About Berklee Housing/Meals/Operations

RockBandMom
Fri, 06 Jul 2012 12:29:58 +0000

An update on my daughter at Berklee. She just finished her first year.

The classes at Berklee are stunning.

The operations and housing/meal policies at Berklee are horrendous.

The communications at Berklee are horrendous. (The blackout they had in Boston last spring confirmed this in spades. Parents were reduced to scanning inaccurate news reports for information. Students had no idea what was going on during their exam week.) Students get most of their information via an unsanctioned facebook group. (Thank goodness for that!)

The dorm/meal plan options at Berklee are horrendous. If you live at 150, the closest dorm to campus, you MUST be on their full meal plan. I thought that was just for freshman year. No, it is for every year you live there. The cafeteria is JUST an all you can eat cafeteria. You MUST use it. (My daughter hates the food. It is ALL carbohydrates. If there is protein, it is covered in carbohydrates. There is a small salad bar.) You can’t take any food or drink out, except in a small container that you can pay an extra $5 for (but no liquids). You can’t use meal plan money to buy groceries or anything else. You can try to use it at a small cafe for lunch with tremendous lines, but most students won’t be able to because of time constraints. (Furthermore, I was told by a full-time employee who worked there (and he made sure that I knew he was a full-time employee) that this policy was never going to change. It was useless for me to write to anyone about it even to suggest future changes.)

People complain that schools spend money on climbing walls and then raise tuition. Berklee doesn’t even have a gym.

You go to Berklee for one reason. Music.

It was the only school my daughter applied to… It would NOT have been my choice.

Looks like it will be an apartment next year for her despite my concerns. I didn’t want her to have the double whammy of a new apartment and demanding classes her first year. And next summer we were looking at a possible internship so I didn’t want to worry about subletting for her second year.

But at this point, I’ll do ANYTHING to distance myself as FAR as I can from the operations at Berklee.