Boston University students complained that the various schools and colleges on campus lack a sense of connection and inter-accessibility despite the fact they all are part of the university as a whole.
Transferring from one school to another or taking classes in a school other than one’s own often proves to be somewhat of a Herculean effort involving extensive paperwork and administrative approval, students said.
According to the BU website, the only requirements to transfer to the College of Arts and Sciences are “a 2.30 GPA, good academic standing in your current school, and at least one full-time semester with 12 or more credits in a degree program at your current school.”
However, many students report having encountered a significant amount of difficulty transferring from one school to another.
“I have friends who tried to transfer from one school to another, and they made it sound like a huge pain,” said CAS freshman Ethan Marsh.”I actually don’t know if they’ve succeeded.”
Likewise, CAS freshman Sarah Marquez said that she had many friends who experienced difficulties in the transfer process.
“I have friends who tried to switch from [the School of Hospitality Administration] to [the College of Communication] and who complained about how complicated it was,” she said.
Some students said they have been able to skip around from school to school with no difficulty.
“When I was in CAS, I took classes in [the Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences], and then eventually switched over to Sargent,” said sophomore Nicole Elise Ouellette. “It was easy to switch. The people were all really friendly.”
SAR junior Vijeta Limbekar also said her switch from CAS to SAR was relatively painless.
“It’s not difficult,” she said. “I just talked to an advisor, wrote an essay, and that was pretty much it.”
Other students said it is too difficult to take a class in a school or college other than the one they are enrolled in.
CAS freshman Marina Krykbaeva said she wanted to take a beginning photography class in COM, but was unable to due to the rigid registration structure.
“I had to wait two weeks to register while all the COM students registered for their classes, so by the time I could, the class was full,” she said.
Though Marsh takes classes in College of Fine Arts, he agreed it was difficult to enroll.
“I’m in CAS, but I take CFA classes,” he said. “There are classes for non-CFA kids but they fill up really fast.”
Registration requirements vary from school to school and registration priorities differ depending on the college in which a student is enrolled.
CAS freshman Ayelet Wachs Cashman said in addition to colleges lacking connectivity, she found it regrettable that students solely in CAS were so separate.
“Other schools have formals and other events, but CAS doesn’t have anything for its students, which makes it hard for people to get to know each other,” she said. “That’s probably because it is so big; there are too many people.”
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
