Boston University Business School

Just had a lot of super negative experiences. My parents went to BU and its nowhere near the quality it was at back then. BU has been going downhill the last few years and I would not recommend attending.

2nd Year Female -- Class 1922

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I was decently excited about BU and the idea of being in the beautiful city of Boston. There seemed to be a lot of opportunities at BU, and I figured that because the school was so big, there would be so many resources. It only helped that BU is a research facility, so I could work with professors 1-on-1 to get great internship and research opportunities.

Before I talk about my experience, I would like to say that I think some people can be happy at BU, but in my study of economics, I was less that thrilled. I undervalued the importance of a campus, which would have made the large school feel more like a community and less like I was just a number in such a huge institution. I luckily met some good friends, but they felt the same way. People just aren't as approachable with a school this big.

However, I was more frustrated with the academics. I realized (at least in economics) the smallest seminar courses are about 45 people per class, while most range from 60-200 people. The professors don't know you by name and they are very mechanical, all about going by the books and less about trying to apply what we are learning to the real world. Many of my classes aren't discussion-based, and I feel like I am just regurgitating information rather than really learning. A lot of professors just read off their lecture slides, and it has become apparent that many of them simply don't know how to teach. I finally understand the cons of being in a research institution because a lot of the faculty are just there for their research grants, but they aren't qualified whatsoever to teach. Additionally there are so many prerequisites for classes I found interesting, that between those and the large lecture hall distributional requirements, I wouldn't get to take interesting courses until junior or senior year (but since the classes are so big and most professors are so bad, they wouldn't even be worth it).

Ultimately the academics prompted me to apply to transfer. The administration didn't care at all about my transfer process and made my life impossible to try to transfer (one professor literally refused to sign the paperwork he needed to sign and my advisor said he couldn't help. Additionally no one knew who needed to fill out what paperwork and they wouldn't send in any of the transcript forms they needed to). The institution truly only cares about profits and number-crunching rather than the quality of life, and that came across in my school experience.This all being said, I've heard from some of my peers that the engineering program, psychology program, and a lot of the humanities are pretty good. Also the humanities classes are a good deal smaller, so maybe it would be worth it to any people looking in those majors, but my advice would be that for the cost, you are buying a brand name. Save your money and go to a more intimate school with professors that genuinely care about their students.

1st Year Female -- Class 2018

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