Love For the Black and Gold

Introduction
There's a lot to do here. And by a lot, I mean everything. It's a big school, but that just means there are many more opportunities to make it smaller. I know they say you'll find your niche ad nauseum on their website, but it's true. Some of the clubs that myself and/or my friends are involved in: UMD Skydiving. Varsity Knitting, Scrabble club, various a capella groups and our campus radio station.

Campus Life and Social Life
On the weekends, I like to take the metro into DC. My friends and I will just hop on and go to Pentagon City, Georgetown, or wherever else. It's so close so you can decide fairly last-minute to go somewhere, within reason. There are a ton of parties. I don't personally go, but a few of my friends are really into the frat party scene and that's really active here. Sports are really big here. I play at the Football and Basketball games with the band...and the crowds are always filled for Football and most of the time for Basketball as well, especially the Duke game. Advertisement
Academics
We have a really great school of Journalism, which is one of the main reasons why I went here. As for the instructors, all of my TAs have been wonderful except for one, who I am going to talk to and see if he gets any better. But even though I'm a Freshman and I took 16 and 17 credits in my first two semesters respectively, I'm having a great time and I love all of my classes. I didn't just get stuck with crappy CORE requirements like some of my friends at other schools did. I didn't necessarily choose all of my classes: I took Soil and Environmental Quality first semester to get a non-lab Science done with and it was the only class that fit, but I ended up loving it.

Student Body
It's maybe not as diverse as they claim it is, but you will definitely meet a lot of people from various backgrounds. My hometown and high school were more or less a glass of milk but now at UMD, I have a lot of close friends who are not just like me.

In Closing...
The school spirit of Maryland is really contagious. When I was a prospective student, when I got on campus, plenty of students talked to me about different aspects of the school and almost all of them said "Here, let me write down my e-mail for you, and I hope you'll e-mail me if you have any questions!" There were only two schools I visited that were like that. Everyone else wants to be here, so it's hard to be unhappy!