<p>How hard of a school is it? Is it really competetive? Is it cuthroat? Is it a very heavy workload? I want premed, by the way ...</p>
<p>I think it depends on two things:</p>
<p>One, the rigor of your high school curriculum; and two, the courses you enroll in.</p>
<p>I personally don't feel like the workload has been drastically harder than high school; I did the full IB diploma program with four HL courses, so I feel like pulled more allnighters in high school than I do here. But I also have to say it depends on what kind of courses you take. College allows for a lot of flexibility in selecting your courses so you don't have to kill yourself unless you opt for it.</p>
<p>I'm a pre-med. Half of the school is, actually. Oh boy.</p>
<p>The school is challenging, no more or less so than any similar top-tier college. The intensity of your workload is much more a reflection of your major and course selection. Pre-meds, engineers, here or anywhere will be putting in more hours.</p>
<p>Put together a lot of overachievers and competition is inevitable. But Northwestern is not on the East Coast and you feel the difference. Much of the cut-throat attitude that dominates a lot of campuses there never made it across the Mississippi and certainly not all the way up to Evanston.</p>
<p>Big 10 sports, Chicago, Dance Marathon, Waa-Mu, Lake Michigan, etc, etc, etc are great escapes that can't help but keep your studies in perspective. You get the whole college package at Northwestern. Thanks to Medill, Comm, SESP, and Music aspiring dancers, thespians, musicians, journalists, screenwriters, teachers and speechwriters are around to (thankfully) thin the ranks of the science geeks (it's okay, I was once one of those pre-med science geeks). People work hard here. People have a great time here.</p>
<p>
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Much of the cut-throat attitude that dominates a lot of campuses there never made it across the Mississippi and certainly not all the way up to Evanston.
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</p>
<p>Evanston/NU is east of the Mississippi...</p>
<p>Whoa. Thanks, handyandy. Too much p chem and my eastern roots showing.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, it's good to know that the competitive attitude isn't there. That's kind of what I like about senior year in high school. While in earlier years, everyone was all about having a higher GPA than others, at this point we all just work together to do things like calculus or analyze our stuff for English. You can definitely see this difference when looking at the underclassmen in our calculus class. While the seniors all like to work together, the underclassmen all have that natural distaste for such cooperation.</p>
<p>It definitely matters on your own abilities too. My best friend from home is with me here, and we're both in the new humanities honors programs, we both took mostly the same classes at home too. He's having a pretty rough time here, probably going to get an A (MENU), and A-, and then a C+ (in the honors humanities thing which counts twice). I'm probably making the dean's list (pending the grades on my finals). I don't find it hard here, he obviously does. But like was stated, the competition here is NOT the east coast and makes me very, very happy for that. :P</p>
<p>It's competitive in the sense that the student body is bright and ambitious.</p>
<p>However, it's not cutthroat as students generally have no problem helping each other out.</p>
<p>^^ Exactly what he said :P</p>
<p>do you enjoy the honors humanities?</p>
<p>Yes, very much. My friend, not so much...</p>
<p>Arbiter, the fact that you say your friend is not so smart suggests to me that this program, at least its admissions standards, are not as stringent as they would like some to believe?</p>
<p>To give us an indication of your friends' intelligence level (or rough estimate), what kind of stats (SAT and GPA) did he have, that allowed him not only to gain admission to NU but this program? Was he admitted to other high caliber schools?</p>
<p>Columbiahopeful,</p>
<p>Kaplan</a> Humanities Scholars Program
[quote]
What do I have to do to apply?
All you have to do is list "Hum 101/The Good Society" as your top choice when you sign up for a freshman seminar in May. (See below: How do I apply?) There is no application as such.
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</p>
<p>There doesn't seem to be anything special about the admissions standards; however, the classes are probably richer and more rigorous than the regular freshmen seminars.</p>
<p>200 people applied, 48 were accepted and they're expecting more next year. This is the inaugural year. I never said he wasn't smart, just not as smart as me. Compare my stats profile to his stats:
2220 SAT (don't know exact breakdown)
~3.7 GPA (Top 20% of class)
Recs were probably good though not fantastically earth shattering.
No significant extra curriculars that I can really think of, co-president of a club with me, was on science Olympiad...
He was admitted, relevantly, here and Johns Hopkins. Our High School is ranked in the top 30 of the new US News rankings. He was also admitted to the ISP program, though he dropped out of it in like, June.</p>
<p>It is not, strictly speaking, an honors program. And it should be noted that whi9le it says all you do is list it, its not a lottery- they presently use your full college application profile to vet applicants. It should be noted my High School has 3 of the 48 spots in it this year, and we're the only HS to have more than one in the program.</p>
<p>northwestern is quite difficult.</p>
<p>basically, you do not have a lot (or any) day-to-day work in most cases, however the two or three times a quarter that you have to turn in a big assignment it better be good</p>
<p>aside from that, the atmosphere is not competitive, everyone is just really smart.</p>
<p>pre-med is notoriously difficult btw</p>
<p>if you are worried about rigor, SESP and the school of comm have much more lax grading standards than weinberg, medill, or mccormick.</p>
<p>It should be noted that for language calsses, you will likely have daily assignments, and they ran the gamut from easy (I hear Swahili fits there) to back breaking in difficulty (Japanese... OH GOD WHY...).</p>
<p>How's the grading curve for engineering generally? Do the top 10-15% get an A or something to that effect?</p>
<p>"basically, you do not have a lot (or any) day-to-day work in most cases"</p>
<p>I don't know about you, but I've had an average of 2 5+page problem sets due every week in this school so far.</p>
<p>^hey, how's the kellogg class?</p>
<p>It's a similar one problem set a week and a lot of work, but really worth it -- the Professor for the first class was amazing and we have high hopes for the other three classes too.</p>