<p>^ Thanks, again! I am actually a mom. My S has shown strong interest in math and science. By the time he graduates he will have completed Organic Chem 1 (honors) and lab and Organic Chem 2 and lab at University of Colorado-Denver. He has also taken a college course called Israel Today at another college. He has perfect SAT II and AP chemistry scores and got a 36 on the math section of the ACT. In the whole CC and NU environments, we didn’t think that was so spectacular. However, if he got NU’s attention and got selected for something special, he will be very pleased. Since he also loves astrophysics, he will love the interdisciplinary aspect. Thanks for helping us out.</p>
<p>May I suggest having you soon contact the ISP if he is interested? They will put him in touch with students in the program. My soon spoke with three, including the peer advisor (two for an incoming class of 30.</p>
<p>I did notice close to half in his class were from upstate IL, perhaps because they know about the program.</p>
<p>Sent from my ADR6300 using CC App</p>
<p>Thanks! We appreciate the suggestions.</p>
<p>I meant to say YOUR SON not you soon. I was using the key pad on my cell phone. </p>
<p>Another thing of note are the class sizes in the ISP, around 30. I’m not sure why, however, that the chemistry class is not with ISP but it the more typical large freshman class. Perhaps your son could pass out of that with his great track record in chemistry. Being from CO, I don’t see any hesitancy for NU due to the weather, although with the recent blizzard, the campus was shut down for ONE DAY, only the fourth or fifth time in the 160 year history of the school. My son got a kick out of it since, being a SoCal native, he’d never had a snow day before.</p>
<p>My S actually WANTS cold, dreary weather! He loves it. And, small class sizes are exactly what he wants, although he is very attracted to the big university idea. I am not sure if he will be willing to go to a school the size of NU, at least for undergrad. Since he plans on going through to PhD, he will be back in the mode of choosing a school in another few years. I do think he should be able to get out of basic chemistry since he already has 10 credit hours of organic chemistry and lab from University of Colorado. He purposely took it at a university rather than a community college so it would have a better chance of transferring. Do you think NU would have a problem with that transferring?</p>
<p>Well, NU is the smallest college in the Big 10, but then the others tend to be huge! As of fall '08, enrollment of 19,310, of which 8,702 were undergrads. So as you can see, there are actually more in the grad and professionals schools, although two of those (medical and law) are on another campus in downtown Chicago. It’s mid size in terms of enrollment, but it seems bigger with respect to the research activities, the student life activities, etc.</p>
<p>I just looked at the ISP stats again. Of the entering class of 2014, there were 31 students. There were two faculty advisers and four peer advisers. They hold a separate meeting during the Wildcat Week orientation, so the students can really ask questions to know what they are embarking on with ISP. In fact, most of the WCAS freshman are required to take a freshman seminar first quarter, except for the students in the special programs (ISP, MMSS, etc.) Students in there programs don’t take the seminar until the second quarter, as the special programs really want to use this opportunity to get the students well grounded in their programs.</p>
<p>I honestly have no idea how NU, or more specifically ISP, would deal with transfers. Here’s what I do know. At a typical campus this size, they might offer two different versions of freshman physics, one very mathematics oriented and one less so. Well, with ISP at NU, there’s actually a THIRD freshman physics class, just for the ISP students. It is heavily mathematics based and it also carries the integration part of it.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, my husband discovered that, at least for the mathematics professors, they really like teaching ISP classes. Not only is it a smaller class, which has its advantages, but because of the entry requirements for ISP, the professors know they can go into great depth and move along faster than they would with a typical freshman and up class.</p>
<p>A friend who applied to engineering got the email invitation too. It sure sounds like they are sending them out to a lot of people!</p>
<p>A hidden gem that casts its net widely. If I recall correctly, I read somewhere where the typical ISPer is described as someone with the chops who might have gotten into MIT or CalTech but there are only so many spaces (especially CalTech, it’s boutique sized.) In the case of my S, he wasn’t going to be applying to those two schools because that’s not the social environment he wanted for undergrad. (My H went to MIT for grad school.) So what he has is the best of both, an MIT/CalTech kind of education on a campus with students with much broader interests.</p>
<p>On the ISP web page, it says </p>
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<p>Are they really able to make ISP admissions decisions for kids who don’t take one of the required pre-reqs until their Senior year of HS? Are there kids in the ISP program who, say, took AP Phys as a Senior?</p>
<p>Yep, they are, if it’s necessary. NU isn’t going to postpone your admission, of course, but ISP typically adds two to three people to the program throughout the summer.</p>
<p>My S was in the process of taking AP Chemistry as a senior and was accepted into ISP. He had taken AP Physics C as a junior, because he liked physics better and heard rumblings (where turned out to be true) that the better/AP Physics teacher, was possibly going to be leaving the school the following year. He was accepted into ISP on April 1, not the summer. However, he came in with a strong math background, having already completed linear algebra and multivariable calc.</p>