<p>Please share! (: What do you like about Tufts? What do you not like about Tufts?</p>
<p>[Stuff</a> Tufts People Like](<a href=“Private Site”>Private Site) <– Almost universally true.</p>
<p>I <3 Your Blog.</p>
<p>“Official Unofficial Stamp of Approval.”</p>
<p>Stuff Tufts People Don’t Like:</p>
<p>The hill not having a ski lift.
Dining halls closing at 9:00 (so early!) on weekdays or 7:30 on Fridays and Saturdays (seriously, that is too early).
People are smart here so you have to try in classes.
SIS (registration and other assorted things) is pretty terrible. A compsci grad student essentially built a better one in a few weeks ([Tufts</a> Course Selection](<a href=“RaptorAttack.com is available at DomainMarket.com. Call 888-694-6735”>RaptorAttack.com is available at DomainMarket.com. Call 888-694-6735)). Tufts’ solution: Hire 50 people for two years to work on it.
Classes start at 8:30 but can go as late as 9:30 (if you’re in a lab).
Second semester freshmen engineers have priority over second semester seniors in terms of registration.
It can get cold in the winter.
Boston is further away than you think–25 minutes at minimum.</p>
<p>My daughter is graduating this year, yay, and she loved her experience at Tufts.</p>
<p>From what I observed from the outside, the best thing about Tufts is how many opportunities there are. My daughter did boxing, stand up comedy, sketch comedy, radio, and (ahem!) burlesque, amongst other things. All of her roommates are very fun, interesting, talented and amusing.</p>
<p>Speaking of amusing, Tufts seems to have a freakishly large number of comedy groups. There’s standup comedy, sketch, video, improv, and children’s as far as I know.</p>
<p>The down side (again, this is second hand) is the somewhat “geekish” nature of a lot of the students. My daughter said the typical Tufts student is the “cool nerd.” I.e., that kid in highschool who was extremely smart and nerdy, but also interesting and qwerky. This can manifest itself in painfull and/or embarrassing moments, when that geeky kid asks an earnest and long-winded question of a guest speaker. Also, in the fact that it can be hard for a typical student to know how to have fun, in the way other college students might.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, though, it was a great experience for her. She got internships over the last two summers fairly easily, and I think the Tuft’s name helped in that regard.</p>
<p>I can see where that’s coming from, but I definitely wouldn’t go so far as to say that the typical tufts student doesn’t know how to have fun– Tufts students know how to have fun ;)</p>
<p>
SIS sucks and we all hate it, but I think it’s worth pointing out that, while it’s surprising that replacing it is SUCH a large project, the reason it IS a large project is because of how many different databases and other software it has to interface, in addition to all of the other functionality.
Tufts Course Selection is a great site, but has very little overlap with SIS in terms of what each actually does.</p>
<p>Well, SIS is down for maintenance (as usual, it seems) , but going off of memory, it has:</p>
<p>Course selection and registration
Transcripts
Tuition balance
Maybe one or two other things?</p>
<p>Course selection seems like it would be at least 40% of SIS. Or am I missing something</p>
<p>Speaking of transcripts…we have a big beef at our house with SIS about unofficial transcripts. S2 was asked to provide a transcript for a great summer position that just became available. Employer said they’d accept an unofficial one. S2 printed it out and sent it to the HR department. They would not accept it because…his name is not on the transcript!!! The employer said they’d accept a fax or email of the official one from the registrar – but nope, Tufts only mails them. Requested it Tuesday, it should go in the mail Thursday. Sigh. A 20th century approach, but I can understand the need for security.</p>
<p>S called SIS and was told the names aren’t on the unofficial transcripts because “students could do anything with them.” Ummm…that’s why they are UNOFFICIAL?! Now we have to wonder if another internship he applied for was shot down by the same issue.</p>
<p>In the meantime, S is losing money because hiring can’t go forward until they have his name attached to his grades. Between the bureaucracies of the company and college, it is quite frustrating.</p>
<p>In future, he’s going to pay for an official transcript every semester so he has an unofficial copy of his official transcript to send when needed.</p>
<p>Oooh, great tip CountingDown. Thanks.</p>
<p>SlitheyTove, we figure if S already has a copy of the current transcript, he won’t have to jump through hoops and go crazy trying to get one at the last minute. And if he sends it here, I can scan it and have an emergency file here, too. (We have found this works well for insurance cards, passports, driver’s licenses, etc.)</p>
<p>Good news: Tufts sent out the transcript a day earlier than promised; it got to the hiring office this am and S had an offer by noon. Whew! The catering job he had lined up (and where he has worked for two summers previously) started out giving him decent hours, but now he hasn’t been scheduled in three weeks. And they like him a lot! This other job was like manna from the heavens at the right time.</p>
<p>Bad news: he gets to drive the DC Beltway to get there.</p>