Margaret -
07/16/2020If your parents have a lot of money to blow, and you don\'t know what you want to do with your life, sure, attend Rhodes. If either of those does not describe your current situation, LOOK ELSEWHERE. To address the money peice, Rhodes is OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive and I would argue that the school does NOT provide your money\'s worth in education and preparation for your future. All the administration cares about is money (do not let their instagram posts dissuade you of this fact). There are an outrageous amount of pre-requisites to graduate, which I used to think was valuable for a well-rounded education, but I now believe is a way to wrangle as much money out of its students as possible. For what I learned in my non-major classes in the liberal arts, I could have gotten the same information for the price of a couple of books and internet access. There is just no way that the value of the classes and the money you pay are in any way correlated or comparable, even at a deep discount.
Now, I do believe education is an investment and am under no delusions that it should be free. HOWEVER. Rhodes does next to nothing to help prepare students for life after college. The career services is so pitifully unequipped to help students land jobs. There are a few reasons for this - one being that many of the majors offered at Rhodes have no clear use in the real world. COUNTLESS of my peers graduated with degrees in anthropology, art, history, languages, etc. and were not advised or prepared that there is essentially no job market for these majors. Of course, it is not in Rhodes\' best interest to dissuade people from these majors, as I am sure they make up a large source of income (I bet there is a correlation between students paying full tuition and majoring in professionally-useless subjects). Now, what Rhodes COULD do to mitigate this issue is advise and inform students of the many job possibilities out there, help educate students on how to spin their experiences and interests into a job, etc...but this does not happen either. Even many people who had majors with more clear career paths or job opportunities (sciences, business, psychology) floundered after graduation. Let me rephrase: the number of of students that I graduated with who I have watched struggle to find a job, fiddle-fart around, \"study\" for the MCAT but actually just pivot to something easier, or just, like, move back with their rich parents is ASTOUNDING. A secondary impact of this phenomenon is that it does not provide a strong alumnae network, which theoretically is a key asset one hopes to have upon graduating college.
I can only conclude that Rhodes does not give two flying shits about the lives of its students once they graduate. All they care about is getting more students in the door, and more money in their pockets. If you do not already come from a wealthy family, I would strongly urge you to look elsewhere for your college education.
Now, if you do find yourself in the camp where your parents do have a lot of money and you don\'t know what to do with your life, Rhodes does have some great professors and courses. The Economics department in particular is great. The Business department is also pretty good, though the way the pre-requisites are structured essentially prohibits early graduation and is frustrating in other ways as well. I also had some great professors in English and Philosophy (though those departments are hit or miss).
So I\'ve touched on what I feel are the most important factors in choosing a college - investing in your future. There are other secondary/supplementary factors, that I will touch on now. 1) Greek life is out of control. As a former participant in Greek life myself, it truly felt like that circle was all the social life that existed at Rhodes. I saw sororities and fraternities turn students into different people - worse people. Which, actually, 2) is an effect of the Rhodes culture as a whole. There are many old-money southerners at this school. If you are not one, you pretend to be one; and if you don\'t want to pretend to be one, you\'re outcast. Either way, it brings out the worst in people. There were peers that I loathed because they truly were not good people in college, who appear to have outgrown this phase in adulthood. But nonetheless, four years on Rhodes campus filled with pretty shitty people can be demoralizing. 3) On-campus housing is really awful your first two years, yet they still charge you exorbinantly for it. The food is really, really bad. 4) Essentially no sports (technically there are sports, but there is little excitement or investment in them). 5) Memphis is OK. There are some cool/cute spots and it improved signficantly over the time period I was there, but I would not choose to spend another 4 years there.
Rhodes has also become increasingly political, which I find unfortunate.
Aja -
01/26/2020I really like Rhodes. It's very small, which can be both a positive and a negative. It doesn't take long to know/recognize the majority of people in your grade, so it often feels like everybody knows everything about everyone. But the positive side is that it's easy to make friends/friendgroups because you'll get to know someone and then realize they're friends with your other friends. Which is great. The class sizes are small and the professors are accessible. Most of my professors have been great, I had one that was not great but she was also not soul-crushingly terrible. I would say it's rare to have a truly bad professor. The classes challenged me in a way that I did not anticipate as Rhodes was originally one of my "safety" schools. Greek life has a huge presence on campus, but I would say it's not as intimidating or shallow as joining a sorority or frat at a big state school is. It won't make or break your time here. For me, being in a sorority has been more empowering than anything. Overall, I would recommend this school.
Sam -
02/27/2019Rhodes is overall a great school. Great academics with great professors and lots to get involved in on campus. However, like any higher-ed institution nowadays, there is an extreme lack in political viewpoint diversity. In my experience, this makes it very hard to be able to openly and honestly express one's conservative opinions (or even moderate/slightly-right-of-center). The students at Rhodes are very politically active, which is great, but sometimes they are too quick to name-call and shoot down genuine, good-faith ideas that might be presented - instantly labelling others as "racist", "misogynistic", etc. I find this to be disheartening at such a great academic institution, where freedom of speech and opinion should be embraced for all, not just the left. But, I guess thats kinda the norm everywhere now, so what can you do.