<pre><code> I woke up at a Days Inn and walked to the McDonald's that is located next door for breakfast. After my sausage McGriddle, my family and I went visit Tufts.
We cutted through Harvard's campus and a question immediately came to my mind: "How will the students at Tufts feel with Harvard and MIT so close in proximity?" This thought lingered with me especially in the area of career opportunities. Why would a company choose to hire a Tufts engineer and not the local MIT engineer?
I arrived at Tufts an hour earlier than the scheduled 10:30 information session. Wow... Tuft's campus was certainly aesthetically pleasing. The whole campus had a secular feeling and I saw that the environment is beautiful, with great spots to view Boston and interesting art splashed throughout campus.
After a personal walk around Tufts campus, the 10:30 information session began. So far, I've visited five information tours and I found Tufts' to be the most personal. While other schools talked about "numbers," Tufts talked about school spirit. The admissions officer giving the information session was Nehemiah Green, and he constantly stressed "fit." He talked about the warm and inviting student body of Tufts and how Tufts is less "cut-throat" than other schools. He gave many examples to everything he talks about and was hilarious in some of his anecdotes (visit to find out!). But overall, he created an unique atmosphere at Tufts which I haven't seen at other schools: "A student body and faculty that cares." Also, it was cool how there was a girl from Belgium there, and another girl from London there as well!
Most students go oversees; my tour guide went to London. Tufts gives its students a **global perspective**; students are required to take 6 semesters of a language! Which brings another question into my head: "exactly how much of an engineering school is Tufts?" I felt throughout campus that the focus of Tufts was the humanities and perhaps physical sciences. Now Mr. Nehemiah Green's point comes to my mind and I wonder if Tufts is a "good fit" for me.
On the tedious and traffic-ridden way back to long island, I ponder Tufts and the question of whether or not I can happily spend four years there. I can imagine that many students choose a school and didn't really know what to expect there. I find Tufts to be more focused on quality education and prepares its students for graduate school rather than for a job. I come to this conclusion after talking with some students and they give excellent accounts on how they learned how to speak a language fluently at Tufts and how they developed a more global perspective at Tufts. Most of the students I talked with were planning for some sort of Law School, MBA program, and a few Med-schoolers, but they all had some sort of a "higher goal." Ultimately, I find that the students are not attending Tufts to simply get out and get rich, but as Nehemiah puts it: "Heal the World."
And I love that idea. I would love to attend a warm school where the students help each other and help the world. As an aspiring engineer at Tufts, the only thing now that I have to worry about is the rest of my Junior Year, and hopefully if all things work out, I'll be at Tufts in 2010.
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<p>P.S. During my tour, I saw a Tufts student (male) run half-naked across campus screaming "SPRING BREAK! SPRING BREAK!" I love that sort of a light-hearted college atmosphere.</p>
I’m more or less ambivalent to our proximity to MIT and Harvard. I’m on the xc/track teams, and we do run through Harvard Yard/Harvard Square pretty often on our way to the Charles, though, and that’s fun. As far as career opportunities, I don’t think Tufts engineers have any difficulty getting jobs. While Tufts might not have MIT’s reputation, they still produce many great engineers, and there is a fairly high demand.
Maybe he didn’t emphasize that the School of Engineering is separate from the School of Arts and Sciences and has different distribution requirements. Because you have a much stricter set of courses you must take to get an Engineering degree, the distribution requirements are a lot more lax; basically, in addition to your engineering classes, you need to take at least one Humanities course, at least one Social Science, and then several more courses that fall under the categories of humanities, arts, and social sciences.
I know many Tufts students (and alumni) who plan to go straight into the workforce after graduation (or did); however, some of them do have plans to go to graduate school at some point.</p>
<p>“P.S. During my tour, I saw a Tufts student (male) run half-naked across campus screaming “SPRING BREAK! SPRING BREAK!” I love that sort of a light-hearted college atmosphere.”</p>
<p>no language requirements for engineers? I must’ve misheard something then.</p>
<p>Still, I feel that Tufts liberal arts style education prepares more for grad school, and I realize there are still many students who enter the work force right after graduation.</p>
<p>NoLuck - I agree with you to a certain extent however Grad programs such as MBA which you mentioned need atleast two years of work experience before you can apply and get accepted. So people who wish to pursue an MBA need to get into the workforce before they can start their grad studies.</p>
<p>But thank you for sharing your experience at Tufts with us. I am an international student admitted to Tufts but I can’t visit since it is too far away/expensive and IB exams are around the corner. So your experience at Tufts is helping me create an idea of how Tufts is really like :)</p>
<p>JIS1 - if you’d like, you can give me a call or send me an e-mail I can connect you with oodles of current students that share interests. Even without visiting, you can still get a sense of our community.</p>
<p>NoLuck - thanks so much for posting this! It’s super helpful to read what kinds of experiences visitors had and to be able to relay that feedback back to the relevant people. Most of what we hear after an info session is positive, but it’s often hard to know what that really means (would people just come up and say, “Well, that was awful”?). It’s wonderful that Nehemiah and our tour guide helped you get a sense of Fit at Tufts.</p>
<p>Haha, I know that MBA requires a bit of work experience, however, Tufts seems to provide students with many unique and eye-popping experiences. From what I’ve heard in my information session and tour, there are many students participating in the UN, helping out in third-world countries, and getting internships after studying abroad. I think these opportunities make an applicant very unique when considering grad school.</p>
<p>Dan - Thanks for the offer! Thats great, I have actually contacted Kerrin Damon and I have been linked up to a current student who is studying economics so I am indeed getting a feeling of Tufts already. I will be enrolling today!! Thanks for the offer once again</p>
<p>NoLuck - You are right about that! Tufts is extremely concerned about making its students Global Citizens and therefore you hear about them working in various NGOs, UN Agencies or even in third world countries!</p>