The University of Texas at Arlington — Local services in Arlington

Went there for advising after being admitted using applytexas. The guard said I'm a student so I can't use guest parking since I've been admitted. She refused to tell me where it was and said I should park in a toll slot. I don't have coins so I parked in student parking way out far in the very very back. Campus police still issued a $50 ticket after I got out of advising. Advising can be booked for weeks or months so be sure to get it in early. Orientation is also booked and costs good money. Orientation had a bunch of shills from wells fargo in every other speech and there were wells fargo salesmen outside every talk. Orientation takes all day. I came to the school with 10 clep credits but they wouldn't let me apply them until 12 days after my first class. I can't park in free area because I'm a student but I'm not a student yet so I can't apply clep but I can't be a student until I apply the clep because those satisfy prerequisites to the classes I need to enroll in. I took one summer class. I got a professor dying of terminal cancer that was struggling to breathe for two weeks while trying to lecture. We got a substitute who could not speak very good english. Our professor Mr. Sears passed away on the third week and now we have a new teacher. The whole thing was kind of unbelievable. Adviser issued a hold on my account so I can't take more classes until I finish summer. I asked several times until they told me it's college of business policy and there's no way to get around it. Finally got it taken off in midterms but now it's harder to find classes because fall registration had been open for 2 months. They wanted my professor to email advisers to take off hold and would not just take a blackboard printout of my grades. Professor was annoyed after I told them they wouldn't accept printout but his email finally took off my hold. I'm not going to spend money on bad professors. I don't understand why UTA gives me a transfer scholarship and then gives me no one to spend it on. I enrolled for fall but trying to enroll online says prerequisites met for one of the classes even though they are met. I had to drive down and get adviser to sign off on prereq form and take it to be manually entered in upstairs. Class got full in the time it took to do this and I ask her to give me a class with horrible teacher and does not fit my schedule and then I'll swap it with a better class as people drop. I check for new classes every few hours and find a better one. System does not let me swap class and gives me same prereq issue even though I'm already enrolled in the exact same class! I have to email poor older lady every time there's an opening and so far I've had no luck getting it in before it gets full. I also talked to the computer science adviser out of curiosity and he was horribly demoralizing when I asked how quickly I could get a degree if I did max hours and what he thought about Tarleton. There was a lot of other students in line for advising and that question made him get louder and defensive for irrational reasons but that's what I was there to ask. He'd say "Is this what you want", "are you sure this is what you want" like I was wasting his time, I just wanted more information about the program. He wanted to get to talking about the list of courses but I kept asking him questions and this annoyed him. I'd spent 3 hours in line to ask him these questions and had already got the course overview from being in line forever listening to the other students he talked to. It's felt like a constant struggle to get decent teachers and get the classes I need at this school. That is my maverick experience so far. The students are...

UTA has all the resources in place you need for a great college experience but it is up to you. The university is definitely coming up very rapidly, becoming more and more selective and attracting better students: It's evident everywhere.

A lot of alumni and current students complain and therefore give the school a bad name: things such as a lack of school spirit and such is only a problem to the people who just come to campus and leave right after. At this school, there is two kinds of students: The ones who are ambivalent, and the ones who are excited, have spirit and like the college. A lot of the people who come here don't bother in trying to make friends or being involved, as they have lives off-campus. However, there is a strong social life here, but it is not as apparent as other colleges where everybody lives on campus, but it's definitely here.

New buildings, tons of new professors, Arlington is spending hundreds of millions renovating the vicinity. Once you factor in the financial aid, which is very, very generous compared to other universities; the school offers probably the best educational experience per dollar in the DFW area (SMU, TCU are small liberal arts schools that simply cannot compete with the resources of a large research university). UTD gives nowhere the amount of financial aid and scholarships and is nominally more expensive.

The administration is aggressively pursuing its goals of better graduation rates, more funding and making sure UTA will become a prominent college in Texas, by attacking and claiming the DFW metroplex first. It is aggressively snatching away talent from UT and UTD in order to become the best college in the area and being mentioned up there with A&M and UT; though this won’t happen overnight. However, in less than 3 years graduation rates have gone up by an impressive 10% and population has grown exponentially, all while bringing in students with better qualifications. The recruiting efforts are something to be amazed at.

A lot of its metrics, which affect “holistic” rankings (such as graduation rates and such) are also weighed down by its demographics, many people commute here in the evenings and are non-traditional students ( which I think is awesome!) that might take maybe one or two classes, where as large schools of comparable population have 95% full time traditional students. Don't let "rankings" fool you, we have great professors and small-ish class sizes (again, compared to other schools of similar population).

I will be graduating debt free and I’m happy with the fact that I have received a strong education and have made great friendships from people I never would have come in close contact with during my highs school years.

Overall, the best value for your dollar...

Not there for the student. I am taking online courses due to working full time and having a family. I have taken six courses over a 3 semester period. Had a problem 3 different times in 3 different classes. The first one, I had a family member pass away unexpectedly and was going to be gone from Friday-Sunday with no internet. I let my coach know and she told me to send something showing that I someone passed or was having a funeral. Ok, no problem, I sent her the obituary, she gave the information to the instructor, and they gave me until the next weekend to get my assignment turned in. NP. The second problem I had was when I was taking a timed quiz with 25 questions, I got through the 4th question and it froze. I ended up having to shut it all down and sign back in. By the time I got back to the quiz, there was only a few minutes left. I only made it through question six and the rest were counted wrong. I made a 24. Right after being done I emailed the coach and she wasn’t sure what to do. Waited a week for her to figure it out then contacted the instructor. She told me there was nothing she could do about it, that it was too late. What? Then there is the 3rd. I sent in an assignment, the program told me it was received, so I go back 3 days later to see what my final grade is and it shows my assignment was never received. I notified the coach and the instructor. The coach said I should have made sure the assignment was turned in and the instructor told me it was too late, she had to turn the grades in. So twice my grades got screwed into the 70’s. I pay for my classes and spend a lot of time doing to the work to get 90’s. So I called the school about this, they told me it’s all up to the instructors. Hmmm. So I’m paying someone to tell me they can’t help me and give me bad grades when things glitch. They know there are going to be problems at some point with online courses between using windows or IOS, the internet, and canvas. I am not paying another dime to...