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URI is a great place for a test run in the real world. There are nothing but options here. It's located in a suburban town (where I was born and raised) but only a half an hour from Providence. So you can choose where you want to spend your time. There is also a big difference between living on and off campus. On campus, to me, seems almost like a boarding school and you have to take a bus to get anywhere off campus. However, if you live off campus, there are a large number of options available since this town is a tourist hotspot in the summer and there are a lot of empty summer houses right on the beach during the school year. Oh, that's another great thing for non-RI kids, our beaches are about 15 minutes from campus (gorgeous beaches, too.) Personally, I didn't get to meet an overabundance of different people, since half the students here are from RI and the other half from somewhere in New England. But, the kids who are here tend to have a lot of school spirit. There are an infinite number of clubs and organizations to join, and URI is very much a community that you can enjoy being a part of.
Rae Junior
andy Junior
Music department is a piece of ***. Program requires ridiculous amounts of work for a near useless degree. Quality of music is poor, quality of student musicians is poor. I feel like the quality of all other classes is a crapshoot, sometimes you get a good teacher, sometimes you dont. The quality of education is not consistent, even throughout different sessions of the same class. FOr example: You might take WRT104, and in one class the students may be told that the final assignment is cancelled "because there is not enough time left in the semester", yet in another session, with a different teacher, the students are required to do it. There needs to be consistency.
Angry Freshman
I think URI is a great size and it has a lot of great qualities. I could walk around campus at 2am and not feel like anyone was going to come after me and the people are very friendly. When I tell people I go to URI they get very jealous because they know how close it is to the beach... something URI students love and take advantage of. The one thing I'd change is the fact that it's a dry campus. I dont party much but since its a dry campus there are more accidents and problems with students drinking because they have to go off campus to do so. There is however a lot of school pride. We have a Rhody cheer that everyone yells at the sports games and on the quad or at one of URI's many school events. Though I am transferring from URI, I will always remember the great people I met there. Everyone is very friendly and its easy to make friends and have fun. Springfest week was the best time during the year... there were concerts or movies every night and events during the day like "mocktails" and a thing where you could make personal signs... it was a lot of fun.
Caroline Alum
THE PARKING!! is probably the most annoying thing about campus life. Even if you got a damn parking pass, you still can't even find a spot and you have to resort to random spots in areas you can't park.. so you get towed even though you paid for your permit!
Kolvathy Senior
The best thing about URI for me (being a cheerleader) is basketball season. It is something that I look forward to every year and this year was definitely the best with the Ryan Center selling out most of the games. Another great thing is living with my friends off campus. One thing I would change is the parking on campus. There isn't enough and it isn't convenient at all. I think URI is just right. I did not want to go to a small college, I went to a very small high school and hated it. It is hard for people who don't get involved though because finding and keeping friends is difficult. People usually ask me if it really is a huge party school. When I lived on campus I spent most of my time in my dorm or at the gym, now I spend most of my time in the classroom or at the Alumni Center (where I work). URI wasn't made to be a college town, but it turned into one. After the campus became dry a lot of students moved off campus to Narragansett or Bonnet Shores, this made the towns surrounding the Kingston campus reluctantly turn into "college towns". When you come to tour the campus, URI does a great job making it seem like everyone who got "most school spirit" in high school came here. In reality, it isn't always like that, but there is a fair amount of school spirit and pride. I have some friends who don't even know that we have sports teams, and some who never miss a game. It seems like the Greek system is also fairly supportive of URI and its image. A lot of alumni keep coming back to visit as well. The one unusual thing about URI that you wouldn't expect from a New England school at least is that the students here go to the beach, a lot. The first few and last few weekends of school you can find a majority of the URI student population hanging out on the beach..we go there to 'study' during spring finals a lot. One experience I will always remember is the 07 Basketball season when we made it to the finals at the A-10 tournament in Atlantic City, it was one of the most fun weekends of my life. One complaint I hear a lot is about parking on campus.
Tricia Junior
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