<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I know this may be a belated reply but I would like to give my two cents. I was also rejected by NYU as a freshman because I honestly just wasn’t the strongest candidate, since some personal adversity had gotten in the way of being the best in school. Anyway, I attended Penn State and I was just happy to go to college and make friends - I started in one of the 2011 LEAP programs. I had such a fantastic time during the summer. Halfway through the fall I started getting frustrated. I was in the Nittany Grotto Caving Club (amazing people and fun in that group), got into Phi Eta Sigma Honor Society, and maintained a 3.53 GPA. I lived in Simmons with honors kids and took advantage of the K-floor’s meetings with Dean Brady. I got frustrated because I felt like I was living in the middle of nowhere, which I was. I grew up in Europe and spent six years living in New York City, and while PSU boasts a beautiful campus I needed far more stimulation. I wanted to be a part of things - the rush and the intellectual buzz. I took a semester leave of absence this past fall and reapplied to NYU as a transfer for the spring. I was accepted, and I am due to start the end of January.</p>
<p>I will share what I have learned about Gallatin so far: making your own “concentration” is a blessing and a curse. I accepted late because, for a time, it was difficult for me to choose between the two schools. This pushed me back in terms of registering because your advisor needs to clear you before you can register. What this means is that you go to your advisor, talk about which areas of study interest you, and then you have to find courses, put together your schedule, and send it to her so that she can approve it (make sure nothing conflicts and that you’re not waiting for a class that has a 10 person wait list). As a Gallatin student, you need two Expository Writing courses and four Interdisciplinary Seminar courses. These are intended to give students basic requirements so that we’re not flailing about in the dark. My English 15 course from PSU counted as one Expository Writing class, which is nice. What is AMAZING about Gallatin courses is that they, like someone else posted, incorporate different subject matters into one course. I am registered for International Human Rights for the spring. There are others that concern the written word, identity, time period, and narrative writing all in one. So administrators (or whomever) work hard to make the courses interesting, since that’s what Gallatin is all about. You take generally four courses (16 credits) at Gallatin, which surprised me because at PSU you can take up to 21 credits.</p>
<p>Another thing to note is that the first two years are spent taking whatever courses you want. In this respect, Gallatin acts exactly like PSU’s Division of Undergraduate Studies. This means that Gallatin will accept all your course credit from your previous school. The only difference is that at PSU, you will declare a prescribed major. At Gallatin, you will declare a “concentration,” or your unique area of study. Now here comes the part that gives reason to why it will be difficult to go into Gallatin as a junior: as a junior at Gallatin, you are expected to have declared a concentration already and probably begun minor preparation for your senior colloquium. I don’t see how they can accept juniors, to be honest, because you’d be coming in without a concentration that’s the first year of preparing for the colloquium. But about the colloquium (you can find more information about this on the Gallatin website): it’s a two-hour-long discussion/presentation of your concentration to (as I understand it) your advisor and two or three other faculty members. You have to incorporate 20-25 books into your presentation, and the amounts are broken into time periods. But don’t let this overwhelm you, as it did me at first, because preparation begins about two years before your colloquium.</p>
<p>I understand cost is a huge factor. Luckily, my mother is a professor at NYU so I qualify for tuition remission (NYU pays for 90% of tuition). As such, my total cost per semester will cost about the same as a semester at PSU. This was a huge bonus for me; NYU a few years back decided not to apply this to graduate school as well, so this was my chance. I didn’t want to go back to Penn State, though I have amazing friends there, because of a few things, which may or may not seem minor to others. I couldn’t stand the beer-chugging frat guys and the 5"-heel-and-mini-skirt-in-the-dead-of-winter-wearing girls who seemed to wash over the undergraduate student body. I didn’t grow up with football (though being at games was a lot of fun) so I didn’t like the cult-like obsession with it outside of the stadium. It was more than this, though, and I am sorry if I offend anyone. I felt like I had to work very hard to find the students who were off the radar - my gays, my musicians, my poets, etc. I felt like, outside the classroom, the cultural scope of PSU and its undergraduate students was very limited. It was hard to relate to people. A lot of my friends were grad students, which made me feel even more set apart from my undergraduate classmates. Second thing: I wanted to be able to apply what I was studying outside the classroom. I felt like anything I was studying ended at the classroom doors, and that bothered me. I love NYU’s applied approach. Third: NYU’s motto is “In and of the city, and In and of the world.” They’re not just saying that for reputation. NYU is the first school, to my knowledge, to actually have branch campuses abroad. There are so many places to go that I may not go to after college, and that’s super exciting. PSU is a bubble; that’s exactly what some people want and what some people don’t.</p>
<p>Two last things about Gallatin, which I should have mentioned earlier: you can generally cross the red tape that other students can’t when it comes to taking classes in other schools. I am currently on the wait list to take a scriptwriting class in Tisch, with the consent of the professor. You just have to make sure to be clear as to why you want to take that class. Lastly, in my application I made clear that I had been involved at my former school, but listed two or three fundamental reasons why it was not the school for me and hashed that out in paragraph form. I emphasized that though PSU is a good school, I wanted the experience I knew NYU could give me. I’m not a huge city girl, but I love walking around the village and going in and out of cafe’s and meeting people from all walks of life. And there is a sort of heart of campus: Washington Square Village. There’s some intense student life there.</p>
<p>I hope this has helped, and good luck with everything!</p>