I am not aware of research being mostly for work-study. I got mine with no issue and I was an international student! You mentioned generic facts about work-study that apply to everywhere. For example, “we are all not wealthy” / “work study money comes from the government” are true everywhere! According to the annual report from Office of Undergraduate Research, Pell eligible applicants had success rates just slightly above the average and the report also explicitly stated the grants were given base on merit, not financial need. The slightly higher success rate was probably because poorer students were more motivated to put together better proposals to win the grants. Anyway, the stats totally contradict what you claimed!
URAP is just one of the undergrad research grant programs. I don’t know where you pulled the 16; it could just be for the summer. The total grants last year was 114. Last year, the total number of awarded students for undergrad research was 532. That’s almost one out of ten freshmen/sophomores/juniors (most applicants were probably sophomores or juniors) and many people did not even apply for grants. This number doesn’t even include unpaid research opportunities that are even more common. NU allocated more than $3M to undergrad research per year. As far as I know, only Stanford beat that number.
You cited articles with issues that apply to many other schools, including Yale! NU is not perfect so of course, anyone who digs hard enough is gonna find articles like those.
https://undergradresearch.northwestern.edu/funding/urap/urapjobs/
16!
My online friend here thinks I am trying to badmouth what is in many ways a wonderful school. That is not the case at all, as I pointed out above. But when we were researching schools, I promised myself that I would provide feedback once I was able to. Most here have probably come across the same write-ups I did and the question - pay for the top schools, or take a different approach and look for aid (the northwestern versus univ of pittsburgh article) for example). This is a very expensive school. Before anyone starts saying - they give great aid - that is not true. Many of us who fall int the middle class range who just make " a little too much" or have "saved a little too much’ have had aid taken away from us collectively over the last decade to be put towards other groups This school is very expensive for us. As I have shown above (with links showing that I am not the only one who thinks so) - clubs are a problem. If you don’t get in the popular ones Freshman year, yeah, it is pretty much over. I think it was said above, there are kids who are super busy. That is because for many of them keep themselves in these clubs and others out - it is the same kids in the clubs with leadership positions. I think part of the issue is that there is a very different experience for kids who come knowing what they are going to do and those exploring. If you are in the sciences, computers, etc… the clubs and research may be more available and open. My friend above may be such a person (or it could be someone in administration). If you are in other areas of the school, it is not so easy. Academically, it is an amazing place to explore - can’t be beat. But, I’ll refer back to URAP It starts off with Lots of faculty mentors are running job searches for students with no prior research experience! -* again 16 positions for the summer. This is often aimed at kids who are not sure (or at all) what they want to do and it is meant to give them ideas. My friend above discusses research - 1 in 10 - I don’t think that’s great, but whatever. But that is based on having some idea of what you want to do. Urap is meant to stimulate ideas. It is not necessarily meant for kids who don’t know their direction. So, I will leave it with this. It is a great place for kids who come in knowing what they want to do. It can be a great place for students who did lots and lots in high school and come in running full blast freshman year. For others, while academically being amazing, the difficulty with access to top clubs and organizations, especially after Freshman year (Morty says in one of the articles “It makes me cry” - you had the power to do something about it Morty), advising not being great, and research/jobs not being as great as advertised (at least outside of the sciences, should be considered. Just considered. Read (reddit ) with a grain of salt) to get a sense of what kids are saying. All I have said has been based on the experiences of a bunch of kids over there last few years. I think the feel is that this is based on the experiences of nerdy or unpopular kids. Not at all Some have been nerdy, but I wouldn’t say unpopular. Actually, a girl we know has had one of the toughest experiences. At school, we met her parents and her mom was saying she petitioned for about 13 clubs - she got into none. Me met her at some point and she was absolutely beautiful -there was another mom there who whispered to me - well,of course she didn’t get in to anything - she is too pretty. I have no idea if that is true, but as I said in the beginning, leaving admissions decisions to children for these top organizations is ridiculous.
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My daughter is a freshman at McCormick currently living in a campus dorm. She has many freshman friends at various NU schools and they are involved in lots of activities and clubs. Her friends who wanted summer research/work study positions were able to get spots, and it didn’t seem that difficult.
I don’t doubt the previous poster’s experiences, but that has not been our daughter’s experience, or it seems the experience of her friends who are involved in many campus organizations. She has been able to join activities/clubs she’s been interested in - social clubs, as well as impressive professional clubs in her major.
An exception is the NU Sailing Club. She and her friends applied but they had zero sailing experience and didn’t know anyone on the team. They just applied on a whim. I believe that club had hundreds of applications for only a few open spots. No one felt slighted. They’ll probably just take a class at the sailing center or try some other sport at the Rec Center.
She has been invited by other students to be on various clubs and Rec sports teams and has been very selective on what she joins due to her academic load (as I’m sure is the case with most NU students).
And I really don’t believe that, according to previous poster, a student didn’t make clubs because she was discriminated against for being “too pretty.” Unbelievable. I think we can give these NU students a little more credit than that. Maybe there are some other social issues at work here. NU is certainly not the best social fit for everyone. But it seems to be a great fit for my daughter and all her friends on campus, who are “pretty” both inside and out.
Oh, and last time I checked, an 18+ y.o. adult inviting someone to join a student run/managed club/activity is not “leaving admission decisions to children.” These are adults now, and no more hand holding is needed. If a student still needs this type of adult support to join/excel at a club, maybe NU is not the best place for them. There are literally hundreds of open-to-all, as well as selective, clubs/activities on campus. And if a student can’t find their right fit, it is very easy to start a new club, which is also something my daughter is thinking about doing.
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Yep, this is the point I made before. One idea I am uncomfortable with is this (kind of default) idea of appealing to authority. For instance, expecting the uni president or adults to fix something when life/peers/whatever deal you a rough hand. I think there’s something to be said for showing some initiative and being energized by rejection to build something new or do something else.
However, I do agree that with full-price at privates being so insanely expensive now, if you can’t get aid/scholarships and that type of cost is real money to you, you really need to enter college with a plan and goals. If you need to find yourself, taking a gap year to do so or a lower cost option (saving the money for grad school once you know your goals) makes a lot more sense.
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@Collegegirl10134 did you get the necessary insights from this thread? Did you end up committing to Northwestern?
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So it seems like some clubs are exclusionary, but unlike at the big state schools, it doesn’t really matter whether you’re in one or not when it comes to getting jobs in the prestige industries.
You know, I still haven’t heard back an answer for “why not start your own club?”
The 16 on that URAP page are what are currently available. The page shows openings on a rolling basis. When they are filled, they will be removed from the website while any new ones will be added. It’s just like any job openings website. If it were super competitive, these openings would have been gone right away! It’s been days since you looked at them and the 16 are still there. That’s a good sign, unlike what you were thinking!
As I said, I challenged you to find another school with as much funding for undergrads. I only know Stanford beat that.
1 out of 10 for research grants. Again, find me a mid-size school that gives out over 500 grants to undergrads in a year. From what I’ve seen with other schools, grants are a lot more limited and competitive. Keep in mind there are also research opportunities in which you assist professors’ research teams on their on-going research. There’s no grant/no pay for those but you are involved in the research. Those are more readily available. Also, many students don’t do research; they are happy with internships/co-ops. In other words, the success rate for getting a research opportunity is basically 100% if you put the effort (it’s not 10% you were thinking)! I have not heard of any of my classmate who had a lot of difficulty to get one. I got mine (non-grant) by simply walking into the office of one of the professors I took a class with and I was no academic superstar (3.2 GPA overall).
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