Interested in transferring

Colleges and Universities A-Z Northwestern University
1

I am currently a college Freshman at another top private university, and I am interested in transferring to NU as a sophomore. I am currently an English major concentrating in Creative Writing, and I plan to continue working toward this degree. I have so many questions, and I’d love for anyone to answer as many as possible.

  1. What programs are in place, if any, to help transfer students mix into the NU culture as easily as possible?
  2. What is the general attitude of the student body? For example, are NU students generally collaborative with one another, kind, engaged in the culture, happy to be at NU, etc.
  3. Coming from a semester system, what should I know about the quarter system?
  4. How large are class sizes for second-year students?
  5. How much are professors available to underclassman, and undergraduates in general?
  6. What are some of the common complaints among NU students?

Thanks for the help! I really need it.

2

  1. Don’t know all too much about this, though I do know that there are transfer student parties every now and then. Transfer students also go to Wildcat Welcome, the ten-or-so day long orientation before school starts in the fall. Additionally, you’ll be in a seminar class with around fourteen other transfer students centered around a theme that you demonstrate preference for (these preferences for seminars are expressed through a form sent out during the summer).

  2. Hmm good question. I’d say motivated to somehow change the world (usually in a positive way), hard at work, definitely collaborative, and grumpy about and simultaneously grateful for the quarter system. Which leads me to your next question…

  3. The quarter system is fast paced and merciless. Do not get more than a few days behind in more than one or two classes or you will spend the rest of the quarter digging yourself out. Keep if the studying and homework, since midterms begin usually around week three and last to the end of the quarter. There’s also reading week, which would give you as a Weinberg CAS student a week to prepare for exams or write essays or, for you, creative works. I, and many others, are however thankful for the system because you get to take more courses than at semester system schools, which means you get exposed to more ideas, the quarter system forces you to get real good at stuffing info into your brain constantly at a high pace (a valuable skill), and it gives you something to bond over with other students. I’m a big fan of the quarter system, by the way.

  4. I’m not in the liberal arts college at NU (Weinberg), so all I know about second-year literature classes is from the student registration website and not from experience, but it looks like such classes have 15-30 students in them.

  5. Professors are in my experience very available and willing to help students out with work, or even non-work stuff like class selection, discussing current trends in their field, etc.

  6. Being overworked. Weather (especially in winter). The inertia of the administration, if you’re in a student group working on something that the university doesn’t have as a priority. That last one happens more rarely than the others; in general the adminstration is very generous cash-wise to student groups. The university is, in general, really awesome at academics so there’s little to complain about in regards to that.