Brigham Young University-Provo Top Questions

It is extremely competitive. It is nice because it pushes you to be a better person, but sometimes school work is very challenging.

The most frustrating thing is being a minority. BYU is in Provo, Utah and somtimes it can be difficult to be a minority. There are times when people are stuck on certain views with being LDS but there are the people who are more liberal (can still be a conservative liberal) and be more accepting of certain opinions.

Sometimes the feeling of jumping into a relationship is annoying. Most people here want to get married and it's common for people to assume you want a serious relationship with them if you act interested as a friend, which isn't true lots of the time.

How expensive on-campus housing and meal plans are.

Probably the most frustrating thing at my school is that, as a Male LDS member, we are expected to serve missions for our church at the age of 18 and those of us who haven't gone are somewhat ostracized. The constant question of when we're gonna go is always coming out of someone's lips when the answer to that question is always, I'm not going to go. There is too much of an expectation of the men having to serve a mission, when in reality it is not required.

Certain exams seem to reflect exam-taking skill more than knowledge adquired.

lack of diversity

The most frustrating thing about BYU is the incessant public display of affection. Especially during the springtime, everyone is romancing about all over campus. This is largely due to the “find your mate ASAP” attitude that prevails in the LDS culture.

The only thing that frustrated me with my school is in your first year you have to do this Freshman Mentoring program. I hated it because if forced you to take First-Year Writing and American Heritage your first year. I had already fulfilled the writing requirement with AP tests so I didn't have to take that class, but I had to take American Heritage. I absolutely HATED that class, so much so that my performance in it was horrible and now I have to retake it eventually. It's the worst class EVER.

The most frustrating thing to me was that your grade is very much based on your test scores. Classes have a lot of students in them and so the grade must be based on your test scores. I am not a very good test taker and so I consequently did not excell in my classes like I would have liked to. That was very difficult for me.

What was frustrating to me was how competative some of the students are. All they care about is getting a good grade for graduate and/or professional school. I wish they cared a little more about learning the subject. Their competative natures led them to complain about assignments and tests that the professors would give. The assignments and tests were meant to show how much we learned. The competative students wanted a good grade for the least amount of work possible.

BYU has strict policies, which are wonderful to keep standards high, but can sometimes be annoying.

Grading curves.

so many awesome opportunities you can't do them all

They take the best A students from all around, shove them in classes together, and then curve the grades giving grades A through E. So if you are not the best of the best (even though you are smart and hard-working) you only get average grades.

I would probably say the high academic stress that is present. The type of students that attend BYU are very dedicated to learning and doing their very best, so there is a lot of pressure to do extremely well academically. This is a good thing, but it can be frustrating when you feel like all you do is study and have little time to have a social life. This school is definitely a social bouncing place, however, the pressure to excell is always there.

Science tests can be intense an often last over 3 hours.

The politics of the school. The heirarchy of the school makes it so hard to get anywhere. I feel lost most of the time but I don't know where to ask for help.

The most frustrating thing at BYU is the lack of diversity. I feel that a lot of the people here are exactly the same, and it's hard to make friends sometimes or meet people who are different. A lot of the people here feel like clones of each other, all coming from sheltered Mormon homes. I myself am Mormon, but I feel the people here take our religion to an extreme level, one that even I'm not comfortable with.

The financial aid department is very unorganized. They require you apply for their financial aid, drag you out, and then after a couple of months, you ask them and they say there is no financial aid available. It's been extremely discouraging.