<p>Hi, I recently was accepted to McCormick, and plan to major in mechanical engineering. I, however, am not your typical nerdy, anti-social, awkward engineer. I play sports (plan on trying to walk on to NU's basketball team), like to work out, party when the time is right, and be able to have a good time on the weekends. </p>
<p>If I attend NU, I plan on living in Elder, as it seems the most well balanced dorm. Honestly, I do not want to live in a engineer-majority dorm. Ironically, the typical engineer is probably the least appealing person to me. </p>
<p>My question is, will Northwestern allow me to succeed in school as an engineer, and also allow me to separate myself from the other, "socially-awkward" engineers so that I can have a good time? Will I even have the time with all the coursework and studying?</p>
<p>i mean i dont know much about engineers at NU, but i’ pretty sure to get in to the school in general youve got to be pretty rounded, so i doubt youll be the only engineer who does regular things</p>
<p>True, but I have and read many things about engineers being secluded in the dorms all the time with no one ever seeing them. Ha maybe everyone is just exaggerating.</p>
<p>One of the girls in my class (chemE) was on NU swim team and one of my roomates (mechE) was a top-5 NCAA wrestler (heavy-weight class)!! By the way, you’ll find lots of biz savvy type in the industrial engg/management sciences dept.</p>
<p>I think that stigma tends to come from Slivka where all the engineering kids hang out with each other and form a pretty tight community so that not a whole lot of outside people hang out with them.</p>
<p>I know your feeling, I’m going to be in engineering at NU next year… and while I’m definitely slightly nerdy, I understand the need to be around normal people. Or at least people who can talk about football and don’t want to play Halo or whatever all the time. I think living in Elder will help you out a lot with that. I’m pretty sure the only thing that will really tie you in with engineering kids is the Engineering Design and Communication class where you have to work with a group of 3 or 4 other kids on a project. However as I understand it, you can choose your own group, so just find some people who seem socially adept and you should be fine.</p>
<p>I think you’ll find a variety of engineers. Yeah there are always going to be the kids who lock themselves in the rooms, study and play Dungeons and Dragons … but you’ll never see them anyway so it works.</p>
<p>You’ll be fine-- if you WANT to be social, even living in Slivka isn’t a social life death sentence (though I’d suggest against it), and you will definitely find people who have the same attitude as you.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t know if it’s any consolation, but I’m going to be an engineering freshman next year and I’m female, a cross country/track runner and black belt who wants to attempt to double major in history, education, or physics?</p>
<p>So theoretically, I’m hoping there aren’t a lot of stereotypical engineers out there as well.</p>
<p>The two largest engineering departments are biomedical engineering and industrial engineering & management sciences and they have almost half the engineering student body. Biomedical engg is by nature multidisciplinary and the students in that field tend to have diverse interests in math, engineering, biology and medicine. Quite a few are premeds and will become doctors in the future. The industrial engineering & management sciences has bunch of aspiring business managers who just happen to be good at math. They are the confused folks that think their math is too good for them not to be engineers when what they are really into are business-related fields. </p>
<p>Phoenix121, NU engineering has always been one of the few with large female % - ~30%. The national average is 20%.</p>
<p>By the ay, EDC is gonna force the anti-social ones to become more social.</p>
<p>Well it sounds like there are at least a couple of others out there who are in the same boat as me. I’m starting to feel like Northwestern will have the best balance between academics and social life…Now I just need to wait for my FA award to see if I can attend :)</p>
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