Rating: 
Summary: Sadly Lacking.
Review: A wise man once told me not to write a book right out of college, that I should go out unto the world and get some experience first. Neal Stephenson did not hear from this wise man.I guess any Neal Stephenson fan is going to read this book anyway, since he wrote it, and any book he wrote is going to have some degree of wit and imagination to it, so let me just warn all of you Stephenson fans: don't expect much. Really. It's messy, the structure is lousy, the narrator is unnecessary, etc etc. The story's been done many, many times over (read Fool on the Hill by Ruff, Moo by Jane Smiley, or even Tam Lin by Pamela Dean or White Noise by Don Delillo, for more entertaining/insightful looks at college life). So basically your only draw is to see how Stephenson's developed along the way, and your answer will be: a lot. The good points? It's not completely without merit: the Go Big Red Fan Thing Whatever it is sequence is funny the first time, several characters are likeable, and a few bits of obscure knowledge seep through. The style is already well on the way to the Snow Crash / Cryptonomicon casual-smartass-genius tone (I discount The Diamond Age, which is a bit different though equally good) which makes most of it at least mildly entertaining even when the plot is wandering. Still, one can see how this book went out of print - if it wasn't Stephenson, it wouldn't be back. If you're not hard-core Stephenson fans already, I would reading recommend any of his other books first. This book barely hints at what the writer is capable of.
Rating: 
Summary: Staying Home...
Review: I know it's an exaggeration of things - but I had a great time with this book. Never went to college or witnessed dorm life myself. It descended quickly into chaos; the language and layers of happenings. I had never read anything by Stephenson before and will try to read CRYPONOMICON next.
Rating: 
Summary: Starts great but fizzles out
Review: This novel about life at an enormous university completely fizzles out at the end. It starts out interesting, with several different characters, including feuding roommates, an older, cat-owning physics student, and a senior student body president who is not interested in freshman floor bonding. You think these are going to be the main plotlines, but the D&D gamers end up taking over the whole story. They bored me to death. I won't give anything away, but somehow after 9/11/01, reading about kids calling themselves "Terrorists" running around playing pranks in high rise buildings is chilling. The university is obviously modeled on Boston University: witness the large neon sign, the autocratic unpopular president, the turnpike running under the campus, the football stadium in the middle of the towers, and the Plex itself which is a dead-ringer for Warren Towers.
Rating:
Summary: Its funny because it's true!
Review: Maybe it helps that I lived in close proximity to Boston University for years (one of the models for American Megaversity -- the neon "Big Wheel" petroleum company sign was the giveaway) and I grew up in close proximity to ZooMass, um I mean UMass... "The Big U" is a tremendously funny take on the experience of being a square peg in the round hole of the hive-mind crypto-facist experience that passes for higher education in America. Stephenson skewers the wretched excess of every facet of big-college life, from the BMOCs to the terminally self-obsessed campus politicos. This is definitely a "first novel" and it occasionally suffers from the pitfalls of first-novel-ness (verbal excess, convoluted plotlines), but don't let that distract you from the wonderfully insane plot(s) and hauntingly familiar characters that pepper the story. Everyone is a target; you will eventually recognize yourself somewhere in these pages.
Rating:
Summary: Great satire from a great writer.
Review: Coming from an author who has elevated science with his great works in science fiction it is a welcome change to this author's reputoire. This is an elegant satire on the reality of college life. I would recomend this book to any Stephenson fan or a person who hasn't ever read something by stephenson. Two thumbs up!
Rating:
Summary: Big Wheel, why have you left us?
Review: This first novel is a little rough compared to Stephenson's later works, but I had many a good laugh reading about the Terrorists and Airheads at the Big U. Perhaps I found it so humorous because it rang a chord with my own college experiences. I had the master key, explored the steam tunnels, played Dungeons and Dragons, and got pennied into my dorm room. Ahh, those were the days. The second half of the novel reads like an action thriller, and unlike other reviewers, I found this to be a well done and fun diversion from the satirical, off-the-wall, but almost documentary look at college life in the first half. Stephenson does have some difficulty wrapping up the endings of his yarns, but I'm not in it for the neat package. I just love the humor, the invented vocabulary, and the characters who expose the humanity and the heroic in all of us.
Rating:
Summary: Grunt. A very so-so book
Review: Stephenson is only getting better with each book that comes out. Of course, he didn't exactly set the world on fire with this, his first book. This is an odd book, at best. The first half is almost a pretty funny satire of modern college life and those of you who attended massive universities will get a chuckle or two out of it. The second half of the book starts off poorly and falls apart completely at the end. I won't go into detail, mainly because it all blurs together, but it really is unimpressive. Obviously, this book is being re-released to capitalize on the success of Cryptonomicon, but feel free to give it a pass unless you are a die-hard fan of the author. If not, I recommend starting with Zodiac, or with the seminal Snow Crash.
Rating: 
Summary: a pre-college must
Review: I read this years after college, but damn it brings you back.... Makes you feel like your time in college was pretty tame! GO BLUE!
Rating:
Summary: Vintage Stephenson...almost
Review: The Big U has many of the hallmarks that we have come to love from Neal S. -- quirky characters, at least five plots that all come together in the last 5 pages of the book. But it is *definitely* a first novel. It starts out strong and falls apart in the second half of the book. None of that, however, should stop anyone who enjoys Stephenson's writing from reading this book, if only to see where he's come from and to get some sense of how his writing has developed in the past 20 years. And rest assured, it has a decidedly Stephenson-esque ending.
Rating:
Summary: Too close to reality to be entirely comfortable
Review: Biting satire of university life, also very funny. I might be missing some of the point because I'm not American, but it is still an extremely good novel. All the characters are extremely odd, but not quite enough to be completely unbelievable, especially if you have ever been to any meeting of any role-playing games club anywhere! As in all Stephenson's later books, the geeky science guys are the most normal, and are also the main characters, which gives the book an interesting perspective. Especially amusing are the depictions of university bureaucracy and the mother-goddess worshipping women's group. Especially troubling are the dictatorial S S Krupp (Roman Emperor, Anyone?) and the ludicrously extreme student politicians. Far too close to reality! In short, good book, good writing, good ideas.
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