Speak Up for Hofstra!

moxiemaya
Tue, 10 May 2011 13:45:57 +0000

I’m a freshman at Hofstra, and I cannot wait to leave this place because…


Public safety is a JOKE. This school is in the middle of the ghetto. I was walking to Dutch Treats (a convenience store on campus) alone one night and was chased down by two men. Luckily, I reached the emergency call thing before they caught up with me, and public safety came to “help”. They did not believe that I had been chased, and tried to write me up for pressing the button when I was not in need of help. Ridiculous.
I graduated from high school with a 4.5/5.0, a 2240 SAT, and a National Achievement Award (like National Merit for African-American students). I was accepted to UCLA, but decided to take a gap year instead and turned them down. When I got home, I realized that I wanted to go to school on the east coast, and Hofstra was the only school still accepting applications at the time. I have a very good scholarship here, but that is the only good part of attending this school. The students and professors are sub-par. Of the 9 professors I’ve had so far, 7 of them really had no idea what they were talking about. My classes were excessively boring and few of them covered material that was relevant to the subject. I got through these classes without any effort, while my peers struggled to get by. I’ve found that most students here lack basic skills and intelligence, and I’m shocked that most of them even graduated from high school.
If you dorm here, and you don’t have a car, you’re life will suck. Hofstra offers an “entertainment” bus that goes to the mall, grocery store, Target, etc. only on the weekends. There are buses that go to the train station everyday, but the train stations aren’t particularly close to anything. Since I’m from California and didn’t drive my car all the way out here, I’m pretty much trapped on campus unless I can convince a friend with a car to take me somewhere.
The dorms are horrible. The elevators in my building are almost always broken. I’ve been trapped inside of one of them before. The rooms and the furniture are in terrible shape. The bathroom floods regularly.
The administration is incredibly unhelpful. When I was applying to transfer, I had to get some forms signed and filled out by my counselor. She told me she wasn’t the person who was supposed to send them, and sent me off to another office where I was told the same thing. I went to 4 different places before I was told that my counselor was, indeed, the person that needed to fill the forms out. It took her 4 weeks to do something that shouldn’t have taken more than 1 day. I had to request my transcripts to be sent 3 times before they were actually sent out.
Hempstead is not close to New York City. If you’re coming here because you think you’ll have easy access to the city, think again. You will need to wait for a bus on campus, then wait for the train, then take the train to the city. This will take anywhere from 1.5-2 hours depending on which train you take. Also, Hofstra buses to go two nearby stations, but only during certain hours. If you take the wrong train home, you’ll be waiting at the train station for hours before a bus comes (or you’ll just have to take a taxi).


I think that about sums it up… Hofstra is not an Ivy in any way, shape, or form, nor will it ever be close to that. If you’re not getting a full-ride here, consider a state school which will probably be cheaper and offer you a much better education.