Northwestern University Top Questions

Northwestern is a great school with perhaps the best pre-professional connections of any school in the country. Although it's reputation doesn't extend too far beyond the midwest, the "Purple Mafia" is extremely influential and has a huge presence in New York City and Los Angeles. Students at Northwestern are often said to be in the Northwestern bubble: completely indifferent to the politics (and fashion!) of the real world. However, the size of the school allows it to be a very tight-knit community, and its location just outside Chicago puts amazing resources at the students' fingertips. Besides the bone-chilling winters and grueling quarter system, it's a great place to spend your 4-years of college, and you'll most likely come out with stelar job opportunities as well.

The best thing about Northwestern is its location: between city and lake and a $2 40-min El ride gets you into the center of Chicago. Although a bit expensive, Evanston is full of shops, independent coffee houses and hangouts. Between the Shakespeare garden, lakefill and the beach, the campus is quite romantic. By the end of your first year you'll know your way around almost everywhere. Food in the dining halls is acceptable, very occasionally outstanding with some variety from hall to hall and a lot of day-to-day variety. Make sure to try the famous stir-fry! Most people say Hinman has the best cafeteria. There is a lot of variety as far as dorms are concerned, but they all have their pluses and minuses. For some reason, we talk about "north campus" and "south campus" as if there were a wall between them. Northies hang with northies, southies with southies, etc., with the north side being math, science, engineering (and frats) and the south being music, languages, art (and sororities) and so on. South campus is much closer to downtown Evanston, which is a definite plus, although the rooms tend to be smaller and you miss the benefits of the (good) gym SPAC and Lisa's cafe.

I love Northwestern's location. I also like that almost every class is taught by teachers.

Northwestern's best qualities are the beautiful campus and it's academics. When the weather is nice, the campus is gorgeous. the buildings, especially on south campus, are just stunning. the sorority quad (including some dorms) is breathtaking. Not only are the professors superior and the class sizes good (they range from really small to fairly large), but it's just so EASY to do whatever you want. It's easy to double major, or to take classes in other schools. There are a few controversies that have recently become problems. One is that the university doesn't always give student groups sufficient funding. Particularly with performance related activities, there is a lack of rehearsal and performance space. However, this is definitely getting better and the administration has been taking steps to improve this. Perhaps a bigger problem is security. the administration does things to help, but they never seem to be the right things. for instance, there are occasionally instances of muggings that happen off campus (particularly south-west of campus, in an area where a lot of NU students live). the details of these instances get publicized on the NU webpage that most people set as their default page. however, when the daily tried to do a story about one of the instances, the university removed it from the website. they don't like people knowing about things that happen like that, I guess because they are trying to keep a good reputation. A much more effective system would be to make people aware that the danger is there (like everywhere) and to take steps to avoid problems. The university police patrol the campus area at night, but there are significantly more muggings that happen south of campus than on north campus (which is where the police tend to stay). it would be better if there was a bigger police pressence patrolling the streets for muggings - and not under-age drinking. A bunch of drunk 19 year olds aren't any sort of a threat the way crazy homeless people asking for girls' purses are.

Northwestern has prestige but is not well known outside of the Midwest. It is the perfect size and has a gorgeous campus. It is unfortunate that we don't get to enjoy the lake and beaches as often as we would like because of the unpredictable weather. Even though we are only a 40 min El ride away from the city, many people do not go into Chicago. Our school will not provide us for U Passes, so instead we just hit up the local bars. Evanston has a lot of little boutiques and restaurants, but the town does not like us because we don't pay property taxes. Although we may be the worst team in the Big 10, at least we are D1 and get to see some great colleges play in comparison to some of the other prestigious universities.

Northwestern has a great location, on the water near downtown Evanston just an hour or so from Chicago. The work is hard, but we certainly know how to party. It's not a huge campus, but it's large enough that there's always something to do. The people are friendly for the most part. The size is perfect, at least for me, you run into people you know everywhere, but you don't know everyone you see.

It's a nice size, with a beautiful campus, good teachers and alright policies. It's not a party school, and Evanston isn't very interesting. Students don't take advantage of Chicago very much. In general, Northwestern places a lot of value in the Greek system.

Northwestern is a medium-sized university, which gives you world-class research and small class sizes while combining the feel of a Division I Big Ten school.

The greatest thing about Northwestern is that it is a smart school, but it doesn't lose the social life like the Harvards and Princetons do. Its prettybig, but not huge. I love to go out at night bar hopping and just hook up with random girls and have amazing stories the following day. Another great thing is the quarter system: you only take four classes at a time which obviously has a million benefits.

Campus and lake are beautiful. Number of classes and interesting topics is good. Evanston caters to university students, but there is tension between "town and gown. I spend most of my time at the Catholic center in their study lounge because it's quiet and there is hot water for coffee, tea, or hot chocolate. Frequent student complaints include the quarter system and the pace. It gets frantic, especially in winter quarter