<p>Hi, everyone. After being accepted from the waitlist, I enrolled in BU this week. Since enrolling, I have been worrying A LOT about certain aspects of BU. So I guess I’ll just go ahead and list my questions?</p>
<p>1) How do people tend to meet each other/become friends at BU? Is it mostly clubs or dorms or parties or a mix?</p>
<p>2) Is it very easy to become lost (in the lonely sense, rather than the physical) at such a large school?</p>
<p>3) Does BU’s lack of freshman oriented activities/guaranteeing that freshmen will room with other freshmen make it difficult to make friends?</p>
<p>4) Is FYSOP truly a good way to meet people?</p>
<p>5) How many very large classes is it typical to have freshman year?</p>
<p>I’d really, really appreciate some answers to stop my nervous speculation. Personal anecdotes would be great! Thank you :)</p>
<p>Congrats on getting off the waitlist!</p>
<p>1) I’d say people mostly meet each other through dorms, but if you happen to end up in a small house or apartment or get a quiet floor, you’ll definitely start making friends in classes and clubs. After the first couple weeks or so, you start to recognize people in your classes and figure out when you have free periods and stuff. There was a guy in my poli sci class who also lived in my dorm and we would always go to lunch at the same time, so we started eating together and now he’s one of my best friends!</p>
<p>2) You won’t get lost if you don’t want to get lost. And by that I mean you have to make a bit of effort to put yourself out there, but to be honest it’s really crazy how small the university becomes when you make friends and start doing clubs.</p>
<p>3) Not really. I lived in mixed housing freshman year and quickly became friends with a lot of sophomores and transfers. I also had a freshman roommate my sophomore year, and while every experience will be different, she ended up becoming really good friends with us and still met some friends in her freshmen classes. Even though we don’t have big freshmen survey courses here, most of your intro-level classes will be comprised of mainly freshmen. Start a study group, strike up a convo, you’ll find most people are hoping to meet new friends too.</p>
<p>4) YES. I didn’t do it, but man, I wish I had! If you’re worried about meeting people when you get here, FYSOP would be great for you to ease your nerves.</p>
<p>5) Usually first semester freshman year you’ll have 1 or 2 large classes. My intro to poli sci lecture was probably about 200 people, but we also had discussion sections that were about 15. That helps a lot with meeting people too. Your foreign language and writing classes are likely to be pretty small. Basically any classes you take that are under the divisional studies requirements or core curriculum are likely to be a bit large cuz they’re intro level, but after that it dwindles quite significantly. Add the people who never come to class, and you’re looking at some pretty decent numbers.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for your answers! That was extremely helpful. :)</p>
<p>I’m just going to give a general response rather than respond to the qs individually.</p>
<p>I participated in FYSOP and it was totally worth it. You get to move into your dorm early and get a head start getting to know your floormates since you’re there a week before everyone else. I’m rooming with one of the kids from my FYSOP group next year. You’ll meet most of your friends in the dorms i’d say, but you have to make an effort to get to know people (e.g. go to the common room and chat). Try to live in warren west or towers. Clubs are a great way to get to know ppl also. I have a few friends here whos lives revolve around their club especially the ones in cultural ones like chinese student association or filipino student association. You could also consider rushing for a fraternity or a sorority. And fyi, there are alternatives to the traditional social ones such as the community service fraternity, business fraternity, etc. You can actually meet a lot of people through sporting events too. I have a few friends here that I met at BU Hockey and Basketball games. I totally agree with BUBailey on the smallness of BU once you’re settled in. BU is actually not a big intimidating place at all. I feel like I see the same ppl all the time…</p>
<p>Sorry for the giant bloc rresponse, it’s 4 in the morning, forgive me, haha.</p>
<p>A comment as a parent. It’s completely normal for a kid to feel lost and lonely sometime at school. Even when you have dozens of friends and way too much to do, both academically and socially. Part of that is age; late teens, early 20’s is an up and down emotional ride.</p>