I am only giving a rating of 2 stars because of th...

I am only giving a rating of 2 stars because of the social atmosphere. The social atmosphere is great: football games, plenty of activities to be found, friends are easy to make, etc. It's definitely a great place to discover who you are as an individual and what your interests are. Other than that, the academics (especially in the Eberly College of Science) are horrendous. Classes are entirely too big (even as you advance in your major, you will still be in big lecture halls), the majority of professors do not care about undergraduates (they would rather put their attention to their research and oftentimes will act nasty/apathetic towards students should you ask for help), active learning and critical thinking is not fostered in the majority of classes (your grade is based on exams that assess your ability to memorize insignificant details, not how you critically assess and apply your knowledge), and many of the advisers do not do their job of helping students transition into their major and provide guidance along the way. Many of the lab classes are based on outdated curriculum that bear very little coherence to classroom material (for example, doing an entire half semester's worth of work on siRNA in plants when we only spent 10 minutes talking about that in class) and many students leave class very confused about what is even going on in their experiments. There is too much emphasis on General Education requirements and not enough on classes within the major. For example, I wanted to take a Human Genetics class but sadly I could not because I did not have room in my schedule, as I was required to take a tedious English class (which focused on common-sense everyday things that one already knows [i.e. how to properly format margins, how to format web pages to make them aesthetic, etc.]). While I was there, I studied typically 5-6 hours everyday and tried to reach out to professors for help when I did not comprehend something. I would say approximately 70% of the time, I was met with condescending remarks and nasty/apathetic attitudes from professors. For all the money the school generates through research, you'd think they would invest more in their students with better facilities and instruction/curriculum. Sadly, they don't. Do yourself a favor: if you're out-of-state and are looking to major in science, do not waste more than $36K a year to attend this school. Education is meant to foster learning, critical thinking, and application of knowledge to real-life scenarios. Penn State Eberly College of Science fails to do this.