Aubrey Carr
Google
I cannot speak for the undergraduate school, but I was extremely disappointed with the faculty and graduate program overall. I felt I was deliberately set up for failure and misled about the supports I would receive. My advisor repeatedly failed to show for meetings and left emails partially answered if she replied at all, as though she could not be bothered to read through my questions and thoughts. She gave substantial feedback on my full thesis only after my defense. My program director openly insulted my intelligence during my thesis presentation and added assignments to her classes without updating the syllabi (she had emailed. I had contacted student services prior to the beginning of the year to update my email, but communications went to an inbox I can no longer access all the same. I frequently was left off of email communications from the school.). We were assured that AUR has internship connections around the world, only to find out halfway through the program that we were responsible for securing our own internships and that AUR couldn't do much for us outside of Rome. The one internship AUR offered which was connected to my thesis topic went to another student who was studying something else. We were discouraged from utilising the Career and Internships Office to help find leads. I chose a small university in the hope that I would not be lost in a crowd, that I would be supported and guided in the research process. I was not anticipating conducting research entirely independently, at a school that doesn't even provide access to most online databases and doesn't publish theses. What a waste of $20k. I am, frankly, surprised that AUR has accreditation. I urge anyone contemplating graduate school to investigate thoroughly his program of choice and not merely take it at its word. I should note that there are a handful of absolutely wonderful staff and faculty, without whom I would have lost all hope in the very institution of academia. My deepest thanks go out to them for getting me through the day on my darkest ones.