Hi all,
I’m currently a freshman at Northwestern University, and am looking into my options regarding transferring to a comparable East Coast school for personal and social reasons. I’m looking for a university less focused on Greek life…in my extracurriculars, it almost felt like going Greek was essential for success, and that feels really stifling to me.
At Northwestern, I am a MMSS/Econ major, ~3.6 GPA, good extracurriculars. In high school, 3.9 UW, 36 ACT, 800 Math II, 770 Physics, National AP Scholar.
I’m not for certain, but I’d be looking at Brown for sure and other less Greek-focused universities and liberal arts colleges that are around the same level. I’m not even sure I want to leave NU, but I want to know my chances and get some advice in case I do want to leave.
Hi. While searching for something else in this forum, I saw your post and thought I’d try to help. (Your post caught my eye because I was curious why you wanted to transfer from NU. Coincidentally, my daughter applied ED to NU and was rejected. She has no interest in a Greek life either, and for some reason had thought Greek life was not a big factor at NU. Maybe she is lucky not to have been accepted after all.)
My kids’ Naviance lists the following east coast colleges as typical overlaps with Northwestern -
Boston College
Tufts
NYU
UPenn
Brown
Cornell
While searching a bit, I found posts that suggested that Vanderbilt and Georgetown had small Greek scenes, and another than included them on a list of strong Greek colleges.
Other strong schools that supposedly don’t have much Greek life include:
Bowdoin
Amherst
Middlebury
Swarthmore
That said, since your decision is not yet final, you might want to visit the Student Actitivies Officelook into the clubs and other campus activities that might interest you. Evanston is such a great college town, and proximity to Chicago and all that city has to offer on top of the excellent education you can receive from Northwestern make it seem like such an ideal school from where I sit.
Best of luck to you!