Ok thank you:) I’m majoring in physics but that might change bc I’m very indecisive. I really love NU and think it fits me extremely well. @PengsPhils @binky17
@tangy702 Have you gone to visit UMass during their honors day? Perhaps the honors college can facilitate a meeting with the undergrad physics chair, or email with a professor at least. It’s worth digging deep because you may find you like it. All my physics students over the years went on to grad school, so could that be a consideration? Could factor into your family’s thinking (cost, degree, etc).
All of the YouMass Days programs they offer happen to be while my family is away. Also idk if I’ll attend grad school (mostly bc I don’t know what exactly I’ll end up majoring in at the end of my undergrad schooling) but my thing w northeastern is that with the co-op I’ll have more of a chance of getting a job after school. @binky17
Yes @tangy702 , I definitely understand why you want to go to NEU! My son most likely will attend, and thrilled to do so. He swears he won’t go to grad school, haha. My son’s cousins are crushing it in science programs at both NEU and UMass, so I really think you would prosper at either place. I do think that, if the initial job placement right out of college is most important to you, NEU would be worth it.
How accommodating is Northeastern of students who want to skip out of lower level classes? If I’ve already studied discrete math and algorithms online, would they let me take a test or something in order to take higher level classes?
It depends if its a requirement of your major or not, but generally talking to the dean or someone in a college can do the trick. You will likely be able to skip the class but not get credit for it, only be able to take higher level courses. I know one person who substituted discrete math in CS for Calculus 3.
Generally, if you take to the right people and be persistent and patient, Northeastern is pretty flexible with most things (does not apply to financial aid and merit scholarships for admission purposes, more so class requirements, double counting courses, substitutions, prereqs, coreqs, etc).
@binky17 I apologize for the delayed response. I have many good things to say and haven’t had a minute to articulate them. I’ll try to do it justice briefly.
My husband received his graduate degree from Northeastern in '97 and with the exception of a few hockey games has not been on campus since. My daughter thought she was going to have to revive him with smelling salts when he saw the investment that Northeastern has made in the campus since his graduation. Next year’s honors housing is magnificent, newly built, with two doubles sharing a single bathroom. It sounded like the lower floors are for freshman, and the fantastic view from the upper floors were for sophomores and a few older students. East Village is definitely more central than I’ntl Village and a great place to start making new connections. We did not see the inside of the new science and engineering building but from the outside it looks dazzling.
The entire day was well planned and executed like everything Northeastern has done in this process. The students that Northeastern put in front of the audience were impressive. They had all travelled extensively and multiple times during their undergraduate career through the dialogue of civilization, traditional study abroad and/or co op. My daughter was prompted to observe that some schools version of a complete student was someone that had read Plato and taken math and Northeastern has totally redesigned the complete student to mean extensively travelled with academic and real world skills. Another nice touch, the honors students were all given a copy of Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, and all will read it regardless of major before the author visits campus in the fall.
My daughter was impressed with the other students in the group as well, and for her it’s extremely gratifying to be surrounded by motivated, talented peers. It sounded like most had been admitted to other highly competitive schools (ex. Johns Hopkins, Georgia Tech, Michigan) and were genuinely considering Northeastern.
Congratulations if your son has already decided on Northeastern. We left without a doubt that our daughter could have an extraordinary experience there.
@RelocatedYankee Thank you so much for your response! Very kind of you. My son read your description intently. He is attending the honors webinar on Friday, but a prospective review is just so valuable. Thank you again and perhaps we will see you and your daughter in the fall.
We visited campus twice, most recently last weekend, and my reaction was about the same as RelocatedYankee’s. Very impressed. Plus, we were particularly impressed with CCIS and their approach to teaching.
@TexasMom2017 Can you please elaborate on what you mean by ‘their approach to teaching’?
We were visiting this past Saturday too!
Thanks.
@durna01 we actually heard more about that (CCIS approach to teaching) when we visited last summer. Doreen (forgot last name - dean of students) and the CCIS dean are both very compelling - talked about the language (racket?) that they use for teaching CS concepts to new students. Even freshman w/prior programming experience must take the class to learn this approach. Several other kids from our HS have done CS at Northeastern, and they spoke very highly about this and how it helped them understand CS in a different way. I also like that classes are small (conpared to a lot of colleges) and are taught more by professors than TAs or adjuncts.
My daughter (not a CS major) took the fundamentals class as an elective. I have a CS background (from back in the 80s). I thought the approach was great. They teach technique not a language and you won’t get a good grade unless you follow their “style guide”. This may put off some kids (who have been programming for ages and their only concern is that it works not how it looks.) The class was not what I would call small (taught by the professor with like 50 kids) but the lab classes are small (those are taught by the TA). I was impressed that the professor knew my daughter and that the TAs were very helpful. They have a nice area in H where you can go for help and lots of the CS kids hang out there. Almost all my daughter’s friends are CS (or Computer engineering) majors and have done very well in their co-ops and now getting jobs as they graduate.
I was one of those TAs for the fundies class. They put a lot of thought and effort into that class. They also just hired a recent grad just for that class, to work on curriculum and organization. There’s a weekly staff meeting with all the professors, TAs, and tutors (totally 40-50 people in the fall), and we’d bring up specific students who we saw struggling or excelling to make sure they got the attention they deserved, and also to discuss what students in general needed extra help with so the lecture could be adapted. I was a neuroscience major, but because of my tutoring and TAing, I ended up spending more time in the CS department. It’s a great community and I made good friends there.
Seconding everything said by those here already about CCIS. Doreen Hodgkin is an amazing part of the college. She’s someone that makes the effort to reach out and talk to every student, and is willing to help with the small things or go to bat for you on a big issue. She also has been incredibly supportive of getting more women involved in CS by being welcoming to them and creating events, clubs, and other spaces to do that. One of my best friends works with her regularly on those areas.
As far as teaching goes, I have TA’d or tutored for 3 semesters now, and am incredibly proud of it because of how much you can really help students, and how much the professors care. Some of our best professors actually prefer to teach the intro course over upper division electives or research, and even some of the research is going into how to teach introductory programming. The professor that recently was awarded the CCIS teaching award is currently in the middle of trying to develop an even better teaching language, and students can even get involved in helping with that.
Link: https://www.pyret.org/pyret-code/
I link to this tirelessly because it really does say the most about the program, but here’s an essay by the creator of the current curriculum. He will be teaching the introductory course for the second Fall in a row, to give you an idea of how involved he is himself, in addition to teaching software development semi-regularly.
Link: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/Thoughts/Growing_a_Programmer.html
I think most here have seen that now, so most of this is likely more relevant to @durna01
Do most students come with their own laptops, or is it possible (advantageous) to buy from the university ?
most bring their own. There is a deal with both apple and dell where you get a discounted college price (most colleges offer this). My daugher got a new laptop in June before starting, this way she would have the summer to get used to it.
What are the class sizes like for a possible bio major or marine bio major? What would be the size of the biggest classes, and how often would you be ina big class? For smaller seminars, would those always be taught by a professor?
@jillpink All classes are taught by a professor, even the larger ones. That goes for all subjects. TA’s and tutors are used in a complementary capacity, and will likely help with labs and recitations. For general biology/chemistry courses, you may find 200-300 person lectures, but they will also have recitations and labs in smaller groups of 20-30. After those bigger classes, expect more in the range of 20-50.
Every professor is required to hold office hours, no matter how big the class. You can always find them there if you need a professor specifically.
Not all classes in every department are taught by professors. All of my bio classes were, but I hat a few psych classes taught by a grad students adjuncts, and one CS class taught by a post doc. That said, those 4 classes in my entire undergraduate career were no less well taught than the ones taught by professors
@PengsPhils @nanotechnology hey guys thanks for your help in advance but I was considering the BSIB program for business with two co-op’s and am considering the +1 Program to get a masters degree. I was wondering how intensive the program is; is it that you have to take courses in the summer or all year round? Or does the typical student at northeastern take summer courses in order to graduate on time or is it mostly just to get ahead so optional for motivated students I guess?
also can you elaborate a little bit about the core/ge requirement program? How long is it and I know it is like 11 courses now that you can flexibly choose, but when can you typically start taking courses pertaining to your major?