Kennesaw State University Marietta Campus — Attraction in Marietta

First off, I transferred to SPSU from a community college in central Georgia. That being said, my comparisons are based on my former school experiences.

It seems as though SPSU went through a major staff realignment 3-4 years ago. While the professors are no less than amazing, the school still suffers from bad practices in the business side, which seem to be fading as the "old guard" are beginning to retire and move along.

Academically this school has been very challenging. As a mechanical engineering major, I have been put in the same courses as students at Georgia Tech, MIT, CUNY, and Cambridge, with many of the professors holding degrees from the same universities. I have been no less than challenged, from my introductory graphics class taught by a 22 year veteran Lockheed manufacturing engineer, to my upper Senior Capstone course which is critiqued by multimillion dollar contract earning professor.

The campus itself is very pretty. unlike other schools around, the campus is "closed" by a large ring road and forests. It is very odd to find someone walking through campus that is not student or staff. There is a small gym, which is planned to be replaced in the next few years, along with a 25 yard pool, baseball fields, volleyball and basketball courts, and a very unique 9-hole disk golf course.

As for housing on campus, I must give them a thumbs up! In the past our campus housing was run by a contracted corporation which no less than destroyed any relationship with the university. Since 2011-ish the campus has reverted to a department run staff. The RA's on campus have always been awesome to me and tend to go out of their way to make you feel at home. Many of them are from out of state or abroad and try their best to comfort those who are homesick with fun little activities multiple times per week. The apartments are hit-or-miss, depending on your roommates; as many kids are transient students coming from abroad to learn English through the ELS program.

The food is pretty bad, overpriced, and the meal plans are difficult to work around as the cafeteria is only open for limited hours. (closes at 7pm if I recall, while most engineering labs and courses are afternoon and night based.) However, there are a small selection of kiosks and restaurants on campus, but expect to pay $10 for a burger and fries, along with waiting for 20 minutes.

Job placement is the one thing that I commend SPSU for, regardless of major. While many colleges rely on prestige, SPSU has a reputation among the local manufacturers for making hard working, practice-based students. My first semester at Southern Poly I went to the counseling center begging for some sort of job to help pay the bills. Within 1 month I had a job working on campus as a student assistant. Fast forward a year and I now have a well paid internship at Georgia Tech Research Institute. Many of my peers and friends have been working since their freshmen and sophomore years as drafters, machinists, and interns at local business; all thanks to the amazing staff at the counseling center.

Overall, I think SPSU has done very well, given it has only been around since 1948, with it's present form really only taking shape since 1963. I have met numerous engineers who have jobs at research labs, construction companies, consulting firms, and the whole spectrum of work. All of them tend to thank SPSU for the practical and hands-on approach. I see SPSU growing rapidly in the next couple of decades and while they still do not hold the public eye like schools such as Georgia Tech or Carnegie, the momentum that SPSU is carrying may soon push them past other schools who ride on their prestige, rather than...

The school itself is great. The professors are extremely knowledgeable, and the courses offered are much more practical than if you went to Tech (SPSU has always prided itself for being a more project-oriented school, whereas Tech is more for theoretics). However, this school is well-known for having some of the worst non-educational departments.

The administration is lousy (they'll redirect you somewhere about 3 times before they send you to the right place), the people working the financial aid are incompetent morons (it took me about 4 hours one day to try to get an answer from them which they didn't even know, and they made it very clear by their rudeness how much I was inconveniencing them, though these types of mouth-breathers are pretty prominent in the Atlanta area/south in general). The police force on the school are sometimes very invasive, and sometimes completely unaware of what's happening (It took them 2 days to get rid of a few students throwing a football around in a full parking lot). However, and I find this the most important, when I lived on campus, it took approximately 9 months for a certain Tara Adams to replace the carpets in my apartment, something I was promised upon move-in. She constantly pushed back my "re-evaluation" date after I told her the carpets were disgusting, and in too horrible condition to justify the 9 grand I'm paying annually. It wasn't until it became a noticeable health issue that I brought this to the Director, Chris Bruno, who made the carpet replacement happen the very next week. Another big issue was when I made multiple complains to the office (at least 4 or 5) that my EXTREMELY OBNOXIOUS roommate was staying up late at night shrieking like a 13 year-old at other people in his multiplayer games, which was always extremely profane and went on anywhere from 5PM to about 3AM. I have multiple records I presented to them as well. Nothing ever happened, and apparently, he has been through 3 roommates in 3 years, and has seniority in the room.

Much of the staff needs to be fired and replaced with people who give a damn, as the housing department does not need to be run by someone like Tara. Nor should we be forced to use the financial aid department who did not know what a 529 account was.

The only reason I'm rating this so high is because I think the education here is much more important than pedantic inconveniences with this school's...

The Marietta Campus of KSU has gone downhill since the merge of SPSU with KSU. The administration and management is awful, so even if you want to jump through the extra hoops they made up to be pretentious, it is no easy task to get that parking permit or sign up for everything on time.

Most colleges design their curriculums to keep the students paying for as long as possible, but KSU takes it to a different level. As other recent reviewers have mentioned, their acceptance of transfer credits is abysmal, particularly in science. It would be one thing to not accept credits from some low-quality no-name school, but KSU will evaluate credits from other top USG (University System of Georgia) schools and just structure their programs in ways to reduce an 80+ credit transcript down to under 50 credits applied. That's an entire extra year of classes if anyone's counting.

A lot of KSU's issues do come from the Board of Regents, in fairness, but its own management seems intent on making it worse faster, less organized, and harder to succeed with; compared to other schools in the USG trying to make it easier despite the Regents' policies.

In summary- Signing up is a nightmare, far more than a normal college and anyone who has done it know it's already a pain. After the administrative side is temporarily handled, good luck getting classes; most of the SPSU professors resigned after their current students graduated. If you're transferring, be ready to throw away half of your existing credits; despite being a "proud transfer school" the only way I could recommend going to KSU at all would be from start to finish to avoid wasting a huge amount of time.

Believe it or not, I was extremely excited to be an Owl a few years ago, but KSU's poor management of literally everything disillusioned me and instead I'll be graduating from...