University of Rhode Island | Student Reviews | Best College

Student Profile

Tricia

Class: Junior
Major: Other
Gender: F

High School: Kittatinny Regional
Transfer Student: N

Big Picture

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.

Academic Life

During freshman and sophomore year (taking General Education classes) you can be in classes up to 500 people, so obviously those professors won't know your name. As you get older or take more specialized classes, the classes get smaller and you usually end up taking a lot of classes with the same professors, so then you can build more personal relationships. My favorite class was military science. It has nothing to do with my major, but we got to go outside and play around with compasses and my professor was hilarious. My least favorite class was Math 107 because I couldn't understand my teacher. My freshman year no one studied or did work, and we all got bad grades, but I feel like thats how it is at a lot of schools. Being a junior now I study a lot, you have to as you get older because the work load just keeps growing. In a lot of my classes you get credit for class participation. You will often hear people talking about their classes while they are walking across the quad, there are also different clubs you can join about different topics. In my major we aren't really competitive with each other, I'm not sure about other majors. The most unique class I've taken is military science. My major is Public Relations. It is a relatively new program here and is still trying to find its place here. We have some good professors and some not so good, but all of them really do want to help you and will usually go out of their way to try and help at least. Advising as a whole is kind of difficult to deal with here so you do have to find your own way sometimes.

Student Body

I've never really had a problem with any of that but I know that there are many clubs and groups geared towards those groups that you can join and learn more about. I don't think that any kind of student would feel out of place here, you may have to go out of your comfort zone to find similar people just because the school is so big, which is why there is a high transfer percentage in the freshman classes. A lot of students wear sweats/leggings to class. If you asked any of the guys at our school they would say the girls have the 'jersey girl' style with Uggs, leggings, and big sunglasses...I disagree. I am from Jersey and the only place I see people wearing those kinds of clothes is here. There is a lot of interaction in classes so everyone has to interact at some point, but mostly it seems that everyone is open to each other. It is not like high school in the dining hall, people are never there at the same time so I can't describe who is always sitting where, it is just groups of friends sitting together. One night I will be sitting with the cheerleaders, but then I can sit with my friends who are in Sororities or people who aren't involved with anything, then people who were in my dorm freshman year...it all differs. Most URI students are from Rhode Island, New Jersey, Mass, Long Island or Connecticut. If you are in state it is pretty affordable to go here, although in state rates are suppose to go up this year. Out of state it is pretty expensive so out of state students are usually upper middle class or on scholarship.