University of the District of Columbia — Attraction in Washington

UDC sells itself on affordability, and while it is indeed the cheapest school in the city this is for a reason. UDC is a LAST RESORT SCHOOL.

While this place is indeed accredited and has some qualified professionals, the institution ideology is more focused on collecting federal dollars and grant money than providing a meaningful opportunity to achieve professional success after college. I did not fulfill my goals BECAUSE of UDC, but more so in SPITE of their best efforts to make every step of the process as painful as possible.

The administrative arm of this institution seems hellbent on making the lives of any student who dares come ask for help into the equivalent of torture. Communication is universally nonexistent and the ubiquitous "SYSTEM" they use to address your concerns is ALWAYS "down". Financial Aid will ALWAYS be late. Student Accounts will charge out-of-state tuition to an in-state student, while their account literally says in-state designation, for 4 years with no recourse even from the President of the University himself. They won't even APOLOGIZE for charging someone tens of thousands of dollars extra. Student Accounts will hold onto private loan money 3+ months after it has been disbursed to the school, while giving no indication that they ever received the money and continuing to threaten and harass for payment. They will put multiple separate administrative holds on a paid-cleared account to prevent registration even when in totally good standing, and since that system is down they cannot remove the holds or even tell you why it is still there. Nobody even knows who removes them apparently.

Using the online support ticket is useless because it is seldom that somebody contacts you about the request you submitted.

Advisors will force you to take unnecessary classes that are not on your program schedule, sometimes multiple times. At the same time, and despite advising being mandatory before every. single. semester, you cannot rely on the advisors to give meaningful advice that will assure you have the credits you need to graduate on time.

Research professors are largely not engaging their students in the experience, which is weird considering how small the STEM cohort is in relation to the amount of faculty. Most don't come to campus the required 4 days a week and none of them are consistently on time.

The school of engineering only announces guest speakers the same (or next) day they are speaking; same goes with scholarships, internships, and career opportunities. Despite most of these kind of things taking a few days to complete the application or plan for they usually give you less than 24 hours.

My professor and department chair, Dr Paul Cotae, had no qualms disparaging my desired career path; even going so far as to call me greedy and lazy; and if this is not indicative of the faculty culture it is also worth mention that professors do not return grades for assignments and some not even for tests. But that is ok, because you could do absolutely nothing but show up in most of these courses and still get a B! Some professors like Dr Hongmei Dang bump all grades a letter by default, counting an 80% as an A and 70% as a B!

There are no meaningful professional development opportunities for the engineering school despite it being one of the largest and best-funded on campus. There is zero alumni involvement, no employment drives for seniors, and the only real shot the school provides Engineers at helping you seek the career you desire is at a single STEM conference (BEYA) that one could attend on their own and free of charge. Very few employers visit campus to hire or pipeline talent despite being surrounded by some of the biggest firms in the world.

This is a LAST...

Honestly, apply to another university. Don’t go here. You may not graduate or end up wasting a huge amount of time /money trying to get into the right classes and not having much direction from counselors. I got my BA in another state but I’ve decided to take an entry level chem class this Fall 2025. I applied to this school on June 7th as a non-degree student. I submitted my transcript & got an email to allow 2 weeks for admissions to process it. Great. A month later, and I heard nothing. So I called and emailed the admissions office and no one responded. No one answered my emails or voicemails. I had to take time off work to show up in person to the student registration office. The front desk was curt & unfriendly. The student counselor who came to see me acted like I was the inconvenience. (There were no other students in the office). She told me they didn’t have my application and then found it in 2 minutes after actually looking up my name. She asked for my transcripts and then found them when she again looked up my name. Then she actually admitted me to the school. She gave me no further steps. Didn’t offer me a contact to registering for classes (I have found you need admin approval to register for classes). I had to look it all up myself only to be told the online info was outdated. I finally got a hold of a student success advisor. It’s been a full week of me calling and emailing him to ask for him to put me into an ‘intro to chem class’. I have had to call and email him every day to hopefully get a little closer to registering for an entry level class. I provided him my transcripts, the exact classes I wanted, and reached out to the professors and he has emailed me a 4th time to ask me yet again what classes I would like to register for. I’m losing my mind. This whole process has taken so long that I might not be able to register on time for this fall semester. I am a full grown adult who is good at administration and I worry how any beginner student can successfully register & excel in this school when staff is incompetent & offer no assistance whatsoever. If I could advise you, I would tell you to apply to a school with staff that is excited & helpful to register you. And no, this staff is not over worked. They have about 3,000 students to look after. My last university had 35,000 and they were far more helpful and responsive. UDC needs to step it up. I’m so disappointed. Update: The Student Success Advisor got me registered for classes. I start next Monday. So far, no staff that has registered me has directed me to any sort of student orientation packet. So i’ll have to ask & find out but by bit how their student portal works. Just not feeling set up...

The worst university ever, my experience at this university has been draining and miserable. Some off the professor are rude and highly unprofessional. I had one professor a couple off years ago name Samuel Walters tell me that he doesn't have to respond to my emails, and if I reported him they wouldn't even listen to me. I will never forget that, it was odd to me as well because, other professors' I had encouraged students to email, and come in during office hours for assistance. I reported this to the dean, and she told me that professors' are not obligated to respond to students' emails. I couldn't believe it, in addition I wrote the president off the school who is a joke in my opinion, and he never responded. Anything, goes at this University. I blame myself, for returning to this school I was told things have changed, and it has not. Different departments loose papers, I had turn in my vaccine exemption forms August 02, 2021 and was told it was never received. When, I inquired about the documents again, the representative had told me they forgot to submit the documents to another department. But, by then I was already dropped from my courses. At this point, I said forget it, I am glad I transferred to another University that's extremely professional, the transition was great. The staff are rude as well, I remember almost getting cursed out by a lady in the student health department, because I simply asked if my health waiver was received, she was so rude. I honestly, despise this University. Returning, to this University as a readmit student was not worth it, it's beyond me because, UDC reached out to me to come back this past summer and it's still a joke. The women bathrooms, are a joke it's been like that since I started a couple off years ago. Some, off the doors don't lock, the library needs to be remodeled. I remember part off the ceilings in one bathroom was completely missing. Elevators were not working, and some parts off the building were not cleaned, the math tutoring lab couple off years ago was, leaking and ceiling was completely gone. I believe, some individuals work at this University because they can display their dispicable disposition. It really, amazes that the student center is appealing. But, if you go to other departments off the campus the conditions, are horrible or layout is outdated. I blame myself for being at this University for so long,...