Variety of Questions for Current Tufts Students

<p>Hey, I'm a junior, and I wanted to ask some questions concerning tufts, so I can compare it to some other schools. I'm supposed to have an essay comparing tufts and uchicago by tomorrow afternoon, and the guy whom I was going to interview hasn't responded yet. So I need your help to get answered what I can. Here are the questions:</p>

<p>1-What are some of the more popular activities to do on a weekend, both during the day and in the evening? Is there ever a problem with not having something to do?</p>

<p>2-Do you feel like you have time to have fun?</p>

<p>3-How prominent are sports from a standpoint of participation, especially intramural?</p>

<p>4-Do you feel like there are enough clubs that suit your interests? If there aren’t, do you feel like it is relatively doable to create one?</p>

<p>5-How competitive is your school? Do people talk about grades a lot? If they do, what do you feel the general tone of the conversation is?</p>

<p>6-What is the intellectual culture at and around your school like? Do you feel like learning at your college is limited to the classrooms? How much do people have intellectual conversations or read important books during their free time?</p>

<p>7-Do you feel like there is a culture of discussion and challenging one’s own opinions and beliefs in the student body?</p>

<p>8-What is the learning environment like? How much questioning is encouraged, especially in traditionally more rote classes like math and science?</p>

<p>9-From both your school and the surrounding environment, how much are you exposed to different cultures, especially from another country?</p>

<p>10-How easy is it to study abroad, especially in lesser-visited countries?</p>

<p>The students are in the middle of finals, so you may not get a reply…</p>

<p>Au contraire! Well, I ought to be studying for my upcoming finals and/or writing my paper. But this is a nice way to relax.</p>

<p>1) Tufts is not UConn or whatever big party school, and things to do on weekends can be lacking. But I think the best way to figure out what there is to do on a weekend is to check out archives of the Tuftslife calendar: <a href=“Wayback Machine”>Wayback Machine. That will not include parties thrown by frats, clubs, and upperclass students, nor will it include the multitude of things that clubs do on weekends if you are in a club or on a team that does stuff on weekends.</p>

<p>2) Yes, certainly. This is certainly not a school that kills you with overwork, though you will have to work hard.</p>

<p>3) Not terribly, but there is something for everyone. This is person- and sport-dependent. Perhaps others will know more than me, but is there anything in particular you have in mind.</p>

<p>4) You almost certainly will not be starting a new club, though I personally know the groups of people who have started five different clubs on campus (three unrecognized, two recognized). It’s not terribly hard; the three unrecognized clubs are only unrecognized because the club leaders would rather have them as unofficial ones; it suits their mission better. But yes, there are definitely enough clubs to suit my interests. A full list can be found somewhere on tufts.edu, but the best place to look through a list of the funded ones might be <a href=“Tufts Community Union”>Tufts Community Union; (and associated pages). There are other unfunded clubs that do quite well too–among those are the Tufts Daily and Tufts Mountain Club.</p>

<p>5) This is a hard school and people care about grades, but they aren’t incredibly talked about. Which I think is the best way to go about things. It’s not like people are unwilling to share grades; they just don’t brag about them. It’s absolutely not a cutthroat environment either, which is incredibly better than some of the other places I have heard about.</p>

<p>6) This, 100% yes. It’s dependent on the people whom you meet, but I learn so much every day from my friends and from the clubs I go to.</p>

<p>7) Well, yes. With a caveat. It’s pretty socially liberal, and that can get interesting at times if you have heterodox opinions to that (I for example am super progressive on a lot of things, but I’ll end up clashing a bit with some of my best friends because I tend to be a bit atypical among certain matters. People respect that I think; certainly my friends do; and it has led to some fantastic reevaluations, both for myself and others. But it’s hard to explain without actually living the experience.</p>

<p>8) Course-dependent. Oddly enough, the courses I have had that give the least amount of time for questioning have been two of the larger humanities lectures I have taken. Math and science are quite encouraging of student participation. I would say that the higher level courses expect questioning and critical thought, and the lower level ones encourage it.</p>

<p>9) It depends on how much you make of it. I’m not particularly sure of what you mean by this, but there will be folks from other countries around no matter what you do. Remember that they are individuals and not ambassadors of their culture, but you will learn a lot from folks. This applies to people of socioeconomic backgrounds as well as people of different nationalities.</p>

<p>10) I don’t know; this hasn’t really come up for me. Not too hard, I don’t think, but I can’t say for sure.</p>

<p>Hope this helps. Feel free to ask follow up questions.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>My son had a lot of international friends. Mostly I think from taking EPIIC as a freshman.</p></li>
<li><p>If you want to do it it’s possible, but you will probably only get Gen Ed credit for anything you study, or language credit for languages. Frustrating if you an IR major and could really use those credits. It’s generally not a problem if you only take a semester off, more problematic if you take a whole year. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>Can’t answer the others really as I am a parent, and don’t have the most talkative of kids.</p>

<p>You can find some answers at the Office for Campus Life [-</a> Office for Campus Life -](<a href=“http://ocl.tufts.edu/]-”>http://ocl.tufts.edu/)
including the list of official clubs -
[Student</a> Organization List - Office for Campus Life](<a href=“http://ocl.tufts.edu/student-organization-information/student-organization-list/]Student”>http://ocl.tufts.edu/student-organization-information/student-organization-list/)</p>