Fendi, Mercedes, the beach.... oh, and the school!!

Introduction
I was very happily surprised when I came here because it looks just like a resort. Everyone pretty much looks like they are going to the beach so it felt pretty resorty.Coral Gables is an amazing area, very upscale, really safe, there’s a lot to do, a lot of restaurants and it’s pretty easy to get around. The weather is typically going to stay gorgeous and 75 and sunny. It pretty much doesn’t rain except for in the fall. You could probably go to the beach every day if you wanted to. I have not been through a hurricane that has been horrible. We had a lot of scares last year, but we pretty much just stayed in the dorms and weathered it out.
The typical student at Miami carries a designer bag, wears heels to class, very trendy. But there is a different population of students, the more academic ones. There seems to be a split between the typical student and the one who is here for academics. You can classify the typical UM students as from NY drives a BMW or Mercedes and has a Fendi bag attached to her hip. In the the typical class you can have someone sweatpants and flip flops to dressed up like they are about to go to South Beach. It depends on what there reasons where for coming here.

Campus Life and Social Life
People are definitely friendly here. Everyone is very welcoming. People here are very outgoing so you meet a lot of people your freshman year. I have a great group of core friends. We met on the floor of our residential college and we live together now. We have a club on campus called LINK, it just tells you about different volunteer opportunities in the area, so I go to that every week and we do different things like fun day. Or we go to downtown Miami and help kids at middle schools.Places to hang out would definitely be the Grove. You can find anything you want there, if you want to go shopping, if you want to go to great bars. For more low-key you can go to Sunset Plaza, it’s more shopping for kids that don’t drink as much. I live off campus in a house with 3 other girls. They are all my sorority sisters and it’s probably the best living situation I’ve ever had.I lived in the freshman dorms, there were 40 girls on the floor and it was awesome. Tell every freshman to live in the dorms because it is a great experience. I miss it a lot actually. Me and my roommate were completely different, we were total opposites but we got along perfectly.I’ve heard our school has a reputation for being a party school, but we don’t really have any on campus parties. They are really strict about having alcohol at the dorms. There’s definitely a division between South Beach people and The Grove people. If you’re underage you probably want to go to the Grove. In the Grove you know everyone at the bar because you go to school with them. UM has definitely gotten a lot stricter since I got here. It seems like a lot of things you could get away with last year you can’t at all anymore. They are tightening up academics and the alcohol scene on campus and trying to make it more of a prestigious school instead of a party school. Advertisement
Academics
I am studying accounting and economics, I am a double major. We have a very broad undergraduate program, so in the school of business you have to take core classes, so I can kind of decide from there what I liked. So I didn’t have to declare a major until this year. Class is not really the main focal point here for students, they either are dressing to go out later or dressed because they were out earlier. You dress to impress when you go to class. I’ve heard rumors that it used to be called Suntan U. Since I’ve been here the academics have been very difficult. It is a really demanding academic program. A lot of people do skip class to go to the beach or go to the pool. More of the lecture hall scene just has the bad professors that are trying to weed people out. I haven’t had any personal bad experience. I have had far more good teachers than bad here. The professors in the science dept. are very much into getting people out of it who don’t need to be, who aren’t up to their standards. Going to class for me depends on the weather honestly. I go to my major classes but the lecture halls I don’t go to more than once a week. We are a very opinionated school, so kids use class as a forum to get their opinions out. So it almost always turns into a political debate. All my professors I’ve met in my major know me by name and if they see me will stop to say hello. We have a great career center and we have a site online that will tell you about internship opportunities.

Student Body
Food here is horrible. I would just choose not to eat rather than go to the dining halls because the food is just tasteless and it’s pretty much the same every day. I spent a lot of money eating out at restaurant. But I would do anything to avoid eating at Truffles. You have to eat off campus on Friday, Saturday, Sunday because the dining halls close at 7. Freshman year I spent a lot of time at Cheesecake Factory. The cost of eating off campus is a little steep just because of the area that we live in. It’s more upscale.

In Closing...
I do a lot of intramurals and I go to the wellness center a lot. I also do UM equestrian team. It’s easy to get into intramurals and this information about it. Football games are amazing it’s probably one of my favorite times of the year. It’s an all day event and it’s something that I don’t mind doing all day. Tailgating is a lot of fun. That’s one of the things they’ve gotten a lot stricter about. And they were people with kegs in the parking lot, but now you’ve got to have wristbands and there are undercover cops.