NU.in Program Questions

Colleges and Universities A-Z Northeastern University
41

We received no merit. I am not sure I subscribe to the statement that NEU is generous, It clearly states on their site that they provide merit to the top 10-15% of applicants, Some schools offer some merit to 50+%. We received merit from all the other schools we applied to. I would certainly say however that we are at the lower end of the NEU applicant pool (excited we got in) and at the upper end of the pools we received merit from. In addition, I firmly believe that NU In is targeted towards full pay families such as ours. It costs more for the semester abroad AND federal aid cannot be used,

I also spoke to Financial Aid office yesterday, If you did not receive Merit Aid/Schollies in your offer letter/portal, it ain;t coming, Admissions controls that process and it is complete; financial aid office handles need based aid. Financial Office is in the process of sending out some follow-up requests to families for additional detail (e.g., actual copies of tax returns, student asset clarification, etc.) on their CSS and FAFSA. In our case it is likely for them to offer unsubsidized loans. You probably know your EFC and where you sit in the process +/- a few K. Good luck.

We are leaning to NU In but the $$$ are material over our other options.

42

@alexa2143 how much say do we have in selecting our coop cycle? Id be worried about just showing one semester of grades since NUin grades are pass/fail

43

@shafthalf I’m in the business school, so I’m not entirely sure how it works for the other schools, but around a month into the spring semester when you get back, you get sent a survey to fill out indicating your preference for the spring cycle (2nd semester sophomore year) or the fall cycle (June-December of your 3rd year). Everyone that I know got their preference, so your cycle is basically up to you.
That’s definitely something to consider – the spring cycle is more competitive because a lot of people want to do co-op earlier (especially for those who want to graduate in 4 years). If you did decide to do the fall cycle, your GPA could be higher with 2 semesters of grades; I think that within the month that you have before you put in your preference, you’ll have an idea of how you’re doing/your grades in your classes, but it’s really up to you. Some employers have a GPA requirement, but others focus on experience or how well you’re going to fit into the company.

44

My d spent her first semester in Dublin, traveled all over Europe while there as it was so cheap to do once there, became an even more responsible adult while still being in a safe nurturing environment, loved the experience, met a really great group of friends and started on campus in the Spring with a built in support system. She loves NEU, and all in all it was a once in a lifetime experience that she is very glad she took. It’s probably not for everyone but she was pretty emotionally mature to start with and loves traveling.

45

I did N.U.in Greece. Classes were fairly easy for me (at the time a Linguistics major), but my engineering friends definitely struggled a bit more. The workload was about the same for me as it is here at Northeastern, but since the Greek semester is very short we had a lot more class hours per week, making getting work done harder. Don’t let the academics scare you, it’s college so you should be prepared to handle some work. If you have strong feelings about a country sign up and make the decision/ deposits early! They fill super fast, leaving me with Greece and China as my only options. Being able to travel Europe for cheap and the activities Northeastern and the host institution planned for us were amazing and I am so glad I got that experience.

I made an amazing group of friends and it is very easy for me to still be friends with them here on campus, though we are different majors so I doubt we would have met without NUin. I did want to join a sorority and couldn’t find any information about Spring rush, so I’m planning to do that my sophomore fall instead. I do know many NUin boys who joined frats though. While I’ve found it very difficult to meet friends in my dorm because they all have already known each other for a semester and my roommate is also NUin Greece, meeting friends in classes was not very hard, though the majority of my friends are still NUin Greece. Everybody is in new classes come Spring, so people try to meet friends in their classes, NUin or not. It was actually very nice to come on to campus already knowing/ knowing of ~300 people, and even those I wasn’t close with in Greece will wave to me on the street. Joining clubs was easy in the Spring and they host an activities fair for you. It is not like the clubs are closed off since the school year has already started.

I chose traditional freshmen housing as my first choice for Spring housing because I wanted “that experience”. But I would definitely recommend choosing apartment style instead when they ask you towards the end of the fall semester, because I’m jealous of my friends who live in West Village and are good friends with their upperclassmen roommates. Definitely would choose that over living in a freshmen dorm where I don’t know anybody and don’t have a kitchen!

46

@ctnortheastern just how early do destinations fill up

47

My kids (twins) got into NUin. I’m less concerned with the relative stats of students in the program (that stuff is less important once people get into the swing and rhythm of college) than the fact that it is for well-to-do people exclusively. We are not poor. We could probably send one kid to university with our resources…but not two. That is 140K a year and we have an income of under 200K, with some savings and retirement. It turns my stomach a little that they would be attending NUin with no scholarship students. That is an unhealthy model. The Boston campus has a lot of rich kids…but also a much more diverse group socioeconomically and probably ethnically as well. It sounds like a fun four months. But we purely can’t afford it.

48

On one of the NEU parent groups, someone is saying 50% of incoming class is NU.IN. I find this hard to believe, have any statistics been published.

49

@Mom24boys

That’s absolutely not true - as far as I’m aware there are at most 1000 NU.in students, if not less. That would make it 1000 / (1000 + 2800), or about 25%. Based on personal experience, I would venture that the number is closer to 15-20%. I don’t know where that’s published though.

50

@Mom24boys There will be about 2800 fall Boston freshmen. Last year there were about 700 NUIn freshmen. Someone reported here that they were told at an info session there will be about 1000 NUIn this year. It is no where near 50%!

51

@PengsPhils and @TomSrOfBoston I knew the two of you would have facts to pass on. I knew it sounded very wrong, but now I can pass along the useful info you two provided.

52

Per the NU In office when I spoke to them 2 weeks ago, they are targeting 900-1100 students in the program this year.

53

At the welcome day, they said almost one third of the incoming class was nu.in. Idk if that means kids they accepted this year, anticipate yield of nuin/fall admit kids, or the percent of enrolled kids last year

54

NUin targeting class is 1200 students per admissions, we had a huge presentation done about their while proccess and how they evelauate candidates.

Also the 19% was confirmed by them during the presentation.

@Mom24boys

55

Hi, I am a current undergrad at Northeastern and I participated in the nu in spring 2018 to Greece. I would like to start out by saying that the fall and spring program are completely different. For starters, the fall kids take pass/fail classes, or at least the Greece kids did, which makes the experience awesome as they are able to travel and party and enjoy life as much as they want while putting minimal effort into school. For the spring, it is not pass/fail and every class counts towards your gpa, which left me always stressed out and my friends and I had a very difficult time finding the balance between school and exploring the world and having fun.

For the Spring, we only had a little less than three months abroad, so that way we would not be required to obtain visas (this may be different for places such as England or if they make you obtain a visa for the fall). This meant that I would be taking college classes (difficult labs) within a shorter time frame than the rest of Northeastern, basically classes moved very quickly and it was extremely difficult to miss a few days of class and be able to catch up. Now again, this may be different for the fall, it just depends on the length of the program.

The experience of going abroad itself was amazing. I was nervous about leaving my new roommates back in Boston after only one semester, but I enjoyed being in Europe and loved the freedom and friends that I made. So if you’re worried about studying abroad so early in college, don’t. It’s an amazing experience.

For the fall, they have a lot of students and lots of different places available to choose from, so I imagine you would have some options available for classes. This would most likely mean you have bio and chem classes offered and maybe a math class and then nu path/general electives. So in terms of classes, this is a good opportunity to fulfill your basic electives.

In terms of missing clubs and frats and whatnot, I would say that you don’t miss much. Yes, you miss rush week and such, but you are always welcome to join clubs whenever you get back in the spring, you don’t just have to join in the fall. For athletics, it’s a bit different and I passed up playing softball until I would be on campus for the full year, but there will be more opportunities to join clubs and frats and whatnot in the spring.

Now, while you are abroad, you will have to complete housing, meaning you will most likely try to room with those in the program with you, but It may be difficult in the spring to get housing together. I can not speak on this as I was not in this situation, but I had an nu in fall kid replace me when I left, so basically there will be vacancies for housing and you’ll fill those spots when you come back, meaning the chances of rooming together with your friends is probably slim and you will most likely be placed with other freshmen, or even upperclassmen if there’s an empty bed. This is a good chance that allows you to expand your bubble and meet other kids who have been in Boston since September, but you still keep your own friends.

I would say that if you can afford it, do nu in fall. If you are offered nu in spring, be very careful about your decision as I regret mine in regards to classes and messing up my school schedule.

56

Do we get to opt for either fall or spring nu.in. @kirstenm44

57

No. When you apply to NU you are either admitted to the nu in fall program or you are admitted as a regular student. Now, if you are offered the nu in fall, the only way you can go to NU is to accept the invitation. If you opt out of nu in fall, then you are not accepted into NU. For the spring, it was not mentioned in my admissions letter, but was offered online when I was checked my application status after I was admitted. It is only offered for some majors as the only two locations for spring are London and Thessaloniki so I believe it was college of science/engineering for Thessaloniki and maybe English majors for London? On the website it says what site is for what majors.

You are welcome to decline the spring, it is optional. For fall, you must either accept or not go to NU. It should also be noted that for the fall, the only financial aid one is allowed to use is from the school, not any government loans or scholarships just for that fall semester only.

58

I will add my thoughts: My son did NUin China 2017 in Shanghai, and loved it. It is an experience that none of his other HS friends came close to having. It is a structured, supervised program (makes parents happy) and there is plenty of free time and independence (makes the kids happy). The courses/units apply to graduation although I must say if graduating in four years is of top importance, Northeastern may not be the school for you because of its co-op system. Not sure if my son will graduate in four years, and he had enough AP units that he started as a sophomore (unit-wise). With the co-op system (which is NOT NUin), figure that another academic year is spent working, not at school. (The co-op system is the most unique aspect of Northeastern in general - if the co-op doesn’t appeal to you, I see no reason to go to NEU).

The idea that NUin students are not top-notch students is silly - he and his friends are at the top of their classes this spring. Maybe they have a bit of chip on their shoulder that they want to prove to everyone that they are the best. At any rate, classes are harder at NEU, just as they are harder in college than HS. He signed up for some clubs in January, but I think he’s spent most of his time with friends he made at NUin, much the same way you’d stay friends with people you met in the Fall in the dorm. There are so many kids doing the NUin thing (about 1/3 of the class) that they are not left out or snubbed in clubs or activities.

Finally, for parents, we got a small grant ($2000) towards tuition for the NUin semester, at $150k/yr earnings, so they do provide a bit of financial aid (or more correctly, it shows that NUin students are not per se excluded from financial aid). Federal-based loans are not given, as technically the child is not attending a US college. Those (Stafford loans) kick in in January. God, college costs TOO MUCH!!

59

My son went to Dublin with NU.IN last fall and had an absolute blast. He made some great friends, travelled all over Europe and got a full semester’s worth of credit. It did not seem that the academics were very difficult if you know what I mean. That is a once in a lifetime experience, and you get to do it at 18 or 19.

The biggest tip I would give a person upon your return is to get involved in a club or other activity to make new friends, stay tight with the people you went abroad with and realize that your first month or so back in Boston will be a big adjustment (but you just had a great time abroad). It will be a little weird being new to campus when 80% of the other freshmen had 3 months to get to know each other, but you’ll make it work.