Local Atmosphere

The Virginia Highlands is a community of bars and stores that attracts a crowd of thirty-something yuppies destined for the corporate world. Little Five Points and East Atlanta are historically funkier than the rest of Atlanta, and are home to the best bars. Buckhead and Midtown draw a mixed crowd depending on which bar or club you go to—bars are constantly being made over so the scene is always in flux. I have a membership to the High Museum and it has been the biggest waste of moneythis year—the permanent collection is average and the visiting collections are not especially impressive. Atlanta does not have a particularly strong expression of or appreciation for the fine arts—sthe ymphony struggles and the opera is a joke.

Nightlife

If you don’t have a fake ID, get one immediately. Most clubs separate the 18- and 21-year-olds in order to keep younger kids from drinking. I would get a good fake too, as lots of places will take your ID if it sucks. And don’t try to fake a Georgia license, either. Unfortunately for the younger crowd, Atlanta recently changed a lot of its clubs from 18-and-up to 21-and-up only. Still, this is a great time to be down here because ATL is such an up-and-coming city.

Off-Campus Dining

Just across the street from the entrance of campus is an area called Emory Village that has a number of restaurants including Everybody's Pizza, Saba (a pasta place), and Doc Chey's Noodle House. All three are really good and reasonably priced. With the availability of cabs and public transit, it's also easy to get off campus and go into Atlanta for dinner, where the possibilities are essentially endless.

Off-Campus Housing

Off-campus living can be fun, but it can also be harder to handle than you might think. When you live on campus you pay everything ahead of time, so you never have to worry about bills or rent. Off-campus, you have to keep your own place clean, pay utilities, set up a phone and Internet line, etc. Sometimes people spend a year off campus and then return.

Overall Experience

I am very grateful that I came here for a number of reasons. The education and recognition worldwide cannot be beat, the school is fun and interesting, and the people are great. Where else can you come back from a 400-level Psych class and watch Outkast perform at a stage on campus? The opportunities afforded by this school are immense.

Parking

Freshmen can't have cars at Emory, but it's pretty useless as everything you need as a freshman is on campus. If you really have the urge to go off campus, you can use an Emory shuttle to get to the mall, grocery store, or weekend hangout spots. If not, you can always ask an upperclassman friend, or grab a Zipcar, which is a car-sharing program that gives a discounted rate for all Emory students. If you must bring a car, parking on campus is incredibly expensive at more than $600/year, and you are only allowed to park in the parking garage to which you are assigned at the beginning of the year.

Safety & Security

Most students are surprised at how bad some of the doctors are in the Student Health Services. It seems like they really don’t care about you sometimes. Still, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else if something bad happened to me, as Emory has an amazing hospital system.

Academics

There’s the good and the bad. I’ve had teachers say, ‘If you have questions, come to office hours, stop by if I’m in my office, call, e-mail, stop me on campus and I’ll help you right then and there,’ and they will. Then there are the professors who don’t get the point across and don’t care. But I’ve had more good than bad. The same goes for classes. Emory has a lot of requirements for the liberal arts degree, so you most likely will have to take some classes that you really don’t want to.

Athletics

Some of the teams are very successful here, yet no one seems to care. IM sports garner more interest than Varsity. For instance, people read a weekly ranking of IM teams with more excitement than any report of Varsity sports.

Campus Dining

The main dining hall is located in the Dobbs University Center, and the quality of food is typical of most university dining halls; however, they offer a number of different options, and are sensitive to the diversity of dietary lifestyles on campus. Some people prefer Cox Hall because it operates like a small food court, with chain-style dining, and has a regular crowd of Cox-rats, making it a social scene more than a dining facility. The restaurant Caffè Antico caters the museum café, and a lot of faculty dine here, and the food is pretty good but overpriced. I rarely eat on campus because it is such an ordeal to avoid the scene.

Campus Housing

Right now, Emory is spending significant amounts of money in revamping its housing situation. 2008 saw the introduction of two great freshmen dorms. These new dorms are to be followed with an entire freshman dorm complex over the next two years. Also, the Clairmont campus, usually reserved for upperclassmen, has been opened to sophomores and above. Often described as a resort on campus, the Clairmont housing complex is beautiful and well-equipped. Many of the older dorms on campus have been torn down in recent years and are in the process of being replaced, though many buildings such as the Clifton Towers are still relics of the past.

Campus Strictness

I would say that this school is pretty average for strictness. The cops and people in charge are not too strict, but not too lax either. It’s better than some other schools for certain things like bringing guests in dorms, and if need be, it is pretty easy to flee from the cops as the campus is big and not car-friendly.

Computers

Cox Hall has a really, really nice, super high-tech computer lab with meeting rooms fully wired with the lastest AV equipment for small groups to meet in and classrooms with similarly high-tech equipment for larger groups and review sessions. It's usually busy but rarely crowded. The whole campus is wireless, and the connection is pretty good.

Diversity

This school pretends to be diverse, but hardly anyone mixes into other groups. If you are black and you join a white sorority or fraternity, then the other black students will not respect you as much. There are all-black fraternities and sororities and there are Jewish frats and sororities.

Drug Scene

I had an RA and SA who let us smoke and drink in our dorm room when I was a freshman. Then again, there were some RAs who patrolled the halls every weekend trying to bust people. This campus is pretty liberal as a whole, so people seem to feel free to smoke pot in public places sometimes, and everyone drinks.

Facilities

The DUC is mostly only used for dining, but there are study areas and club meeting areas as well. The library has everything you could ever need, including eight floors of books, a Music & Media floor with current movies to rent, study rooms that groups can reserve, and endless computers, including PCs and Macs. There's also a 24-hour coffee place in the basement for late-night studying. Cox Hall also has a computer lab with a more relaxed atmosphere and plenty of resources, including SmartBoards for study groups to use and computers with video and photo editing software.

Greek Life

Emory has cracked down hard on Greek life recently. The new GLA points system limits how many parties a fraternity can throw per semester, the Row is now off limits to freshmen until after fall break, and a couple of fraternities have been kicked off campus. There are so many rules that have to be followed now that throwing an on-campus party is no longer fun—it's just a huge liability. You can't have music after 2 a.m., there's no liquor allowed at all, and if any freshman gets in trouble for drinking and says what house they were at, that fraternity gets in trouble. Rush is 100 percent dry, and Emory actually called the cops when it got word of an APES rush event off campus this year. I would seriously reconsider before you pledge a fraternity at Emory now.

Guys & Girls

The guys tend to be more easy-going but with a large population from the North. The northern dominance is also present for the girls, who are less easy-going and tend not to be very attractive. Many of the students come from a higher-income family and feel the need to show it, which gets annoying.

Transportation

People rag on MARTA, but it can take you anywhere you need to go. People at Emory are just too stuck-up to take public transportation. There are bus stops everywhere around campus, and they can easily take you to the train stops. From there you can get anywhere in Atlanta.

Weather

I love the weather here! The winter is short; spring is beautiful, especially on Emory’s campus; summer is blazing hot but the pool scene is great; and the fall is gorgeous as well. This city gets a full four seasons—something you can’t say about most hot-weather cities.