<p>Hi parents. I have been a lurker for the past couple of weeks. My guidance counselor advised me to come here and get some insight. After viewing the boards the parents forum seems to be the best in offering helpful non biased advice. So heres my story. I currently have three prospects for schools and they include Northeastern University, Duke, and Cornell. I am a legacy for Northeastern (Father an alumnus). I want to continue sports (football) in college but i am really worried about balance of life. I don't want to miss out on a good college experience and academics are also important to me. Northeastern is certainly one of my top choices because i can get a good balance between sports, academics and college experience. Duke and Cornell would be very stressfull and unhealthy in my opinion. Can someone please give me some advice about my current situation and also some insight about Northeastern and their curriculum which is NU Core?? Many thanks.</p>
<p>Northeastern is a great school to go to because of it’s emphasize of hands-on learning and experimental learning through the co-op program which is different from learning approaches at Duke/Cornell because it takes what you learn in the classroom and forces you to apply them in the real world as an undergraduate student.</p>
<p>As for social life, Boston is an amazing city to go to college with. Northeastern is not really a huge sports school but hockey (and sometimes basketball, a player on the Dallas Mavericks, Barea I think is a NEU graduate) dominates the campus. Students love the hockey team.</p>
<p>I think that Northeastern would be a great place to go especially if you are looking to get a job in the New England area as employees in the Boston and New England area know about the great students of Northeastern (ranked #1 for job placement by Princeton Review this year)</p>
<p>I go to Northeastern and I was on a team. I think there’s definitely some balance. In my experience, teams tend to form their own social circle, so you might be spending a lot of time with the people from the football team, but that definitely isn’t just practicing. It’s a lot of fun.</p>
<p>I personally think the coop program is a major advantage. I’m somebody who’s kind of shy and not inherently great at interviewing and bragging about myself, and through the course of finding three coops, I’ve gotten a lot of practice with all of that. And then of course there’s the working in an office part of the practice. Are you being recruited for football? Have you visited yet?</p>
<p>If you are seriously able to get into Cornell and Duke, then noting that Northeastern is a legacy admit is meaningless because your stats would be much better than the school.</p>
<p>Northeastern means Boston, Co-op, and a more diverse student body. If sports is very important to you, you may want to add a D-3 school like Williams or Gettysburg to your list.</p>
<p>Thanks all this will be toughie come fall. AHHHH</p>