Going on yet another college visit, I was expecting my trip to Youngstown State University to be similar to all the others. Gorgeous campus, great academic programs, helpful and knowledgeable staff, and hard to turn down. This is why I was so shocked to discover that here at Youngstown State this was not the case.

I can promise you, the reader, who, like me, is hard at work searching for the perfect college, that I would not try to steer you wrong because I don’t know one person who could have left that campus thinking, “It would be so cool to go here!” I entered the campus open minded and left horrified.

First of all, I am not from the area, so trying to find the campus on our GPS was a piece of work in and of itself. Warning: Many of street names are not labeled correctly. However, driving up and down and all around the various streets in Youngstown, Ohio allowed me to view the surrounding neighborhoods. Believe me when I say, there was nothing to be impressed with, and nothing to draw you in. Run down neighborhoods and very few areas of entertainment was what the city consisted of.

Once we actually found how to get to the school, we entered the building. Instead of being greeted by people, we saw some confused and disorganized adults wearing the red school polos and decided to ask them where to go. They had no idea and seemed just as confused and out of place as we were. However, they were the ones running the visitation program.

There were several display boards up, so I walked around to each and every one of those, only to be disappointed that they didn’t contain any information about the school. Only off campus apartments, school spirit wear, and studying abroad. Nothing that would pertain to a bunch of soon-to-be college freshman.

Sitting down in my seat in time for the presentation, I was eager to actually find something out about this university. A crazed woman, stood up at the podium. Expecting her to start the presentation, she, instead, starts laughing like an immature little girl and tells us that she doesn’t have anything to say. She then leaves the podium. Confused, I continue sit there and wait. A couple minutes later, the same woman gets back to the podium, and begins the slide show presentation. The slide show covered the admission process into the university and listed the academic departments. However, Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
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don’t know anything more about the school because the lady only said exactly what was displayed on the power point.

After she was done reading to us from the projection, we were split up into groups based on our area of academic interest. I went to the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. A homely but strange woman spoke to us. Again, she didn’t tell us really anything about the department, she just talked to us about changing out major and gave a lot of examples of multiple students who in the past have changed their major.

At that point, I had had it! I had only been at Youngstown State University for about an hour and already couldn’t take it anymore. I was disappointed that my family and I had driven three hours just to see this lousy school. However, I had no desire to stick it out any longer. So, we left the school.

Talking with a former resident of Youngstown that very same day, I was pleased to hear that her opinion of the school and city were the same as mine. She advised me not to attend this university and that her parents were thrilled that she didn’t go to Youngstown. She warned me that Youngstown was not a safe place either, as there is a lot of theft. Also, the scheduling process at Youngstown is very slow. Her brother, a student at Youngstown, is into his sixth year at Youngstown as an undergrad student pursuing only one major that is really only supposed to take four years.

Paging through some of the literature the school had given me, I was able to discover some facts about the school, in case you were still interested in attending this dump they refer to as a “University.” Most of the students that make up the 15,000 undergraduate class, live in the city and surrounding area, with the student to faculty ratio being 19:1. The school colors are red and black, and their mascot is Pete the Penguin. The campus is also very small and only takes a mere five minutes to walk from one end to the next. On a positive note, they do offer 100 majors and cheap tuition.

If that is enough to sell you on this school, then by all means, go for it. My goal was absolutely not to offend anyone by my review of this University. I just feel that it is my duty to inform anyone who is interested in this school about it’s less than satisfactory programs and supply them with my honest opinion. I was completely unimpressed with this school. After seeing the school and campus, I would never attend Youngstown State University.