I’m wondering how enjoyable student life is on campus? In terms of clubs, comfort of dorms, food, and most importantly partying. I would love it if a student or former student could answer this.
Disclaimer: I am a current freshman transferring out of Northeastern at the end of this semester.
CLUBS: For the most part, pretty active and engaging. There are a lot of them, but a good portion are very specific and most won’t apply to you (eg: lots of academic clubs outside of your major/career field, gender/race specific clubs). I haven’t met anyone who hasn’t found a club they like, but unless you’re an active member of the E-board your role and responsibilities are probably going to be pretty limited and there may not be as many opportunities for direct involvement in the club’s activities.
COMFORT OF DORMS: Honestly haven’t had a real problem. I’m in a standard double (non-honors), and the best way to describe it is probably “extraordinarily average”. Nothing fancy, but nothing horrible. My roommate found a mouse last week but that’s the first issue we’ve had. Walls are incredibly thin, I live near the end of the hallway and can make out every word in conversations taking place at the other end, with the door closed. If you’re honors your dorms are awesome, otherwise it’s pretty much what you’d expect anywhere. I wish there were more common areas, and that people were more open to just saying hi to each other in the hallways. Not much of a sense of overall community within the dorms, RA programs are sparsely attended.
FOOD: tbh, I hate it. I’m a vegetarian and I think I’ve eaten more pasta, eggs on toast, and gross uncooked tofu in the last few months than I have in the rest of my life combined. They have “options” for people who are gluten-free, veg, etc, but they’re literally the same thing every day and some of the stuff they count as “options” are like, plain chickpeas and the aforementioned uncooked tofu. Rebecca’s Cafe is pretty good if you’re willing to wait 30+ minutes for a sandwich.
PARTYING: This is where Northeastern reeeeally falls short in my opinion. I’m hardly a party animal, and turned down an offer from another school because I was worried that the party scene would be overwhelming. However, Northeastern is pretty much the polar opposite in that there are no parties on/near campus. If you want to find parties, then you’d better know a) a lot of upperclassmen b) frat members at BU/MIT. Northeastern frats don’t have houses, and if they try to throw parties at their apartments in Mission Hill the cops will be called and the party will be shut down after 20 minutes. The longest I’ve been at an NEU party before the cops were called was half an hour, while I’ve spent an hour and a half at an MIT frat before deciding to leave out of my own free will. If you’re a dude, you’ll need a lot of female friends in order to get into a frat party. Boston is extremely strict with regards to fake IDs, most of the people I know who have them have gotten them confiscated at bars or liquor stores.
Again, please take what I’m saying with a grain of salt, as I know that many people have had extremely positive experiences here. This is only my account, and judging by the 97% freshman-sophomore retention rate I’m part of an extremely small minority that doesn’t like NEU. There have been a number of other posts about this topic, and I highly suggest you read through some of those to get a more complete picture. If you have any more questions I’d be happy to answer them!
Here is another response:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/northeastern-university/1970791-northeastern-social-life.html#latest
Thanks for the reply! I read your other thread as well and I wish you the best of luck, unfortunate that you didn’t enjoy nu. You said that the rigor of classes was light. What classes were you taking? I do know two upperclassmen (will be sophomores next year) so maybe they could help me with the party situation
@aihcxx covered it pretty well, I’d add some additions:
In terms of Food, if you aren’t vegan/vegetarian/gluten free etc, there’s a lot more variety and is overall pretty decent as far as dining hall food goes. I know of a lot worse from friends at other colleges. I certainly agree when it comes to those categories mentioned, though.
As far as partying, it also depends what you’re looking for - Northeastern is basically a bunch of small apartment and dorm gatherings, even beyond freshman year. The only even close to big parties are the ones on the hill (Mission Hill) which are very hard for freshman to end up at. For me, I prefer those smaller sizes (think 5-15 people, maybe 25 on a big night).
It depends on your dorm, though. The music dorm had plenty of stuff going on every year I know of, for example. I know plenty of freshman from other dorms ended up partying there often. Being housed in Kerr, it was known for “Kerrsdays” in my year. Was not good for my 8AM Calc 2 on Fridays lol.