University of Maryland, College Park

Location

Located between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, the University of Maryland offers students a suburban lifestyle within easy reach of big-city experiences. The flagship campus in College Park, which has its own subway stop on the D.C.-area Metro transit system, is often considered a commuter school. There are a lot of things to do as far as recreation is concerned. Southern Maryland has the Chesapeake Bay where there is fishing, crabbing, boating, jet skiing, windsurfing, and hunting. There are a lot of shopping malls, parks, and restaurants. Annapolis has a lot of night clubs and is close to Washington DC. The cost of living however is way too high.

Campus

Having a huge campus of 1250 acres, UMCP is known for its Red-brick Georgian buildings. The Center point for the university is a lawn called McKeldin Mall, the university with a spectacular number of 7500 trees on campus. The Mall houses the McKeldin Library (named after an ex-governor) which has a good collection of books and study space. The most popular Testudo statue, which as a tradition is touched for good luck, is placed right outside the library. The XFINITY Center is where great basketball games are played. Another stadium is the Capitol One field Stadium which is the older one and is used for smaller games. The University also has a beautifully designed auditorium called the Clarice Smith Performing Center with comfortable seating and acoustics with performances happening all year round.

Residing Options

The University of Maryland houses 40% students in college-owned housing and 60% live off campus. On-campus housing may cost about $12,000. Some of the popular places to live are Seven Springs, Paint Branch Trail and Graduate Hills (specifically accessible for graduate students). Dorms on campus are Allegany Hall, Baltimore Hall, Cambridge Hall, Charles Hall, Bel Air Hall, etc. Walking from the dorms to your class could take 10 minutes or 40 minutes depending on where your classes are. It's a huge campus! Apart from this, the living-learning programs allow students to live in the similar residential community. Off-campus housing can be found within the range of $750 to $1100 per month.

Faculty

Faculty to student ratio is 1:17 with total faculty and staff to be around 9000. The class sizes go from about 30 to 40. UMCP has been home to 4 Nobel Laureates who have been faculties. Students know the Sciences classes to be very hard and the English classes to be extremely delightful. Professors are known to be passionate about subject and teaching. Students find it very difficult to get good grades here and one needs to work very hard. Popular professors are Dr James Glass (Politics), Dr Eugenie Clark (Oceanography), etc.