university of vermont//burlington (credit, transfer, high school)

[turnyourback]

can someone tell me more about UVM and living in burlington in general? i've visited burlington many times and have loved it, but also know that visiting a place and living there are two very different things.

i would be transferring from a small (tiny) liberal arts school in the middle of the hudson valley, ny. very rural. little to do. i'm hoping UVM will be a change in that regard -- a bigger school with more majors and a bigger (although not huge) surrounding town.

i'm thinking about majoring in sociology and/or psychology, if anyone can tell me about those departments particularly.

another thing i'm wondering is actually about firearms -- does UVM have a no-firearms-on-campus policy? or is there campus carry? just curious

thank you!

[Dwatted Wabbit]

I can't say much about Burlington, I can say check carefully and get it in writing about transferring college credits.
Some institutions are OK with it, some very turfy and profit-motivated i.e. you wanna graduate? take it again here! attitude.
One of the schools I went to had that attitude, and I heard rafts of complaints. (Their registration process was also incredibly slow, inefficient, and frustrating. But that's another tale of woe.) They were very tight-arst about it and difficult to deal with.
Look before you leap.
Good luck.

[goatwoodward]

I double majored in psychology & sociology at UVM, so I can answer your questions. The psychology department takes itself a little too seriously for my liking, they spend so much of the intro classes telling us why psychology is a science, that I wondered who they were trying to convince. The sociology department is wonderful. If you have a chance to take classes with Brookes Cowan, Laurie Essig (who may have moved to a nearby college, I'm not sure), or Jeff Haig, go for it! They were my best professors ever. Steer away from Robbie Kahn, as all her classes (regardless of subject) devolve into discussions on childbirth, complete with videos. Also, Herb Leff's classes seemed a little wishy washy to me - too much feeling, not enough thinking.

So long as you realize that the rankings are biased by those who either loved or hated the profs, check out RateMyProfessors.com for more recommendations.

UVM does not allow firearms on campus. In fact, I think it's cause for arrest. There is a Shooting Club, but they maintain their guns at an off-campus storage facility. The rest of Burlington (if you rent) has pretty liberal gun policies, including concealed carry. Check out the laws before you do it though, as I'm not an expert.

You can get your transfer credits approved before you decide to transfer. Be sure that everything you think will transfer will transfer because no one wants to spend extra time at university, especially not one as expensive as UVM!

[turnyourback]

thanks so much for your reply! i'm glad the sociology department is good, as i hadn't heard anything about it until now.
i just sent my app in, so i'm pretty excited ... hopefully i'll hear in the beginning of may. i guess now's a bit too late to be asking, but just out of curiosity: is UVM a pretty easy school to transfer into? i'm coming from bard college, which is one of the few schools that is actually harder to transfer into than to get into straight from high school, so i was wondering if (hoping!) UVM is the opposite.

[vter]

Don't know anything about the psych or soc programs, but I'm a proud grad of UVM. I loved it there. Good luck!