Congrats! By the way, given your experience with Netflix, do you have any recommendations on what your favorite Netflix shows were? 
@londondad Thank you! As for Netflix, I made it through all 7 seasons of Parks and Rec and 3 seasons of The Office over the course of the school year. Aziz Ansari’s show Master of None (pretty sure this is a Netflix original series) is decent. Other favorites include standup comedy specials, political documentaries, Law and Order SVU reruns.
Next up is House of Cards since it seems like I’m the only political science major who’s never watched it.
Going forward, please let us know how you’re doing at Cornell-I’m now emotionally invested in you and hope you do well
@MotherOfDragons Thank you! I’ll try to remember to post an update at some point during my first semester. I really think I’m going to enjoy Cornell- tbh this is the first time in a long time I’ve been genuinely happy about something, and it’s nice to finally experience the kind of college excitement that all of my friends had last year
Since @MotherOfDragons and others were curious, I thought I’d post an update! I’ve been at Cornell for about a month and a half, and I can honestly say that transferring was the best decision I’ve ever made. I love being here, I actually have things to do to fill my day, I got into a few clubs (downside of CU: literally every club has a competitive application process), and I’m enjoying my classes!
The biggest change has been the level of academic rigor, it’s really an exponential increase. I’m in intro/intermediate courses, and even those are a lot of work and pretty difficult in terms of content. I’ve spent more time seriously studying in the past two weeks than I did my entire freshman year. The student culture really drives the rigor, it’s basically “if you’re not in the library 5+ hours every day what are you even doing?” which can be a little overwhelming at times but I’ve found that it helps me to be surrounded by academically driven people who make me want to work harder to compete with them.
Still struggling a bit socially, this is an aspect of my personality that I didn’t expect to suddenly change after coming to Cornell. I’m quite an anxious and self-conscious person, but I’m working on it and I think joining clubs and talking with other transfers is helping. Even though I don’t feel completely settled into a “friend group”, I’m definitely not experiencing the extreme loneliness that I felt at NEU. Planning on rushing in the spring, so hopefully I’ll find a home in a sorority!
So, overall, it’s been good! Missing some aspects of Northeastern (mainly the amazing group fitness program and the easy access to city amenities, haha) but the new good things I’ve found here definitely outweigh that Thanks again to everyone on here who supported me last year!
((Very random sidenote- I met FOUR other Northeastern transfers at a transfer event on the first night. “Not enjoying NEU” was a weird thing to bond over, but it was nice to talk to others with similar feelings and have my experiences validated by people who “got it”))
Nice to hear you’ve been up to good things at Cornell, @aihcxx!
OT to thread topic, but pertinent to #44:
The challenge as a transfer student, anywhere, is getting integrated socially. Your peers had a year in the freshman dorms to sort each other out and establish their social networks. Since this has been done already, they may tend to be less outgoing than previously.
For this reason, often one’s initial social group may be drawn from the pool of fellow transfer students. So a school with a decent sized entering transfer cohort may be helpful. You picked well on this score.
At any larger school, or city for that matter, the most effective way to meet people is to create or join social groups that are functionally smaller. The trick is, you don’t want to keep passing random people as they fritter about, you want an environment where smaller groups of people are actually forced to interact regularly with each other. Clubs and sororities can work towards this, so +1 on those.
Look for other such opportunities. Jobs, for example. Housing is another. Sharing a small house off campus, or joining a coop, may be more conducive to relationships than a huge dorm. Extracurricular involvements would be another.
Get together with a few people and throw a party. House parties,and dinner parties, are a staple of social events there at least in some circles…
Anyway keep plugging and hopefully soon you’ll be too busy to remember the transition. That’s what happened with my D2, anyway, and I hope the same for you.
“The biggest change has been the level of academic rigor, it’s really an exponential increase.”
Congratulations - its important to be in a school with a great fit. As to academic rigor, you had mentioned in a previous thread
so it sounds like it wasn’t a entirely a Netflix & Chill experience at NEU. Sounds like this was more a case of bad fit - you did not feel you were in a prestigious enough school. Fit matters!
Socially, I agree with the previous post. Join lots of clubs and try and meet other transfer students that are going through the same thing. All the best!
@suzyQ7 Thanks! I’m definitely happy that I’ve found a good fit for me.
As for the academic rigor comparison, I finished the semester you’re referencing with an A in anatomy lecture (B+ in lab- I will admit that the practicals were brutal) and A- in both microbiology lecture and lab. Looking back, my initial assessments of the difficulty were a little high, and I ended up with 3.84 overall GPA at NEU (4.0 in my major).
I definitely don’t think my reasons for not liking NEU were based in prestige- I would absolutely not say that the reason I “fit” better at Cornell is because it’s “”“more prestigious”"". The campus culture, location, academic programs, and activities all have little to do with prestige and I think those factors weigh far more heavily than rankings when I consider my feelings about a school.
Congrats! Do you miss Netflix a little bit?
So glad that you’re happy with your choice! I hope you have some good snow boots for the upcoming season-one of my closest friends went to Cornell (we were all from Boston) and she says to this day it was the coldest place she’s ever been (but she loved her time there).
Re #50: February can indeed be tough, and part of March.(Fortunately much of December - January is missed since school is out, IIRC…)
The data I just looked at says it is 5-8 degrees colder in Ithaca than Boston, in February.
On the other hand Fall Spring and Summer are great there.Particularly it is spectacular in the Fall.
It’s certainly not the highlight of one’s experience there, but people bundle up and deal with it.
Then when they graduate they can reminisce about how cold it was (and, hopefully, how they loved their time there).
But it’s true, OP should be prepared to bundle up !