Oh, the college visit, where young freshmen-to-be are introduced to the "cool" professors who hold their classes outside, the "nice" cafeteria with its taco nights and baked-potato bar, the "down-to-earth" kid who has figured out how to balance school, social life and the rowing team (he also belongs to some frat and plays piano), and, of course, the gorgeous neo-Gothic (or neoclassical, or Federal-style, or something particularly uppity-sounding) architecture of what you will declare to be your future campus.
They don't tell you the truth about college. That cool professor? Fired for smoking pot with his students. The nice cafeteria? There's an apple Nazi ready to pounce at the door if you carry your fresh fruit with you out of the building. The kid who seems to have it all figured out? He doesn't exist. The architecture? Well, the architecture is real, but you'll never have class in one of those gorgeous buildings. Instead, you'll find yourself 99.7 percent of the time inside a 1970s concrete monstrosity with mustard-yellow walls and no windows.
Sure, buildings are just buildings, and schools should be judged not by their architecture alone but by the level of thought that emanates from their walls. Still, there are some really ugly campuses out there, and we took to the Internet (our days of college visits are long over) to find them.
Here are ten of the ugliest/wackiest/huh? college campuses in America.
10. Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
9. California State Polytechnic University, Pomona campus
8. University of Illinois, Chicago
7. University of Texas at Dallas
6. University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth
5. University of Massachusetts-Amherst
4. Harvey Mudd College
3. University of California-Irvine
2. University of New Mexico
1. Anything SUNY
