3rd Year Reflections

Introduction
NU is a better school than many of its rankings show. NU Students are very self-motivated with an eye on the real world. You should know your major coming in, because being undecided is a great disadvantage here. Most programs at NU are 5 years because of the co-op program. This is an amazing program that lets you work in your field full time. If you don't want to do co-op, then you're in the wrong school. Also becauase of co-op, you will be taking summer classes. But it's not that bad because there's no Friday classes in the summer, and you only have 2 classes at a time. Oh, and there's nothing that will piss of students more than calling us "NEU". We are *not* NEU, we are NU!!

Campus Life and Social Life
On-campus parties get broken up often, but there are plenty of off-campus parties. If you don't like getting trashed every weekend, there's lots of stuff for you to do, too. We have an awesome on-campus nightclub that is often packed. There are lots of nearby clubs as well, but most are 19+ Fridays and 21+ Saturdays. Friday nights are hockey nights, *everyone* heads to Matthews to see men's hockey play (and lose). Other than that, the sports crowd isn't too crowded. Also there are only 5 frats/ 6 sororities with 5% of the student body. Most frat boys are great guys, but most sorority girls are snobby rich girls. Academics
Good programs include engineering, business (especially international business), criminal justice, anything related to health science, chemistry, political science, and music industry (but not the other music programs). All classes are taught by actual professors, TAs are only there for grading and lab help. The workload can be difficult at times, but manageable. The library is fantastic, but sadly underfunded when it comes to research resources. Nonetheless, NU is strong in undergraduate research, and capstone projects/ senior research/ etc is the norm.

Student Body
We have a pretty eclectic student body, except for the fact that everyone wears an iPod all day long. One third are from New England, one third are from the Middle Atlantic states, and one third are from elsewhere around the country and world. Unfortunately, we have the Ugg boot/ mini-skirt/ popped collar crowd here, but that may be unavoidable at college. There are indies, band dorks, jocks, punksters, preps, etc. But the cool thing is, you're bound to have a friend or two from outside your social group. So we're not that clique-y.

In Closing...
Be prepared for TONS of red tape! We even have a name for it-- the "NU Shuffle". Sooo annoying. Also, for a co-op school, we sure don't do a lot to accomodate the students on co-op. Most offices are closed on nights and weekends, which forces folks on co-op to take a half day just to get any errands done. And the class selection during summer classes is so limited, that it's hard to take any requirements (my department only offered 4 for each summer session this year!)