Ramapo College Review

Introduction
I chose this school because of the atmosphere. It's a smaller college, so most of your professors learn who you are really quickly, especially if you have them more than once, which happens a lot for the classes you take for your major. The campus is beautiful and the number of students who live on campus is relatively small, so you get to know a lot of people. The classes are small, so if you are looking for huge classes in lecture halls, this is not the college for you. But if you like the kind of atmosphere where everyone knows everyone else, then this is deffinetly a college to check out.

Campus Life and Social Life
Ramapo is pretty much a suitcase school, so on the weekends it can be kind of dull. But this year I got lucky and most of my friends are around on the weekends. The parties are fun, you just have to know where to go. I'm not really into the sports program at our school, but basketball seems to be really big. There are also plenty of clubs to join, if you can fit it into your schedule. I work two part time jobs as well as go to school full time, so I didn't really have time for that. I commuted for a semester when I was starting here, and that made it a lot harder for me to meet people. So I would deffinetly reccommend living on campus, at least for your first year. Advertisement
Academics
I'm a communications major, and I would have to say that for the most part that department is pretty good. We have a lot of equiptment available to students, including DV cameras, a MAC lab with programs like Final Cut Pro and Photoshop, and a television studio. Some of my professors have been great and have really taught me a lot, while with others I have felt like I didn't learn anything in the class. The workload can really vary too. I usually take 4 or 5 classes a semester, and I can usually keep up with the work for those classes. It just gets harder to finish projects when you have to reserve time in the editing labs. Some of the required classes can seem really repetative after a while, because you are basically learning the same material over and over. Also sometimes it seems like teachers think that their class is the only one you are taking and tend to pile on the work. But for the most part, the workload is average. Also I would reccommend meeting with your advisor. Mine helped me out with scheduling and giving me a better idea of what classes would be best for me. The advisors can usually be pretty helpful, and if your's isn't you can always switch. My first advisor didn't help me at all, so I asked one of my professors to help me out.

Student Body
The typical Ramapo student is from New Jersey, but as far as other similarities, I think it just depends on who you hang out with. Most of my friends are communications majors, and we are into movies, television, filming, stuff like that. There are a lot of different groups of people, probably the same variety as you would find on most college campuses. There are frat guys and sorority girls, there are athlets, people who are into partying and people who aren't. No matter what you are into, you could probably find people who share your intrests on this campus.

In Closing...
Some people feel that going to Ramapo is like an extended high school, because of the size. But I like the smaller size of the school, and the fact that just walking around campus I could run into people that I know.