Here’s what I learned from the event:
• your entire financial aid package will be known as soon as you’re accepted
• since merit aid and need-based aid are from separate offices, NU can stack merit and need aid to reduce aid beyond your EFC
• USP is dead, stop asking them about it. Don’t expect an update on any new programs (hint: there won’t be any new programs) until December, or perhaps later. Current USP’ers will continue to be supported.
• NU admissions counselors use the same publicly-available SAT concordance table that we use. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, search “sat concordance table PDF”. First result on Google. NU doesn’t use SAT percentiles, and they won’t glance at your SAT2s.
• NU doesn’t care if you’ve been to three info sessions and a camp. They don’t give a da**. The only interest-based thing you can do to increase your chances is to attend the invite-only overnight session. That’ll be automatically noted on your application.
• They invited me based on 1.) scores, which were a little above NU’s average at the time, 2.) how far away I lived from campus, offering an overnight stay would make it easier for us to make it there, 3.) some “other factors”
• Based on the letter everyone in the program received from President Aoun, my chances for acceptance are very high.
• Admissions would rather see you taking challenging STEM courses than have you take unrelated courses to your field of study, if you’re applying for a BS.
• This is an exclusive program. I don’t understand why I deserved to be invited, but between 5 to 8 students were there in my week’s session. Really weird.
I also learned some CCIS-specific information.