I am going to be moving up to Flint in the beginning of October to attend Kettering and was just wondering if you guys had any advice for me. Just stuff like is there emmisions? whats the deal with tint? any areas to stay away from? any local show/cruise ins? how picky are the police? anything else you think might be helpful to a newbie I would appreciate.

 

Flint cruise/Virgil's is usually pretty good on nice nights. Sometimes it blows though and cops everywhere.

 

Like every body said Flints a $&*$hole BUT! with your fl tags you shouldnt have any problems with the tint. You also got a rundown of the how each side of town is. I grew up on the east side and let me tell ya its not a place you really want to hang out unless your really good friends with some one from there. ( I dont go back much) The emmisions is just like they said but your not going to find a shop thats going to remove your cats for you eather. ya they might be around but unless you know them forget it. Kettering is a very nice school and yes its in the hood but its still a decent area as long as you stay close to the school. go more than about 4 blooks and its bad. Theres alot of bars Celibrations isnt that far from the school and theres a couple of others but you'll learn that from everybody at school. might want to check into the ccw in florida I dont know how old you have to be there but I know we aloow people with fl licences to carry here (change your mind yet?) Its a nice school my niece was accepted this year but shes not sure what she wants to do so shes not going (shes a blonde what can I say)

 

The exception to the tint rule is that if your car is plated from another state, you are exempt from this law.

Keep your FL plate on, and you can tint to your hearts desire. That doesn't mean that you will not get pulled over, so you better not have anything in the car that you aren't supposed to.

The out of state exempt is fact, not something I heard from someone else.

Flint is no different than anyone else. Someone disrespects you, blast him in the mouth & then get the hell out of there before his friends get there

 

Thanks for all the info, I wasn't planning on bringing the Z, I have a 1988 Silverado thats getting an LS-1 to make the trip. Do they plow the roads well enough so that I can get away with that in the winter with some snow tires?

Tint shop here I come.

 

Any amount of tint on side windows is illegal in Michigan, an amount of rear window tint is legal. It doesn't matter how your car is plated, they can give you a ticket. Flint cops, won't, they don't care. The only way you would be ticketed is if you are already being pulled over for something else. ALL of the towns around Flint have police w/o much to do. They will pull you over for anything and everything. With that said I have 50% tint on my side windows...

A 2-wheel drive pick-up sucks nearly as much as an F-body unless you have some tread and some weight in the bed. With that said I have driven my F-body in the snow, they clear the roads off pretty quick. Oops, I forgot, they don't clear the roads in Genesee County, they do where I live.

Flint used to be a nice city... it hasn't been for a long time. It has one of the highest crime rates per capita in the country. Just know where not to hang out.

Brian

 

Any amount of tint is illegal if your car is MICHIGAN plated. Yes, they can certainly write you the ticket, but you WILL beat it in court. I just went to court on this, as the State cop wrote me a ticket, even though I was exempt because of the Dr's prescription. I beat the ticket.

If you get your windows tinted, and you get pulled over up here, roll down your windows, before the cop even gets out of his car, turn on the interior lights (if it's dark), and keep your hands where they can be easilly seen. This respect for the officer will go a long way.

See ya when you get here. Good luck.

 

Not true. Mine got chopped off at Muffler Man on the Davison Rd. Check them out, there good people.

 

I wouldn't advertise that for Muffler Man... big fines if they get caught (they do that type of work though).

The Michigan law is 4" of tint on passenger and front window. This is a state law. 20% is quite dark... Limo tint is 5%, SUV are 17%. The % is the amount of light transmission... Seems backwards to me, but the lower the number the darker. Here's a web site that goes thru tint laws. I'm not discouraging getting tint, but it is illegal.

http://doityourselfwindowtinting.com/tintlaws.htm

Brian

 

Anything goes on the back, 4" down on the front.

 

Black Sunshine- You mentioned you had a Dr.'s Prescription. How difficult was that to come by? I have heard from a lawyer friend that a Dr's Prescription stating you need tint - is the only legal way to have tint on the driver and passenger windows.

 

As an ex prisoner... I mean student at Kettering, my opinion would be to go to a different school. If you have your heart set on kettering read no farther, get 400lbs of weight for the rear of your truck and some snow tires. There are pleanty of empty parking lots around the school to practice on. Just follow the guys like me who'd go out there just for fun

Yes the co-op program is cool, and can be a great thing, if you get a good employer, or any employer for that matter. One of the reasons I left was because there were less than half the number of jobs available as there were students looking for jobs. Don't be fooled when the school rep says that they find you a job, they don't, they put on job fairs and its a free-for-all at that point. The last one I went to, the only reason GM showed up was because they used to own the scool. They were not hiring.

As for the education, it's not any better than any state run school, probably worse. The admin, headed by the pres is eating away at the school like cancer. There is a million dollar fence around the new playing fields (that did just fine without one) while the class rooms/ academic building need serious upgrades in every area. More and more of the staff has a hard time understanding/ speaking english, and the ones that do are being asked to spend less time devoted to the students and more towards research anyway (no help to you as a student, which is why you are going to school in the first place). Don't get me wrong, there are a number of great teachers there, but they are slowly retireing/ moving away/ being pink slipped and being replaced with ppl who are perhaps experts in their fields, but aren't good teachers.

Sorry for the long post, but I thought I'd take off the rosy glasses they handed you when you applied/ toured the place.


-Steve

PS the food at the cafateria blows ***.

 

I also attended Kettering for 2 years of my life. The educational experience was one of the worst choices I have ever made in my life. They teach you NOTHING that you use for ANYTHING. Lets add up the facts:


1) $20,000 per year just in tuition. And that was when I left, it has probobly gone up since. Add $4000 or so in room, board, and living expenses, and you're up to $24,000 a year. Dont fool yourself into believing your co-op, if you are one of the rare individuals that even GET one... will pay for anything near that. My co-op paid for living expenses and half of room and board for the year, it didnt even touch tuition. I have friends that go there, working 60+ hours a week at their co-ops during work term, and about 40 hours a week + 16 credit hours during school, and they still fall thousands behind on their tuition each year.

2) Overall TERRIBLE academic experience. There are a few good professors, but easily 95% of them either dont speak much english or have no clue how to teach. Many are a combination of both. In my 2 years there, I had one professor I would consider "quality", and he tought economics, Prof. Wing. They are lying through their teeth when they say that school will give you a good education.

3) 93% male. My class was ~320 guys, and ~24 girls, over half of which dropped out after their first term. 2/3 of the rest... well, I would be stretching to call them completely female... there were 2 or 3 hot girls in the whole class. And you didnt want to be with them because Kettering gives them the attitude that they are gods, cuz they can have ANYONE they want. After a term there, I was looking at women that I considered hidious before the term... thinking... "well, she isnt lookin that bad..."

4) STRESS!!! The classes are almost impossible without devoting your life and all that you are to studying. I managed a 3.2 grade point average in high school, and I was unable to complete a single term without dropping or failing at least one class. I miserably failed so many classes it would make you cringe. And I tried HARD. I studied more than I've ever done for anything in my life. If you did not make 4.0's in high school, and if you dont have the work ethic to study for 4-6 hours a day, you dont have a prayer at graduating. I have seen so many people go through that school, they start out happy and upbeat, and through the months and years, it tears you down, your personality is destroyed, you forget how to relate with people, many people lose their hair and go bald, I have seen more people become alcoholics than in anything else I've ever seen, and there has been more than one suicide in the past 10 years. If you value your life or the lives of your loved ones, I beg you, do NOT go to this school. I'm begging you. For the love of god do not go. Seriously.

5) Over half the people that graduate either cant, or dont end up working in an engineering field, their degree is wasted, and they dont care, because engineering as a field is one of the greatest hoaxes I've ever seen. I know close to a hundred engineers, and 1 or 2 of them are happy with their jobs. You dont make crap for income, you get worked to hell, and its extremely stressful.

6) Lets add up the math here. Lets say you do get a co-op, and it covers your living expenses, car payments, and room and board, so you only go down $20,000 a year. And lets live in a dream world and say tuition is frozen at that level and isnt increasing dramatically each year. (hah!) 5 years, and you are $100,000 in debt. Lets say there is 8.25% interest. Now lets exaggerate and say the average engineer makes $60,000 a year. First of all, you work about 60 hours a week to get this sort of income, so you have ZERO time to enjoy life, and second of all, you are taxed what, 40% at least? so that leaves 36,000 after tax. Subtract living expenses of lets say $20,000 for a family a year (VERY conservative figure), and that leaves you with $16,000 to put towards your student loan debt, even if you were financially responsible it would take you close to 9 years to BREAK EVEN!!! So in 14 years, your net profit has just cracked into the positives. Now lets get to the even more pathetic part. Lets say you become a Mail Carrier, average income of about $33,000. Lower tax bracket, lets guess 30% tax. That leaves $23,100. Subtract the same lifestyle, $20,000 a year for your family, and at the end of 14 years of your life, the mail carrier is kicking your *** financially by $34,000!!! Add into the equation that you do NOT get a retirement package at virtually any engineering position any more, and if you are promised one now it will almost definately not be there when you arrive... and you are getting the ****ty end of the stick. No two ways about it.

No, I'm not saying you should become a mail carrier... I'm just saying look what you're getting yourself into. Look at how financially rediculous this college is. Look at who you are listening to... you are taking advice from a bunch of professors who have gone to college for EIGHT YEARS, who drive economy beater cars, live in poverty or near poverty, and they want to teach YOU how to be successful??!?? GIVE ME A BREAK!!! College is the biggest financial JOKE of our time. But college graduates make more money than non-college graduates you say!! Well guess what, they started out massively in the hole, and many of them will NEVER catch up financially with the guy that just came out of high school and became a freakin welder. And the BIGGEST problem with any school, is they teach you the worst possible way of making money! Earned income! Out of the three types of income, earned income is by far the highest taxed, its the hardest and by far the most stressful type to gain in large quantities, and its the only type of income that doesnt compound! You have to go out and get it over and over and over... Lets compare with passive and portfolio income. Passive income is like business owner income. Portfolio income is investment income. Both are taxed very little compared with earned income, and passive income is taxed at ZERO upfront. You then get to use the tax code as it was intended to be used, and subtract your business expenses, paying fairly low tax on the remainder. And there's no wage cap on passive or portfolio income. All you do at a job is make someone else rich. Thats the purpose of a job! Jobs are only for those too lazy to build their own businesses.

 

Red89GTA and Raptor are spot on. Kettering honestly blows. Wish I had never gone there but I'm too far along now to stop. You spent $20k+ a year on an education that is honestly useless. I've learned more in my field (CS) than I have in any class I've attended. Best bet is to just goto FL State.

 

Oh, and by the way.. I'll be there this upcoming B Section (living out in Flushing in my fraternity). Look for a white 90LX. Amazingly enough, I've always been the only white LX around school. Go figure.