Unhappy at Northwestern :(

Transfer Students
1

<p>Hi all,</p>

<p>This is my first time posting on here. Although I have been an avid follower of the CC forums since my senior year of high school, I have never actually posted anything until now :)</p>

<p>So, I'm currently a freshman at Northwestern and not completely happy with my experience here.
I was lucky enough to be a questbridge finalist, and was offered a spot as for early decision after being deferred during the match round.</p>

<p>Coming from LA, I find the campus and community more conservative that what I had hoped it would be. Being gay, I was so used to having a group of close gay friends back home. Although there are obviously a number of gay students here at northwestern, it feels a little exclusive to the communications school (Theater, RTVF, Comm Studies) and it's really hard to meet like-minded friends. I'm an econ (tentatively) major in WCAS.
And the student body as a whole isn't very gay-friendly as people might think. It's very fratty and what I would think of as a mini-version of a traditional state school experience. People use gay slurs all the time (i saw a gay couple walking, holding hands on the street, and a group of guys yelled out at them, four letter expletive, etc.). It really does make me feel out of place. It deosn't help that my roommate is not particularly friendly either. He was a little homophobic at first, and although it's ok now, it does still get tense.
I've tried attending the Rainbow Alliance meetings, but their outreach seems a little limited and comprised of only a small group of dedicated students.
I've definitely made a lot of great friends and we go out and have fun, but I still feel really out of place.</p>

<p>Also, I feel at odds with the Greek Life/Sports scene that seems to dominate the campus. I had hoped to go to college where people are more interested in learning about new ideas and focusing on their futures rather than worry so much about which party they are going to get into this friday/saturday night. I thought I had left all that behind in high school. </p>

<p>Being in Evanston also feels so far removed from the city. Yes, it's only a 45 min train/shuttle ride, but 12 miles is a lot farther than you think without a car. Life seems to be very restricted to the campus + downtown of evanston.</p>

<p>Last thing is probably the weather. Winter blues puts me in a funk. I've never been in snow weather before and it gets PAINFULLY COLD. But not a big deal, I'd still love a school with bad weather if I really loved the school.</p>

<p>Now I'm looking to transfer but I don't really know how I should go about it. Obviously I;d want to go to a comparable school or better. I'm really interested in going into IBD when I graduate. Northwestern doesn't have a business program, but there's a lot of people who do it here. I've met some AMAZING ppl though my business frat, many of whom are really into Investment Banking.</p>

<p>A school I think I'd really love is Brown. Their open curriculum really appeals to me. But their transfer admission is need-aware. And being questbridge, idk if I'd have a chance?
I'm also considering Columbia, Penn, Stanford, Yale, but those all seem to be really out of reach.</p>

<p>I'm in the process of filling everything out, but it's really stressful with schoolwork + job + everything else in life. Should I stay at NU and see if it gets better? I'd regret not applying tho, because I probably wouldn't transfer going into my junior year. Are there other schools I should be considering? Financial Aid is really important, preferably a questbridge partner school. Is this even a good reason for transferring to begin with? I probably don't need any safety schools because I wouldn't want to leave NU to go somewhere that wouldn't provide me with as many opportunities for my future.</p>

<p>Sorry for the long post. Any and all comments are GREATLY appreciated.</p>

2

<p>yeah, i was thinking brown too. it’s hard to get into brown as a transfer though, so maybe don’t get your hopes too too high. but i think you’d have a great chance, as great a chance as anyone really if your gpa is high and you express what you just expressed.</p>

<p>you could use cornell as a safety? lol. i’m pretty sure cornell is going to be more liberal than northwestern (which i had thought was a very intellectual school…guess not really), and i do think that cornell and northwestern are on the same level. it will get very cold there though. i’m still a senior in hs and i haven’t even visited yet, so obviously take this with a grain of salt. cornell is also located in ithaca, which is a hippie city.
however, cornell also appears to be dominated by greek life (from what i’ve read), but i’ve heard the sports scene only extends as far as the men’s hockey team. in fact, that IS the sports scene from what i’ve heard.
also, cornell is very rural and hilly, so you’d probably feel constrained.
can’t hurt to have it as an option though.</p>

<p>i’m currently living in SoCal, but i used to live in the northeast, and i actually preferred that weather. </p>

<p>anyway, good luck!</p>

3

<p>The Ivies are very hard to transfer into. Cornell is probably the easiest one, but would not fit you any better in my opinion. Think about transferring to a UC; otherwise stay where you are, enjoy your friends, and get used to it.</p>

4

<p>Best way to transfer into a UC is to come back to CA for a year and attend a CC. UCs take California CC transfers BEFORE transfers of any other type. It may feel like an odd few steps, but I have met a lot of students from good 4years who did that zig-zag route through a CCC into a UC. Would you qualify for a Cal Grant here (often parent income under about 70K but check that number). If so, UCs should be quite affordable. Other privates might not give you as a transfer student enough aid.</p>

5

<p>Its not always accurate to assume that the group of juvenille biggots you encountered were NU students (could have been highschoolers visiting older siblings, etc which is very common) and even if they were NU students, you realize that they do not in any way represent the student body - which is very intelligent, diverse, and therefore open minded as a rule - and every campus has some idiots. You might take solace from the fact that the gay couple felt comfortable enough to hold hands on campus - which is still not the case on most campuses in this country unfortunately.</p>

<p>That being said, your comments concerning the atmosphere and vibe at NU may be more to the point. The reasons I selected Northwestern over Brown, University of Chicago, Dartmouth, Penn, Cornell, and Wash U were its amazing academic standards accompanied with the traditional “university experience” including big time athletics, fraternitys, etc. It sounds like NU may not have been the perfect fit to start.</p>

<p>Your less-than-perfect experience at NU seems more socially generated and this can often just be luck of the draw. You hope for a great roomate with whom you click, or to fall into a group that shares sense of humor, outlook, etc. but these do not always happen as hoped… on any campus. So you could see it as an challenge to try harder to locate those with shared values, interests… or try tranfering and starting over and hoping the wheel-of-fortune spins right into your social circle. I think you may find the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence, and that taking some responsibility to improve your social efforts and widen your net through EC’s may be just as viable an alternative. Best of Luck either way.</p>

6

<p>Rather than “regret not applying,” you should pursue your applications. Until you have another option, you really can’t answer the question as to whether you should stay at NU. As you say, you would only transfer to a school that is as good, so you should continue to try to make it work there until there is another possibility, especially since you have financial aid considerations. Remember a lot of people have a tough adjustment period the first year, but NU is a particular kind of university and I can understand why someone might feel out of place there. We could say that about a lot of universities, so it’s important to make sure a move would actually put you in a different situation.</p>

7

<p>Thanks for the replies guys. I talked to my freshman adviser today and he was totally supportive and understanding, and he is actually going to help me out with the process and etc. </p>

<p>I’m glad to know that this is such a supportive community!</p>

8

<p>I wouldn’t discourage you from applying and, of course, the situation may be oppressive and intolerable, and maybe you alone can see that. But I would encourage you to consider three things:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Three years seems like a long time when you’re 19 or 20; it’s really not as long as it seems.</p></li>
<li><p>In the one year since you applied to Northwestern, the competition for enrollment spots at the top colleges has grown from difficult to fierce. I didn’t see you mention anything about the places you’re considering, but I imagine that all the very illustrious places you considered last year will be more difficult. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>If you want to consider places that aren’t as renowned as Northwestern, but better fits anyway, you would have an easier time, or maybe the increased competition doesn’t affect your specific chances. </p>

<p>Just saying…look at the numbers of freshman applicants this year and prepare to be shocked. Northwestern, as an example, is north of 30,000 applicants.</p>

<ol>
<li> If transferring means you need to spend 5 years in college, really think twice.</li>
</ol>

<p>One other point…and this is easy for me to say…but maybe Northwestern needs more gay people. Why let homophobia push you out of a place that, at one point, you were otherwise highly motivated to attend?</p>

9

<p>

</p>

<p>Northwestern is actually more liberal than average when compared to other very highly selective colleges, according to CIRP freshmen survey results:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.adminplan.northwestern.edu/ir/sspg/cirp/TFS_2010_PDF_PROFILE.pdf[/url]”>http://www.adminplan.northwestern.edu/ir/sspg/cirp/TFS_2010_PDF_PROFILE.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Gays and lesbians should have the legal right to adopt a child
Agree strongly
Northwestern 64.3%
Privates - Very High Selectivity 56.9%</p>

<p>How would you characterize your political views?
Far Left/Liberal
Northwestern 3.5%/46.4%
ates - Very High Selectivity 2.5%/38.5%</p>

<p>Tolerance of others with different beliefs
Highest 10%
Northwestern 47.4%
Privates - Very High Selectivity 41.0%</p>

<p>Privates - Very High Selective include:
Boston College
CalTech
Case Western Reserve
Cornell
Dartmouth
Duke
Emory
Northwestern
Rice
University of Chicago
Penn
USC
Vanderbilt</p>

<p>Northwestern may not be as liberal as you hoped for, but it’s actually more on the liberal side when compared to many others. The econ majors (along with engineers) may tend to be a bit more conservative but that’s true everywhere, not just Northwestern.</p>

10

<p>The above “Privates - Very High Selective:” seems like a pretty tame collection of schools, to me. Being on the liberal side compared to this particular small collection does not seem too difficult. I can’t envision many students manning the ramparts at Cal Tech. Or at Dartmouth, unless they were blocking I-banking recruitment. The whole South is a collection of “red states”, basically.</p>

<p>Someone for whom political orientation of the student body is more of a priority might better seek company with other collections, including Brown,Harvard, and a number of the “very High Selective 4 year colleges” including Vassar, Oberlin, Reed, Swarthmore, etc.</p>

<p>Being “more liberal than average” out of a selected cohort that is not all that liberal is not that much of an achievement, seems to me.</p>

<p>“Why let homophobia push you out of a place that, at one point, you were otherwise highly motivated to attend?”</p>

<p>I donno, maybe because it makes him feel very bad?? If I felt like I did not fit in someplace I would think about leaving too.</p>

11

<p>boston college is a catholic college… =)</p>

<p>a lot of the schools listed are also southern schools (vanderbilt, emory, rice, duke, what’s case western? i won’t include USC or caltech)</p>

<p>so most of the schools that were used are conservative-leaning based on preconceptions.</p>

<p>if the colleges they used were the 8 ivies the results would be drastically different</p>

<p>

This.</p>

<p>the fact that northwestern is barely more liberal than these conservative schools is probably proving the opposite</p>

12

<p>I’m just curious - what did you think you would get at Northwestern? Everything I’ve read/everyone I’ve talked to has pretty much always summed up Northwestern like you did. You seem surprised by the culture and campus life there.</p>

13

<p>Fit with a prevailing campus culture can be what I would term 'an informed crapshoot". You can read stuff when you are applying to colleges, some of the description fits you, other parts, don’t, no school may be perfect so there is often a hopeful compromise. But sometimes the reality differs from what you understood, or your reaction to it is not what you had expected. My two kids who have tried it so far have both gotten it wrong.</p>

<p>OP may have been misled by statements showing Northwestern is more liberal than average compared to cohort institutions, without realizing the cohort referenced was BYU, Yeshiva, Bob Jones University, the Vatican, etc.</p>

14

<p>I would definitely think about American University. I am a freshman here and I can honestly say the campus is very open and accepting of everyone (and is especially gay-friendly). Sure, it’s not an Ivy League or even on the caliber of Northwestern, but it is a great school with some great professors. Also, the city is super close (4 metro stops to downtown) and there is always something going on in DC.</p>

15

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</p>

<p>I didn’t say anything about “achievement”. I merely showed the data and let the OP decide if the school is liberal enough for him or not. He’s only been there for less than two quarters and he might have a wrong impression about the students. According to the data, half of the students consider themselves liberal and less than 14% are conservative and less than 0.5% are far right. But the OP might have thought otherwise. </p>

<p>

USC is not University of South Caronlina. Is there any reason you didn’t mention schools like Penn, Chicago, Cornell? I didn’t know Duke, Rice, and Emory are “conservative schools”. I let the folks from those schools speak for themselves.

??? Comparing Northwestern to those schools is just absurd. The cohort NU used is left leaning as a whole. I bet even at Duke, more students checked off “liberal” than “conservative”. I really don’t know what your real point is.</p>

16

<p>“I really don’t know what your real point is.”
real point was stated in #10:</p>

<p>"The above “Privates - Very High Selective:” seems like a pretty tame collection of schools, to me. Being on the liberal side compared to this particular small collection does not seem too difficult. "</p>

<p>BYU, vatican, etc.- intended as kidding by shifting cohort up a few (or more) notches in rightwards direction, for dramatic effect. For all the thousands of other readers who also thought I was seriously referencing a comparison of Northwestern to Bob Jones et al I apologize.</p>

<p>“Is there any reason you didn’t mention schools like Penn, Chicago, Cornell?” probably got tired, I know I did, I didn’t even mention BC, which is probably the easiest example. You want them included? Penn- the home of the radical hotbed Wharton school, Ibanking demonstrations perhaps more heated than Dartmouth; Chicago- home of Milton Friedman and the famously conservative Chicago school of economics; Cornell - mixed bag, leans liberal overall but certainly not “out there” overall. USC- the rich fratboys of SoCal, home of Ronald Reagan; man the ramparts when path to surf is blocked. Case Western- a largely engineering school in a conservative state =formula for radicalism? </p>

<p>To me, It seems like a pretty tame lineup. Someone deeply concerned about a uniformly liberal environment as a core issue might be better served considering a different cohort, save for perhaps a couple.</p>

17

<p>^My point isn’t to say Northwestern is “uniformly liberal”. The data I cited speak for themselves. I put those data out so the OP knows where Northwestern actually stands using hard data rather than a small cohort of students he has encountered in less than two quarters; it looks like many of them may be econ majors who probably tend to be more conservative than, say, the humanities majors.</p>

<p>I directed that question to Wuchu, not you. He was wrong to say the group as a whole is “conservative leaning”. Other than BC and perhaps Vandy/Case, I don’t know any other that is considered “conservative”. Northwestern is definitely left leaning, not “barely more liberal than conservative schools”. </p>

<p>Also, the OP is interested in IBanking so I am not sure if he’s really has to be in a “uniformly liberal environment”. If he does, maybe ibanking isn’t really for him after all.</p>