I am alum of Rutgers University, one of the nation’s public ivies & a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities (research). Rutgers is comprised of several schools under the state flagship & is situated in 3 cities. The university began as one of the 8th oldest college (1766), evolved from a college to a land-grant university, & was then proclaimed as the state’s flagship. It is a reasonably very selective school & is ranked among the top 400 global universities. It is home to several Nobel Laureates, one of the largest library systems in the nation, & one of the most extensive curriculums of majors & course offerings in the country. Let me speak first to the issue of landscape & scope for all those who are intimidated by size. Oh boy I hear you have to get on a bus to go to class. We are stretched out in New Brunswick over 6 campuses encompassed in a zone of a few square miles. God forbid you can’t just walk across the street. Put it this way: you room in the place where you’re most likely to take most of your courses, but don’t forget–many of you had to take a schoolbus in your life. The university has one of the better transport systems of buses. There are many & they operate 10-20-30-40 minutes a day depending on the hour. The state has enhanced the highway system by inputting several new bridges & roadways. Get out of your own backyard! The university often labeled by some as ugly is anything but ugly. It comprises an old colonial, ivy-wall-covered setting on the home campus of College Ave. College Ave extends across the width from George St. through College Av to Easton Ave. This width is no more than a mile wide & roughly a mile & a quarter long. Old style houses as well as modern halls & dorms dominate this area. The centerplace is the scenic Old Queens which is backed by the pedestrian mall known as the Voorhees Mall. We have the Brower Commons Dining Hall & the old style College Gym & Student Center across from that. The campus is border by the scenic Buccleuch Park. Across the Raritan on the west side is the entry to the Busch Campus which features broad green fields, the Waksman Institute, the science & engineering buildings, & all the athletic facilties plus our own golf course. Here most of the more modern apartment suites are located for housing. Busch connects with the Livingston campus which now features more suites, newer academic schools, & a cinema. Across from Busch one can see the Johnson & Johnson Corporate headquarters. One need take note of the very scenic Johnson Park-great for running, biking, sitting by the quays. Adjacent to Livingston is Highland Park, a tiny Jewish community that makes a good running route. Up a mile or so from Old Queens we have the rustic Cook & Douglass campuses. Here we have fine arts facilities, earth science faciltities, & horticultural facilties. Cook & Douglass feature tree-starred trails around a horseshoe near a beautiful pond & green. In back, we have more athletic fields, the college farm, & beyond the Botanical Gardens. Both campuses feature traditional style dorms, plus apartment suites, language houses, & old colonial house establishments. Don’t sit in a dorm; find a different place to study: we have malls, we have ponds, & park benches. We have bridges & fields & library stacks & many student centers. We are rich in libraries. There is culture here-we have one of the finest offerings of art, music groups, choirs, theater (on campus & downtown). You won’t starve in New Brunswick. Each campus has dining halls & there is no shortage of restaurants. We are well-wired for the internet. Bureaucracy-I’m sure every college has it. Yes parking can be a nightmare & you will get ticketed. Get your decals in order & park smart. Use a bike. We do have abundant parking decks & this is actually the best place for one’s car. You will have no shortage of places to stay fit so stay fit. Course registration should be easier than in my day when it was done by hand. Don’t rely on pen & notebooks. Use a laptop or tablet. Not an easy school to get in but not as picky as the ivies. Yes take responsibility, prepare, & do your work. The plethora of offerings is what makes Rutgers. We have well over a 100 majors & a course catalog to back it up.
Ever heard of paragraphs? It’s a torture for anyone to read such a long paragraph that just goes on and on.
Rutgers is an excellent school, and boasts some famous alumni from Milton Friedman to Kristin Davis, Roy Scheider, Calista Flockhart, James Gandolfini, Elizabeth Warren, Chris Christie to unfortunately, Ray Rice. Maybe being mentioned in the Sopranos as the school of a couple of mafia kids who sold drugs from their dorms didn’t help their image so much.
Rutgers historically had had the individual colleges handled their own admissions, so the different colleges had their own admission stats. Rutgers College, the old Queen’s College, had a very low acceptance rate, around 16%. However I think in the 90s they combined all their colleges into one administrative umbrella and the admission stats got compiled into a single set of stats, so Rutgers’ admission rate went up substantially, to ~60%, which greatly lowered their prestige in the eyes of the prestige hounds.
Aside from the spread out campuses, the run down downtown of New Brunswick, I think Rutgers also suffers from the East coast mentality. Most upper middle class parents in the east coast wouldn’t be caught dead putting on a public U decal on their car. If it were located in the Midwest, south or west, it would get the credit it deserves as a top notch university, especially its English department and Pharmacy school. If I recall correctly, Rutgers is ranked in the top 10 for mid career salary for English, CS, history and a few other majors on the Payscale.com ranking. It is also one of the top 10 feeder schools to Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan.
“Ever heard of paragraphs?”
So everyone’s on the same page, have you ever heard of Kerouac? Maybe there’s something about this style that’s particularly suitable for a description of Rutgers.
I don’t necessarily find references to writing irrelevant; but, on-the-level, @cmsjmt, you could have slipped in your criticism with some subtlety, especially since your reply was first-up.
Never heard of Kerouac. But I agree, I could’ve been a little nicer. My apologies to the OP. I just had a really difficult time reading that big long paragraph.
I know that RU Philosophy is top-ranked. Pharmacy may be as well.
In @cmsjmt 's defense, it is a brutal paragraph and even ignoring the poor writing/formatting, it reads as a hamfisted amateur PR attempt. I always liked Rutgers, but if I didn’t, this post would not make me rethink that position.
Outside the East Coast, nobody knows anything about Rutgers. While it has some top-notch departments, the overall quality is somewhat uneven across the disciplines. Its visibility outside its little corner of the country will benefit greatly from its membership in the Big 10. (Nonetheless, Rutgers doesn’t really belong in the Big 10 — along with those other non-Midwestern members—Nebraska, Penn State, and Maryland. ) 
@zapfino, huh? Nebraska is solidly in the Midwest.
I don’t think you can even get more Midwestern than Nebraska.
This is the problem with the notion of “public ivies”. Every public flagship claims to be one.
Can we start a revolution to call the ivies “academic SECs.” Or maybe make an “academic power 5 conference” list? Who would be on it? the Ivies and NESCAC seem like obvious choice. What are the other 3 athletic conferences with the best schools?
@cmsjmt, Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) was an American writer of the Beat Generation.
From On the Road, by Jack Kerouac:
Cordie: “Course registration should be easier than in my day when it was done by hand.”
@Cordie, When did you graduate from Rutgers? It must have been a while ago if there were no computers. I actually enjoyed your description of the campus. It’s like a walking tour without the walking.
Rutgers has an amazing meteorology program, but nobody wants to major in that field because its rigorous. The problem is that people choose other places that are better known. I’m a future meteorology student, I’m looking at Rutgers, penn state, stony brook, and UB.
“I don’t think you can even get more Midwestern than Nebraska.”
@PurpleTitan. I do consulting in Nebraska so I know it well. I consider it the “Great Plains”.
The only time I hear Nebraska is during football season
Rutgers is a good school, but calling it a “public Ivy” is a bit of a stretch.
@austinmshauri Which is why I could never pull myself together enough to read On the Road.
I disagree that Rutgers isn’t known outside of the East Coast. It’s a strong public school with good sports and decent disciplines in certain areas (law, business, pharmacy, marine biology). Public Ivy is a stretch but hey I’ve always liked the school.
@zapfino, the northern Great Plains are definitely part of the Midwest.
Just like VA/NC/GA are in the Southeast but also part of the East Coast.
According to the book The Public Ivies: America’s Flagship Public Universities published by Howard Greene in 2001, Rutgers is indeed 1 of the 30 colleges considered Public Ivies. Here’s the full list:
Northeastern
Pennsylvania State University (University Park)
Rutgers University (New Brunswick, New Jersey)
State University of New York at Binghamton (also known as Binghamton University)
University of Connecticut (Storrs)
University of Vermont (Burlington)
Mid-Atlantic
University of Delaware (Newark)
University of Maryland (College Park)
Southern
University of Florida (Gainesville)
University of Georgia (Athens)
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of Texas at Austin
College of William & Mary (Williamsburg, Virginia)
University of Virginia (Charlottesville)
Western
University of Arizona (Tucson)
University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Davis
University of California, Irvine
University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, San Diego
University of California, Santa Barbara
University of Washington (Seattle)
Great Lakes & Midwest
Indiana University (Bloomington)
Miami University (Oxford, Ohio)
Michigan State University (East Lansing)
The Ohio State University (Columbus)
University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign)
University of Iowa (Iowa City)
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
University of Minnesota (Minneapolis–Saint Paul)
University of Wisconsin (Madison)
@austinmshauri Thanks for the explanation. Now I get the reference. :))
The original Public Ivies as they were listed by Moll in 1985:
College of William & Mary (Williamsburg, Virginia)
Miami University (Oxford, Ohio)
University of California (campuses as of 1985)
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of Texas at Austin
University of Vermont (Burlington)
University of Virginia (Charlottesville)
Moll also offered in the same book “a list of worthy runners-up” and brief summaries of them:
University of Colorado Boulder
Georgia Institute of Technology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
New College of the University of South Florida (now New College of Florida)
Pennsylvania State University at University Park
University of Pittsburgh
State University of New York at Binghamton (also called Binghamton University)
University of Washington
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The above ones Greene listed are more modern components on the list.