<p>I was accepted at Northeastern for Engineering, and I'm still waiting to hear back from RPI regarding my decision (I had to fax in my financial declaration form later, as I'm an international student, thus I find out soon).</p>
<p>My choices are basically going to be between NEU and RPI (Providing I get accepted), which school is better overall for engineering? I've heard RPI is much more prestigious for engineering and has better facilities, is this true?</p>
<p>Also, social life? And what about the cities themselves, is Troy a nice place to live? Differences between Boston?</p>
<p>Troy is not nice. It’s very ghetto (I live near it) and gloomy most of the year. Boston will be better in every single way regarding social life/surrounding environment. The guy to girl ratio at RPI is also ridiculous. But regarding facilities, which is better for engineering, and prestige, RPI will win those categories yes.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why DaveMatthews et al keep downing on the social life at RPI.</p>
<p>Every college is going to have frat parties and RPI isn’t an exception to that fact. Other than that, going down to River and Front is really nice on the weekends to go in the shops (if you have a girlfriend). If you don’t do that, you can always catch a bus and spend the day at the mall. </p>
<p>Honestly if you choose a real major, you’re going to have a lot of work and will appreciate the small things that you might have taken advantage of at home… even though going to the mall right now probably isn’t special, it will be when you’re able to enjoy yourself for one day out of the week (counting Sunday as a full study day)… it won’t get boring.</p>
<p>The campus here is really nice right now, but I will concede that it looks kind of dead when it’s below freezing here. The snow is very beautiful here though.</p>
<p>Regarding the male:female ratio, you won’t notice it if you don’t glue yourself to your room. If you’re out and around campus, you’re going to meet girls. Don’t sink into the idea that “oh they go to rpi, they must be nerdy and ugly”… I can assure you that there are many very pretty girls here at RPI who do not fit into that stereotype (my girlfriend the most pretty of course… if she’s reading this ).</p>
<p>I was accepted at Northeastern but chose RPI over it because it is obviously a better choice. RPI is much more selective in admissions and can offer you more in terms of how much you learn in undergrad and connections you gain with professors if you make the effort.</p>
<p>Okay I am currently a student at RPI and actually chose Rpi over Northeastern honors, though it was a hard choice. Boston is a much nicer city and since I was coming from New York City the jump to Troy would be losing a lot of the social opportunities I was offered to back home, but it is not as bad as the rumors are. A lot of the posters who go to rpi make me wonder about them as if you go there you can easily find something to do on the weekends. They show movies in the DCC at the UPAC for usually about 3 bucks a weekend, EMPAC will have programs (though they are weird) and if you make yourself social and gain some fraternity friends you should find it not hard at all to get into a party or two every weekend. Yes some of the fraternities like LXA and SAE have exclusive reputations and as a freshmen you may never walk inside their walls but Sig Ep, Zoo, SAE, TEP, Theta Chi and a handful of others usually let a lot of people in. Frat parties are not for everyone, though they don’t entail drinking and you can just go to get out of the dorms. </p>
<p>Troy is an okay city, but people overreact. The people who get jumped amaze me, since personally it is pretty hard to get jumped. You have to walk into downtown troy with your backpack on, which is pointless. I mean if you actually walk into the slums of troy I would like to know why? I live in Barh at the moment so I personally walk a lot. The crime rate is not that bad, people coming from suburbs will be shocked, but its not worse than most urban colleges. I mean if you went to columbia you’d be in more danger. However doing something in Troy well that is hard. They have Troy Night Out and things but I never found that to be to interesting, you can get to albany via bus and you could make a weekend trip to NYC if you wanted to. However you can find things to do on campus if you try, the thing about RPI is a lot of people don’t try. I personally never have found myself that bored here, if I want to have fun I know I can go out and find it, but I see so many RPI students just sitting inside and complaining, but if you ask them to come out they don’t do anything. It’s the way the school is. </p>
<p>One thing about RPI though, be prepared for a lot of annoying know it all type of people, but you will be able to avoid that quickly once you isolate who is who.</p>
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