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NU is known to be a school with a good balance of academics and social life, but if one had to be chosen to classify the school, academics would be the bigger emphasis at NU.
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<p>i agree with this, but the OP was mentioning a certain type of academics, academics that exist for some pursuit of greater depth as an intellectual, which i would argue northwestern is not very full of; at least it's not the prevalent attitude. like i said, most people are there to "do something."</p>
<p>well, i would say i'm pretty much similar to you and i'm heading to NU this fall. Dance parties are definitely not my kinda thing though drinking's fine with me. I'm not into the whole greek scene as well. Honestly, I'm rather apprehensive at the moment.. I'm just hoping to find my niche when i get there through sports, clubs etc. NU doesn't feel like the best fit for me, (i LOVE Rice), but considering i'd go back to my home country to work, i chose it in the end. haha. i hope i'll come to love NU soon. </p>
<p>smyeth, good luck in your choice of schools! i suppose your other options might suit you more, but if you do go to NU, i'm sure you'll find a group of friends you can get along really well with!</p>
<p>I think you're painting NU with somewhat of a one-dimensional brush. Wonky, nerdy, engineering students with slide rules in their pockets go there and love it. Theater majors who can't enter a room without making a scene go there and love it. As with ANY university, there are going to be enough different types on campus that you'll quickly find the people you like, and who cares about the people you don't? They won't affect your life in any meaningful way. You want to root at football games and scream yourself hoarse? Terrific. You don't want to spend your Saturdays anywhere near a stadium? Great; more room in the library for you. You want to join a sorority or fraternity? Excellent. You don't want to? No one's going to ostracize you; you'll have plenty of friends. That said, if you have a certain stereotype of NU that you can't get past, then that is most likely what you'll experience at NU. You have other terrific schools on your list; no need to force fit yourself to NU. Good luck!</p>
<p>"I also thank you for your daughter's friends' accounts of their lives at Northwestern. My impression is that the school overall is frat-dominated and competitive (like many of the Ivy Leagues), but I wanted to know if there were pockets of students who were beyond that, and if so, how prevalent those pockets were..."</p>
<p>Well, I took a lot of chemistry classes there, and the chem majors I met were all very down-to-earth and nice. It was a very collegial environment, not competitive. A lot of them were in frats/sororities, but it really didn't show personality-wise. It really wasn't integral to their identity in college. </p>
<p>From what you've provided about your personality, I would recommend NU to you. Also look at U. of Chicago.</p>
<p>smyeth - there are a wide range of students at NU.</p>
<p>While NU does have its fair share of greeks (mind you, just b/c a person is a greek doesn't mean he/she has no interest in intellectual conversation), there are plenty of people who just do the frat scene once in a while (or never even enter a fraternity during their 4 years).</p>
<p>That's one of NU's greatest strengths - the variety in the student body.</p>
<p>As for competitiveness - yeah, people want to do well, but that is different from being cut-throat (most people, in my experience, help each other out).</p>
<p>Exactly, Sam Lee. The frats at Northwestern reflect the high-quality, intellectual caliber of the people who got into Northwestern (as would be the case for any school of NU's caliber). I was in the Greek system and loved it. Others weren't -- that's just fine for them! No one at Northwestern is going to care one way or the other. This isn't some stereotypically Greek school where if you don't make it through sorority rush you might as well pack up and go home (which described a friend's experience at SMU). </p>
<p>Which reminds me. Of the US News rankings, can someone go through and identify which of the top 20 schools have Greek systems? Would be interesting to note.</p>
<p>"Because frats at NU aren't really the same as frats at, say, LSU"</p>
<p>True, but it's not just about how smart the students are going in. Lots of the guys I met in the frats at MIT were self-conscious about appearing to be a geek. So, in some ways, it was less intellectual than a frat at a state school because the state school guys never cared about school at all whereas the MIT guys were going out of their way to be anti-intellectual (except for stuff they had to do, like problem sets.)</p>
<p>"northwestern is more like penn or princeton than brown or columbia"</p>
<p>is this true? i am an incoming freshman at NU this fall and having lots of regrets about choosing this school. brown and columbia were in fact my first choices (was waitlisted and then denied at both); i avoided applying to penn, princeton, and similar schools. i feel like i made a mistake in choosing to go to NU over other places I was accepted to, like wesleyan or middlebury.</p>
<p>i identify much more with the liberal, hippie, theoretical, philosophical, non-pre-professional atmospheres than those of schools like princeton and penn...did i make a huge mistake/will i probably end up transferring?</p>
<p>why not go to NU with open mind and see the place for yourself? all this worrying is just going to give a negative image of NU from the get-go. u don't want that. just experience the college for yourself, not worry b/c even if you won't like it...what can you do about right now? nothing. so go to NU with an open mind. enjoy summer!</p>
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i identify much more with the liberal, hippie, theoretical, philosophical, non-pre-professional atmospheres than those of schools like princeton and penn...did i make a huge mistake/will i probably end up transferring?
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<p>when you apply for your housing look into south campus, i doubt you will end up transferring once you actually come and experience northwestern. living on south campus will provide you with a more "liberal artsy" feel.</p>
<p>funfetti...i was in almost your exact situation, except i made the opposite choice. having been rejected from brown and accepted at cornell, middlebury, wesleyan, and others, i turned down the name recognition/prestige and chose middlebury. while i too prefer the liberal arts atmosphere and feel that i made the right choice, i have certain regrets on my side as well, as i'm sure you would, too. bottomline: don't sweat it. take advantage of northwestern's opportunities and just find an artsy crowd.</p>
<p>"i identify much more with the liberal, hippie, theoretical, philosophical, non-pre-professional atmospheres than those of schools like princeton and penn...did i make a huge mistake/will i probably end up transferring?"</p>
<p>I wouldn't say NU is as pre-professional as penn or duke and isn't as elitist as princeton. When I was there (~2001-2003), many people were shooting for professional careers, but they were interested in learning for learning's sake too. So NU is kind of a happy medium.</p>
<p>Not really a hippie kind of crowd and the student body is a bit more to the right than most top schools (which are very far to the left in general.) The faculty is probably more liberal than the students. However, I really didn't know the theater crowd and I would expect them to be more leftist. (Northwestern's theater program or whatever they call it is one of the strongest in the country, so I'm sure you'll find plenty of artsy people to hang out with.)</p>
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The faculty is probably more liberal than the students
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<p>oh yeah, i'm scared to turn in a paper that's anything but a conventional liberal position. not that i question the academic objectivity of the professors, but i still feel like it might **** a few of them off :p</p>
<p>Hello, Northwestern has one of the top theater programs AND one of the top music schools in the country. The closest thing they have to pre-professional is MMSS. Why does everyone think they're not going to find artsy people? Like any top university, you're going to find ALL TYPES. And once you find your niche, who cares what other people do or what they are like?</p>
<p>You make a good point, Pizzagirl, that I would find my niche even if I didn't "gel" with the general feeling on campus (I feel like I'd be friends with a bunch of people who posted here and are going to NU and said I described them pretty well!) but for me, I'd rather be in an environment where I could find people like me more easily than if I had to go searching for them.</p>
<p>I guess this is the general tradeoff between a school like NU and a school like, say, Reed. At Reed, (almost) everybody will have something very specific in common-- an absolute passion for school and a tendency to be weird/quirky. At NU, you will find theater people, music people, journalists, engineers, etc. alongside people who somewhat resemble yourself.</p>
<p>I must admit, I think the former is a better fit for me. I have spent five or six years in the same small school district and it has taken me a long time to make good friends, and my friends are scattered throughout age ranges and also throughout the country. Meeting people whom I can relate to easily is very important for me, and at college, I have the stresses of academics PLUS only four years this time, with totally fresh faces. I feel like I would have to sift through a lot of non-starters to find me and my group, and that might take a lot of time and frustration that would be less necessary elsewhere.</p>
<p>Otherwise, if NU kids could tell me where the nerdy/intellectual dorms, hangouts, or activities are (I'm sure NU has some snooty, self-righteous literary magazine I could join :-P) and maybe that would make a great introduction to the school for me and for others.</p>