96 and other UNCW attendees, what do you think of these claims?

Thanks

Every single one of those claims is 1000% false. Only 13% of UNCW students are in Greek life, and you really don’t need to be in a frat or sorority to have fun.

Second, there are many very bright and intelligent UNCW students. I know a lot of colleagues who got into more prestigious schools such as Chapel Hill, NC State, even the likes of Boston University but still chose to come here because it’s a terrific school in its own right. UNCW is a fantastic up-and-coming university, and each freshman class is only having higher and higher numbers (GPA and SAT scores) to enter.

Thirdly, UNCW students are a mixed bag in terms of religion. Most here who are Christians aren’t the type to shove the Bible in your face. People of all creeds live in harmony and unity on campus.

Finally, that last claim is just totally false. Period. One of the myriad of reasons I chose to come to UNCW as opposed to remaining up north was because of its reputation for having very chill, laid-back students and its beachy vibe. So that one is probably the most outrageous, together with the “not so bright” claim.

Thanks for the reply. The site I looked at (Studentreviews.com) had ~40% bad reviews for all my top colleges (including NCSU and UNC) and stereotypes abound for all (Closed-minded stoners for App, Obnoxiously over the top PC loners for UNCA, etc). I just wanted to get a second opinion against the ones about UNCW, because of how high it is on my list now.

Studentreviews has horrible rankings for just about every college.
When reading my university’s page, I questioned if the posts were written by actual students.

i think Studentreviews is garbage.

@0rca i think UNCW is a good school and you will find great people there and have a great time.

@0rca

Remember that review sites like that tend to attract the complainers and pranksters much more than the satisfied people. They are highly unreliable and I would recommend you never look at a site like that again. It just confuses the issue and adds nothing worthwhile. Any state school with a decent size student body is going to be a mix of all types and is unlikely to have an “unusual” group that dominates. In fact, I find the percentage of people in Greek life surprisingly low, but according to their Common Data Set, @LBad96 might have even overstated it a little. Here is what they reported for the class that started Fall 2015.

Percent of men who join fraternities
Freshman class: 4.7%
All undergrads: 4.2%

Percent of women who join sororities
Freshman class: 13.0%
All undergrads: 8.5%

So since 61.5% of the freshman class was women, the entire class percentage in Greek life is 9.8%. That is low, so there is no way that Greek life dominates the campus culture.

And to add to Lbad’s point about religious beliefs, it would be very unusual in a state school like this to have that strong a “Bible Belt” fundamentalist bent. While certainly most of the students are from NC and it tends to be a state with stronger church attendance, even among young people, like most schools the students are still going lean at least a bit to the liberal side. There are few schools, and possibly no state schools, where the students are majority conservative as those terms are usually defined, although those definitions are not worth much these days anyway.

The data also belies the “not that bright” part. Are the students, on average, going to be academic superstars like at Stanford or Duke or U Chicago? No, but most schools don’t have a class almost entirely made up of students like that. But the average SAT for CR and M are just a couple points under 600 and about 2/3 graduated in the top half of their high school class. In other words, you are looking at solid students who mostly have to work hard to make good grades, most likely. If you are a serious student, I imagine you can tailor your experience there to some degree to maximize classes with the brighter students. It appears they do have an honors college http://www.uncw.edu/honors/ and that would probably assist a great deal in enhancing the academic side of being there.

TIL studentreviews is garbage.

Thanks for the responses everyone. UNCW looks really good to me.

@0rca,

I live in Wilmington, not a student. While I can’t comment on #1 and #2, I would like to point out that #3 and #4 don’t even accurately represent the community as a whole.

To paraphrase -

  1. Wilmington tends to be strongly Christian (true) and Non-Christians tend to not have a very good time (false)
  2. Wilmington tends to be shallow and fake. (false)

Just thought this would be worth mentioning, after all, you won’t spend 100% of your time on campus.

Just wanted to say as a student that I agree with everything the other posters have said!

  1. Greek life does not dominate. While it is certainly present in campus, the large majority of people are not in an organization.
  2. This is a pet peeve of mine, people always undervalue students at UNCW, but there are many intelligent students at UNCW, and if you want to be a part of that culture look into the honors college!
  3. While most religious students are Christian, there are also many who are not. People are friendly and may ask you to join them at church, but they won’t be offended if you say no.
  4. There are so many different personalities on a campus of 13000, it’s hard to believe generalizations. Come visit and see for yourself why I don’t believe that’s true!