Are there any downsides to Beloit?

cristiline
Tue, 10 Apr 2012 16:47:05 +0000

Of course, every school is going to have downsides. I’m going to list my problems with Beloit because I do want to be completely honest, but I want to preface it with the fact that were I to choose schools again, I would absolutely choose Beloit.

-the town: it is super small and everything closes really early. Walgreens closes at ten every single day. If you want food at ten-thirty P.M. and don’t have a car, you’re pretty much out of luck.
-office hours: can suck. The mail center is only open from 10:30-3:30 Monday-Friday, and most of the offices close at four or four-thirty (I always take the latest classes, which end at four). The health center is only open until four-thirty on weekdays and not at all on weekends.
-small college = a lot of classes only offered once per semester = you might want to take two classes that are at the same time
-small college = not as many unique classes as you might find at some big university (not much in the way of linguistics, for instance, but we do offer some fun classes like “Philosophy and Star Trek” and something about the TV show “The Wire”)
-food: not a wide variety of options, especially on the weekend. During the week (Monday breakfast - Thursday lunch), you have DKs as an alternative, but it’s closed for Friday dinner and all weekend. And commons and DKs both stop letting people in at seven (you can stay until about seven-thirty, though). And no Sunday dinner. However, they are going to be changing the food service next year. They haven’t announced what they’re going to do yet, but I’m pretty sure all of the proposed plans have extended meal hours.
-diversity: I have some black and Latina friends who have some real issues with diversity at the school and the fact that there’s no ethnic studies program, and they feel that Beloit doesn’t do enough to encourage diversity. I dunno, opinions are varied on this.

I think that pretty much covers it. I’m sure a lot of these are problems you’d find at any small liberal arts college, but there you have it. Again, I really do adore Beloit, but there are some aspects that are a bit frustrating.