Apologies if this is a bit of a diatribe, but I feel the need to warn future students.
I started my college search process looking at schools way out of my league, including the ivies and Stanford, despite having “only” a 3.8 unweighted GPA and a 1510 SAT score (I thought these were good; as it turns out I was wrong). I made the foolish and arrogant decision to apply ED to Stanford, which obviously declined my application.
After this, I did some soul searching and put in applications to the University of Southern California (I would’ve hated it more than Union, I’m not sure what I was thinking), Tufts (I should have applied ED, I might have actually gotten into a good school if I had), and, stupidly, the ivies. I wasted so much time applying to so many schools that none of my applications were really any good, and so I was rejected from all of the above. Thankfully (or so I thought at the time), at the last minute, I had put in an application for Union, along with two other safeties, the University of Arizona and Oregon State. I got into all three with ease (as I said, safety schools), but I chose Union thinking it was a cut above the others.
I was wrong. Union is a beautiful school with a lavish campus (outside the freshman dorms, anyway), the best campus dining I’ve ever had (still not great but absolutely tolerable), and brilliant, hard-working, and kind professors. But I was not at all prepared for the absolutely insipid and vacuous student body.
At my high school, I felt I was above average, but not unusually intelligent or hard working. At Union, I am both, to an extent that I could never have predicted. My freshman preceptorial (seminar) class consisted of a wide swath of Union students assigned to learn about avant-garde art history. Admittedly, it wasn’t my first choice seminar topic, or even my fifth, (just as Union was third to the bottom of my college list), but I still worked hard, did all the reading, and carefully analyzed and contextualized the artistic movements the class covered. My classmates sat in class discussions looking at their laptops and pretending they’d even opened the PDFs we were supposed to have read. One interrupted conversations about classic movies and books to talk about how they reminded him of video games or Rick and Morty.
This isn’t a unique experience at Union; approximately half (maybe even two thirds) of the students here are profoundly anti-intellectual. Going to a small, high-ranking liberal arts college, I expected to be surrounded by people with an interest in the world, with goals and ambitions aside from just getting rich (or, as is mostly the case here, richer). Instead, I found myself living amongst a group of students with less motivation for school than the average community college, who live to get drunk and/or high, and whose greatest aim in life is to graduate so they can go to work at a cushy job at one of their wealthy relatives’ companies. (And I make these criticisms as an occasional drug and alcohol user; the difference I perceive is that other students seem to have no sense of moderation, and no interests outside substance use).
In a word, I am disgusted. Despite the school administrations’ intentions to make Union a top school, despite the massive amounts of money poured into securing stellar faculty, and despite Union’s numerous attempts to establish student activities outside of getting blackout at a fraternity and waking up next to a regretted hookup, the student body remains one of the least-engaged I’ve ever seen.
If you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, etc, you should not go to Union. Not because the campus isn’t inclusive, but because the student body is stuck in the 90s as far as their perception of LGBT people. I regularly hear students call each other “faggots,” refer to things as “gay,” and make fun of gay students for expressing their sexuality. Certainly, there are plenty of very accepting people at Union, probably even the majority. But the minority is vocal enough that it feels socially dangerous to be visibly or vocally queer on campus.
If you’re black, latinx, really anything but white or asian, I would not recommend Union. Despite the administrations’ attempts to create “diversity,” the campus is anything but. One of my roommates this year is mixed race, and I’ve had a number of conversations with him about how hard it is to not be white on this campus. Socially, the school is quite segregated (this is true in all respects), and the fraternities and sororities who dominate the social scene are unwelcoming, although not outright racist, towards non-white students.
You should also not go to Union if you don’t plan to be in a frat/sorority. And if you do plan in being in one (besides AD or DKE), you had better be an alpha male who loves sports and shows no weakness, or a sexy, slutty female who loves nothing more than submitting yourself to bad sex with men who don’t respect you. The greek system here is a hilarious display of backwards gender roles, and, despite the administrations’ best efforts (a common refrain), is thriving.
You should not come to Union if you are politically engaged and care about making a difference in the world. Students here are only interested in virtue signaling and giving poor people their dirty, old used shoes and socks. The greek organizations make a big fuss a few times a year about philanthropy, in which they raise a few thousand dollars, pat themselves on the back, and call it a day. The students here are either wealthy or pretend to be, and none of them can see beyond their own self interest enough to advocate for any kind of significant change; instead, they prefer virtue signaling without taking any real action.
Finally, speaking of wealth, you shouldn’t come here if you’re middle class or lower. My family of four makes less than six figures a year, putting us well below the average here at Union. I’m so used to modest living that I had no idea the shock I was in for. Students here pay thousands of dollars a year for the convenience of not having to do their own laundry; they take Ubers all the way to NYC instead of taking a train or bus; they own so much designer clothing that it spills out of their closets and drawers. Quite frankly, the conspicuous consumerism embraced here is perhaps the thing I most despise. Worse than the wealthy students, however, are the upper middle class students who spend all their money (literally all, some of my friends had already spent $3000 on incidental expenses by winter term) on things they don’t need just to pretend to be wealthy. Maybe it has to do with my being from the West coast, but I find this behavior appalling.
So, there you have it. If you’re a wealthy, attractive, confident, white person with an overinflated ego and a penchant for alcohol, you’ll love Union. Otherwise, I would advise against coming to this train-wreck of an institution. Maybe if the admin gets their act together and recruits more students who actually care about people other than themselves, Union will get better, but as it stands right now, it’s a third rate institution and you’d be better off spending less money at a state school.