<p>Hello Folks, any views on NEU will be much appreciated.........our school counselor asking us to consider this school for CS/Engnr. A friend has visited along with her son and really liked the campus.</p>
<p>Son wanted to avoid the cold but if this school has a good mix of things then its worth a shot as a match/safety hence the interest. Thanks!</p>
<p>I have a daughter there ( 2nd year ) She is not in engineering, but loves the school. As far as the the cold and snow…last year I had two students in Boston…the one at NEU was not bothered by all of the snow because the campus was very well maintained …the other , who lived off campus was a bit sick of winter when everytime it snowed ( and it always was several inches )</p>
<p>^Oh Great, thanks! Good to know. </p>
<p>I read on one particular website that offers students opinions that the teachers in the Math/Sc depts have heavy accents! That is a bit worrying. Perhaps your child has taken a class and can offer some insight?</p>
<p>I am a brand-new MS student in computer science there. So, I can’t really tell you about what it’s like being an undergrad there, but I do know something about CS. :)</p>
<p>It seems like a good program so far. I have heard the thing about the math/science profs having heavy accents, but it doesn’t seem to be true in CS - I got to hear most of the CS school faculty talk during the Grad Orientation event, and only one had a significant non-native-English-speaker accent.</p>
<p>The reputation of both the school in general and the CS program are on their way up, and have been for a while. Even if it doesn’t call itself such, it is basically a tech school, so the math/science/engineering programs are the focus and are strong.</p>
<p>The campus has a nice tech school feel, but also a lot of greenery. Good mix. What I’ve seen of the facilities are excellent. There’s a large, nice, student center. The campus seems to be very diverse - race/ethnicity-wise, gender-wise, class-wise, etc.</p>
<p>I’ve lived up here for six years now, after coming up from the South, and the weather is a pain, but the proximity to the coast makes the winters less harsh. If only it shortened them as well! Part of the Northeastern campus has a basement tunnel system, so on that part of campus you can get from building to building without having to go outside.</p>
<p>Thank you J,</p>
<p>Happy to note your views regarding their CS program since son is looking towards that major.</p>
<p>Where did you do your undergrad? Did you do the co-op program?</p>
<p>Northeastern has dramatically changed - even reinvented itself - over the last decade. It was, like many schools, a commuter school, but Northeastern specialized in part-time enrollment for people who either couldn’t afford full-time or who were working. They claimed huge numbers of students - like 50k, if I remember. They’ve dropped that, retaining the co-op, and have built a campus to go along with the old grey brick buildings along Huntington Avenue.</p>
<p>In terms of location, Northeastern is one of the best urban campuses in America.</p>
<p>From my D’s perspecive (a 'middler - 3rd year NEU student): </p>
<p>The bad news - she wishes more ‘well-rounded’ students would attend, that is, students interested not only in their field, but also in the humanities and politics. She wishes the library were better in non-technical fields: when she wants an escape into popular/contemporary fiction, she heads to the Boston Public Library because, according to her, it’s slim pickins’ at NEU’s. Socially, the student body isn’t as tight knit as other schools, since at any given time a large percentage of the students are off campus, on co-op. In terms of sports, the school also isn’t as exciting as more traditional colleges. And I was surprised by how many large classes D has had, for a private school. Getting into certain classes also hasn’t been as easy as you’d think considering the tuition (that’s mom speaking, here.) </p>
<p>The good news: over the past decade, NEU has vastly improved, and consistently keeps getting better. They’ve hired a lot of faculty, and with generous merit aid, have increasingly attractted better students. My D sees the difference even in the 3 years she’s been there. The rise in standards is also visible in NEU’s rise in rankings. You certainly can’t beat Boston for a college vibe. Finally, the co-op program can offer amazing opportunities. My D, a science student, spent six months working in a Harvard lab, and has been invited back to work there part-time this semester. Her roommate, a business major, spent six months in Paris on her co-op. </p>
<p>For the right student, NEU is terrific, but it’s not an enviroment for everyone.</p>
<p>A friend’s son is happy there. he studies computer science. Good school in a great city</p>
<p>I know two kids there, several years apart: one computer graphics/animation, the other probably comp sci. Both love it. The dorm situation of the freshman was the envy of friends at HYD.</p>
<p>And Boston/Cambridge is a fabulous place for college.</p>
<p>My son is also starting his 3rd year at Northeastern. He liked the campus when we visited and he really enjoys being in Boston. He switched his major to behavioral neuroscience which put him a little behind so he has not been on a co-op yet. </p>
<p>Admissions seems to have very finely tuned antenna that detect applicants using Northeastern as a safety. More than a few surprise rejections have occurred.</p>
<p>my daughter’s social life is far from slow…also she has become friends with people from all different kinds of backgrounds and ethnicities. she belongs to a sorority there. She has friends from other schools in the area too , srom BU, Harvard, MIT , Emerson, etc</p>
<p>Thank you all for responding. Son hates the cold weather but willing to put up with it if the program is really good there. Plus I hear that they do a good job with clearing the snow. Did not know that the dorms are good :)</p>
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<p>I did undergrad at MIT, but I wasn’t a CS major (I did neural & cog sci there - I might combine that and CS once I get to PhD level). Some of my fellow MS students will be doing the co-op program at Northeastern, but as a part-time grad student who works full time, I can’t leave my job for a semester to take some other job through co-op.</p>
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<p>The Boston area in general is very good at clearing snow. If you are from the South as I was, or some other warm region, and you’re used to cities shutting down over an inch of snow, you (or rather, your son) will be pleasantly surprised at how much smoother that sort of thing is here. Though, when the first major snow of the season arrives, all the drivers seem to have temporarily forgotten how to drive in snow.</p>
<p>I haven’t been inside any of the dorms, but they look nice from the outside! There’s a whole cute (and if I had to guess from looking at them, pretty new) cluster of them over by the CS building (so someone who lives in one would be very close to their classes). There’s actually one built <em>into</em> the CS building. Oddly enough, though, it’s not the CS-themed dorm (which I’m told exists), it’s the 21+ dorm.</p>
<p>A caveat: The campus is sandwiched between a relatively nice area of town and a not-so-nice area. New students would be advised to figure out which is in which direction before they wander out for some late-night food or whatever. The campus itself, however, has a very strong security presence and is considered very safe.</p>
<p>A few years ago Northeastern University won an award for the quality of its newly erected dormitories. And as I recall, Boston Police HQ (or some other large PD facility) is next door to the south end of the campus. So perhaps that adds a measure of safety to the area.</p>
<p>Thank you folks for your valuable insights.</p>
<p>One piece of advice I have heard regarding NEU - apply early. I’ve seen several threads (and received a few PM’s because my D was interested in NEU) that indicated parents knew of kids with lower stats who were accepted, and kids with higher stats who were rejected from NEU. The difference was that the lower stats kids applied early (EA), and the rejected higher-stats kids applied just before the final decision deadline. </p>
<p>So apply to NEU as early as possible… a word to the wise.</p>