Rutgers University – Camden

Rutgers – Camden (visited 4/26/17)

The Camden branch is the smallest of the 3 Rutgers campuses with about 5000 undergraduates, only 600 of whom live in the 3 dorms buildings. There are no traditional-style dorms; freshmen live in 3-bedroom/6-person suites; upperclassmen get their own bedrooms in suites or apartments. All rooms have a fridge and microwave, AC, and cable.

Campus was surprisingly nice and compact; I expected more of an urban feel – and this is definitely in the city, but once on campus, it feels quiet and safe.

An academic building in the foreground with an upperclassmen dorm (apartment style living) in the back.

Weekends are “… quiet,” said one of the students working in admissions, the only 1 of the 3 I spoke with who lives on campus. There are some activities on campus, but not a lot. There are shuttles around town every 2^nd Saturday to the malls, stores, theaters, etc. There’s also a subway stop about a 5-minute walk from campus; for $3 round-trip, students can get into Philly which can be seen from campus. There’s also a bus station to other cities for students wanting to go to NYC, Baltimore, or DC.

A therapy dog visiting campus; students also get free coffee during exams!

Every year, the school holds a Civic Engagement Day of Service. 20% of students go Greek, but not all the chapters are nationally recognized. One of the students tried to explain that “it’s different here. It’s more values based. It’s not like the movies.” However, I think that this is the way most chapters are moving (particularly at smaller schools). “There’s no traditional Rush. You get asked to join.” Students are eligible after completing 12 credits.

The dining hall

“Food is good but it’s repetitive. As a senior, I’d love for them to put some money into changing things up.” Students get a declining dollar account with freshmen automatically enrolled in the highest level. “They don’t have kitchens in the freshmen dorm. After that, we have kitchens so we can get fewer dollars on our account,” said the tour guide. Students also said that parking is a bit of an issue. “It’s there, but they just moved it farther away. They do run shuttles though.” It seems that the parking issues are the same as in any city.

The science building

Although there is a priority application deadline, they will continue to admit students if there is available space. During admissions, qualified students will get invited to join the Honors College or the Leadership Institute. NJ residents are eligible to participate in the Bridge the Gap initiative which helps cover tuition for lower-income students.

One of the lecture halls with class going on. It’s far from full.

The Camden campus only has 3 undergraduate academic colleges: Arts & Sciences, Business, and Nursing. The business offerings are limited, but they have some interesting options in A&S such as Computational and Integrative Biology, Urban Studies and Community Development, and Childhood Studies. The minors offer even more choices including Museum Studies, Animation, Statistics, Ethics, and Justice and Society. Money is being put into new facilities including a new nursing building that is going up. The Fine Arts building has a Green Screen, digital media equipment, a black box theater, and more.

It is possible to transfer between the Rutgers campuses, but it’s not guaranteed. The admissions rep said that it’s considered an internal transfer and “it’s up to the Schools. They make the decision if you can move. It’s probable. It’s not for sure.”

The athletic center with a view of the bridge to Philadelphia in the background. 

Because of its size, students get much better access to the professors, something that all 3 students I spoke to raved about. There are a couple lecture halls on campus holding up to 250 students, but most classes are a much more manageable size of 20-30. Even when we toured, we saw a class in the lecture hall with very few students (like 10) in it. The tour guide’s largest class was his General Bio class which did fill a lecture hall; on the other end, he’s had a class with 4 students. Classrooms are now equipped with cameras to record lectures. Some professors do this automatically and will post the classes; others will do it if asked by a student who has to miss class.

© 2017

Rutgers University – New Brunswick

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY – New Brunswick (visited 7/19/13)

I heard stories from former Rutgers students that scheduling classes with enough time in between was a nightmare and that they needed to ride buses to class because of the size of campus. I’ve seen state universities with enough students to populate small cities but never one that had spread out over such a large expanse, so I was curious – and I wondered how they kept attracting students when it was so difficult to get around. Having seen it now, I get it. Students get around easily on the fleet of 60 buses that run every 5 minutes, and the university has made sure not only that scheduling works, but that students have a variety of options to suit all sorts of needs and interests. Being a Rutgers student means having access to many campuses in one.

Campus Train Station

The New Brunswick campus (Rutger’s flagship) is unusual in that they don’t have a single contiguous campus. Instead, they have five campuses with distinct feels. Each has residence halls, libraries, and recreational facilities, but students can take classes, eat, study, or work out on any campus. The Busch Campus has the stadium and lots of recreation facilities in addition to the Engineering department, most of the sciences, computer science, half of psychology, and math. The Douglass Campus was originally the NJ College for Women, and remains a residential college for women. It looks like a traditional college campus with trees and lots of green open space. Special programs for leadership development are housed here. The Cook and Douglass Campuses are contiguous; the Cook campus is the original land-grant portion of campus, and many of the Applied Science fields (biotechnology, food science, meteorology, pre-vet) are still here as well as a farm so students have experience with animals. The business and art departments are also here. The College Avenue Campus is the smallest campus and houses English, history, languages, economics, and other similar departments. The Livingston Campus is seeing quite a bit of new construction with a collection of apartment buildings; the first floor of the buildings house retail establishments such as a movie theater, a 24-hour diner, Starbucks, a Mexican restaurant, and more. The student housing above this are mostly singles. The original site of the school, Queens Campus, is not considered one of the 5 campuses because there are no classes held there anymore. Instead, there are offices, a museum, and the chapel. There are two satellite campuses: the Newark campus is 15 miles from NYC, and the Camden campus is across the river from Philadelphia.

Rutgers was founded in 1766, making it the ninth oldest university in the country (the second public university after William and Mary). They got the land-grant in the mid-1800s and were officially named the State University in the mid-1900s. Currently, there are about 32,000 undergraduates (and about another 10,000 in the graduate and medical schools) at New Brunswick, representing all US states and 125 countries (with 120 languages spoken). However, they’re looking to lower freshman enrollment at New Brunswick and will increase at the other two campuses to compensate. There are 50 residence halls (including apartments) but more will be added with the $1 billion dollar expansion that the university is undertaking, which will include new dorms (including honors), academic buildings, new nursing facilities, and other programs.

New dorms with retail on the first floor

One of the coolest things I learned during the information session was that Rutgers was instrumental in developing the first underwater self-propelled tube across the Atlantic from NJ to Spain. The tube was controlled form Rutgers, and the ship that accompanied it (called Scarlett because of Rutger’s colors) was manned by students and staff from the university. There were even freshman on the team, including English majors who accompanied a Professor who was a documentarian; some were so excited they switched to oceanography as a major! Rutgers ranks as 21^st in the nation in sponsored research.

Here are some cool facts about Rutgers that the tour guides shared with us on our tour:

• They have the largest indoor practice football “bubble” in the country, and the Giants and the Jets practice there.
• Their intramural sports include a 5’5” and under basketball league, quidditch, and underwater basketweaving.
• Their swimming pool has a hydraulic floor to control its depths.
• Their Math building is shaped like Pi
• Their Physics building looks like a cupcake with a steep underground lecture hall.
• There are over a hundred study abroad experiences in 40 countries.
• Some of the off-campus housing is closer to the bus-stops on campus than several of the dorms.
• 3 different police patrols cover campus.
• Nabisco funded their Food Science Building.
• The River Dorms are Living Learning Communities with classrooms in the basement
• They have a well-renowned Marine and Coastal Sciences program.
• One-credit Freshmen Interest Groups led by upperclassmen are offered during the first semester. Some of the more unusual ones are: “Yankee Stadium: Why Did the Stadium Cross The Road?” “Harry Potter and Behavioral Genetics,” and “Graphic Novels.”

Supply Chain Management and Business Analytics Information Tech are the newest majors from over 100 to choose from. Departments are organized into schools: First year students can apply to Nursing, Pharmacy, Arts, Business, Arts & Sciences (the largest division), Engineering, or Environmental and Biological sciences. Nursing is a direct admit program, but it’s not required that they start the first year. Many students start in Arts & Sciences, take the first-year classes, and do a school-to-school transfer. Engineering students take their intro classes in A&S and then begin the Engineering program. First year engineering students have a special residential hall; students who live there have a .5 higher GPA than those who don’t. There’s a “We’re in this together” attitude. The students are told, “Look to the left; look to the right. It’s YOUR responsibility to make sure you’re all here next year.” Materials Engineering: They are working on making bridges out of used milk containers! The Arts school is a conservatory and will earn a BFA except for the music majors who have the choice of getting a BA through A&S. The theater students study abroad at the Globe Theater. Pharmacy is a 0-6 degree; they enter right out of high school and will get a DPharm (required to be a practicing pharmacist) in 6 years. This is highly competitive with 3800 applicants for 220 spots. In Business, juniors and seniors can apply to major in Planning and Public Policy, Management and Labor relations, or Communication and Info if they’d like.

Rutgers has Priority application dates, but not Early Action or Decision. December 1 is a priority deadline and is the last date that applicants will be considered for scholarships. Some of the more competitive schools will also be closed after that. After 12/1, the online application will only show what programs are still open. Students apply to up to 3 schools: students can rank their top three options (and actually could get accepted to all three). Students have to self-report their own grades; they only turn in a transcript after they deposit (the final end-of-year transcript with the graduation date is the best). They only had to rescind 2 acceptances last year because students misrepresented their grades. They will superscore both SAT and ACT. No TOEFL is needed if the international student graduates from an English-speaking school, but it can help if the CR section is low. Currently 14% of the school is from out-of-state; they’d like to get that up to 25% (which is still under the other Big Ten schools).

© 2013

Drew University

Drew University (visited 3/23/17)

“We’re the #1 school for most squirrels and in the top 10 for most haunted campus. Interesting but irrelevant,” said the tour guide.

During the info session, the Director of Admissions started by differentiating Drew from other similar types of schools: “We’re different because we’re dedicated almost entirely to undergraduates. We have the academic programs combined with controlled access to NYC – location, location, location. This is the only highly selective, national, liberal arts college within such close proximity to New York.”

The main quad area. Graduates walk along this path as they march into graduation.

This feels like a small, bucolic college, and I can see why this got the “University in the Forest” nickname (there’s also an Arboretum next door). I visited in March before the leaves were in; I can only imagine what it looks like in the summer (although a colleague said that it’s SO wooded that it can almost get dreary). Despite the rural/forested appearance, things are highly accessible directly off campus: the cute downtown area of Madison is a 5-minute walk. Morristown can be reached by train “but can be expensive; you wouldn’t do it every day,” said the tour guide. Students don’t feel like they need to leave campus for things to do but like having the options off campus. Students were out in groups around campus giving it a vibrant feel.
Students looking for strong humanities (including Pan-African Studies and Chinese Studies), arts, business/economics, political science, international relations, or research with renowned scientists (including a Nobel Laureate in medicine) should take a look at the opportunities here (and students looking for majors in neuroscience or molecular biology will find those here). The facilities won’t be the shiniest you’ve ever seen, but what students are doing makes up for it. “Where’s the $10m gleaming glass and metal science building? We don’t have it … but the science building is newly renovated, and we have 12 industrial scientists and a Nobel Prize winner. The entire top floor of the science building is dedicated to sophisticated research. They brought their tchotchkes with them. They supplement our faculty who are doing their own research. We fund them; they advise 5-7 undergrads each year. Students have exposure to real world research. There’s an NSF grant for Alzheimer’s. Freshmen are working on that.”

The arts building

For students interested in the arts, there is a large, relatively new arts building with wings for different disciplines (fine arts, theater, music). There’s even a “sculpture garden” courtyard showcasing student work. It’s easy to get involved in any of the disciplines even for non-majors. There’s also a separate building that houses the Shakespeare Theater of NJ which puts on 4 shows a year. They offer an arts scholarship requiring a separate application (the deadline was 4/3 in 2017) which is stackable on merit scholarships.

The Shakespeare Theater building

All students must complete an off-campus experience; most do at least 3. This is integrated into the regular academic experience so it doesn’t extend the students’ time on campus beyond the 4 years. These come in a variety of forms:

• Study Abroad/Away:
  • There are 50 school-certified study abroad programs. Most are semester-long, but there are also 2-, 3-, and 4-week “short treks” (domestic and international) led by professors.
• 

  The sculpture courtyard in the Arts Building.

  Internships, several of which are funded through outside sources.

• Semester programs on Wall Street (primarily for juniors), at the UN, in Communications and Media, in Contemporary Art at MOMA, in social entrepreneurship and community service, and NY Rep Theater.
  • These are equivalent to 4 4-credit classes: students spend 3 days on campus with profs and their cohorts and 2 days in the city.
  • Students commute in on public transportation. “You’re walking down the hill to the Madison train station in you Wall Street Finest and taking the 7:14am train to the financial district.”
• PoliSci students can complete a Washington Semester through GWU.

Drew was founded as a Methodist Seminary but is no longer affiliated, although the largest Methodist Archive in the country is located here. They’re nationally recognized for civic engagement, and they run a Civic Engagement Program. This requires a separate application (the deadline was 4/3 in 2017) and is stackable on merit scholarships. They look to bring in 35-40 students each year who have done a great deal of service; this comes with a scholarship. Freshmen are housed together in an LLC and take a Freshman Seminar course. The expectation is that they’ll continue to do good work, and they need to complete 100 hours of service each year, at least half of which has to be done during the school year. The program is intentional and builds developmentally over 4 years; by senior year, students complete a capstone is related to the cumulative experience; they present this at a showcase in the spring.

Some of the upperclassmen dorms.

There are several Cooperative Degree programs with no additional admission requirements except for the MD program. Advising for the others starts freshmen year.

• 7-year accelerated med school with Rutgers.
• 2 BA-JD: 3+3 Seton Hall or NY Law.
• 3+2 with Duke envi sci/management or forestry.
• 4+1 BA/MS software engineering with Stevens.
• 3+2 Engineering with Columbia. Students interested in Biomedical can do this here.
• BA/MA with Wake Forest in Business Management.

One of the freshmen dorms; the late night store is in this building.

Housing is guaranteed but not required. Dorms are fairly standard for freshman with some optional triples. Several lounges have fireplaces. The first floor of one dorm in the main circle houses a late-night store open until 2:00 am. Dining hall food gets much better reviews now: the physical space got refurbished a couple years ago and they got a new vendor when the new president came in. “Food went from a 2 to an 8,” said the tour guide.

About 50% of the 1500 undergrads come from NJ. They’re looking to grow to about 1800 over the next few years. This year, about 20% came in through ED/EDII, and they’ll start offering EA next year. They do offer an Honors Program which comes with a $25,000 yearly scholarship.

© 2017

 

Rowan University

ROWAN UNIVERSITY (visited 7/30/13)

One of Rowan’s claims to fame is that it hosted a meeting in 1967 between President Johnson and Soviet Premier Kosygin at the Hollybush Mansion, the university president’s home. They met here because of its location halfway between the UN and DC. Apparently, Lady Bird Johnson took the chairs which are now in the Smithsonian with a tag that says “Donated by Rowan” – the tour guide says that if we go there, we should tell people that they were taken from Rowan, not donated!

I had no idea what to expect from Rowan, one of New Jersey’s public universities, but I walked away with a good impression. Students are happy and enthusiastic about the programs and the opportunities they’ve had. This school of 10,750 undergraduates has recently been designated as a state Research Institution, and they’re proud that they do not do research at the expense of the undergraduate. Instead, they’ve been doing a great deal to expand their offerings and opportunities for their students. More money has been going into resources for students, and more scholarship money is available than ever before. They’ve increased their academic offerings for students, including eight new PhD programs and several new Masters programs are in the pipeline. Their Med School is highly competitive, receiving 3,000 apps for 50 seats, and it’s only the second university (after Michigan State) to offer both an MD and a DO (osteopathic medicine) degree. This has had a “trickle-down effect” into their undergraduate programs, and every undergraduate college on campus has a pre-med program, even the performing arts, including using dance as part of therapy. They’re getting away from the traditional model of pre-med prep.

They are proud of their Four Pillars program which includes: Economic Engine (helping students getting job and becoming involved in the community); Affordability (they froze tuition by keeping efficiencies in the system); Accessibility (making education available even though they’re getting more selective); and Growth (they’ve built the Stratford Campus for the medical and graduate programs, and they’ve built a partnership with Rutgers for a biomedical school). They’re looking to DOUBLE their student population over the next 10 years. They’ve already shown tremendous growth in their numbers; they used to only serve students from 4 or 5 counties; now they’re a well-known regional university, and they want to become better known across the country. Their out-of-state applications have been rapidly increasing, almost doubling last year from 400 to 700. In the most current freshman class, students had an average of a 3.6 GPA and 1200 SAT or 26 ACT.

Outside of the new science building

Inside the Science Building

Some of the students’ favorite classes have been the History of WWII, the Arab-Israeli Conflict, and Developmental Psychopathology. Their classes range from 10-35, and they appreciate the small classes and the chance that they know the professors; people notice if they aren’t in class, and they’re able to get a lot out of classes. Rowan has a strong business program, including Supply Chain and Logistical Systems, Management Info Systems, Entrepreneurship, and other more usual concentrations. Engineering students can choose to specialize in Chemical (ranked 3^rd in nation, top among public universities), Civil and Environmental, Electrical and Computer, or Mechanical (ranked 8^th in nation). Within the Humanities and Social Sciences College, their Africana Studies, Law and Justice Studies, and Planning are the most unusual majors. In the Science and math division, students can choose from all the usual majors, plus Bioinformatics and Child Behavioral Services. Education is strong at Rowan, and they have a program that allows students to graduate before student teaching, as long as they’ve fulfilled all the other requirements. Two of the tour guides had just graduated but were staying for one more semester to do their student teaching requirement.

Although there’s a lot to do on campus, students love that they’re only 20 minutes from Philly, 45 minutes to the shore, and halfway between NYC and DC. The school is doing a lot to do more outreach into the local community, and the activities on campus give students a real sense of community within campus and into the wider town. Unless students commute from a parent’s house, they have to live on campus for the first 2 years. There are freshman-only dorms which are mostly traditional style, but some have suites where they have to clean their own bathrooms. The university is building a 5-block-long apartment complex with Honors housing, B&N bookstore, Starbucks, retail shops and restaurants, arts and entertainment district. Ten percent of the student population joins Greek life.

© 2013

Stevens Institute of Technology

Stevens Institute of Technology (visited 10/10/16)

A view of the NYC skyline from Steven’s dining hall.

“The Innovation University,” as Stevens calls itself, is located on a surprisingly attractive campus overlooking New York City. Parts of Hoboken are congested and hard to navigate, but the university is in a more residential area (just be careful of the narrow, one-way streets!).

 

The 3000 undergraduates (still skewed towards male, but better than the 70-30 ratio from a couple years ago) take full advantage of all the on- and off-campus offerings. Housing is guaranteed for all 4 years, but students are only required to live on campus for the first year. The university runs some off-campus apartments for students to lease; these are available only for a full-calendar year, great for students who are doing co-ops or internships. These are all within a 15-minute walk, and shuttles are available. New York City is only a 10-minute ride away on Path. “Off campus, students don’t miss Washington Street Wednesday. We can use our meal cards at participating restaurants. A meal there equals 1 meal swipe.” They also have NYC at their disposal, including discounted tickets for shows.

One of the teams practicing

On-campus life is active, and students love the number of options. Some favorite events are:

• Techfest (fall) and Boken (spring)
• Habitat for Humanity Alternative Spring Break
• Castle Point Anime Convention (Spring): this was started by a student who asked to have it on campus; it is now one of the largest and draws 5000 people to campus.
• Ethnic Student Council’s Unity Carnival and Show

A dorm with a sand volleyball court in front. I’ll come in at 7am and see students playing there,” said a rep.

A little more than 1/3 of students go Greek here, and they’ve joined the Rethink Greek Movement which works towards getting away from hazing. There is 1 co-ed community service fraternity. The 26 DIII sports are evenly divided between men’s and women’s teams. Volleyball is really big here. They have a bowling alley on campus; it’s free for students and they serve free pizza on Tuesdays. “That’s a big draw,” said the tour guide.

 

A lounge in one of the academic buildings

Every student gets 3 advisors (academic, peer, and career) to help navigate social, academic, and additional options like internships, co-ops, and study abroad. Students can double major in anything across the 4 colleges except engineering (it’s too course-intensive):

 

• Arts and Letters: Most of these majors are interdisciplinary and combine some sort of technology component.
  • Science Communication
  • Science Tech & Society
  • Music & Technology: They have a sound synthesis lab, and students have worked with the lead guitarist for David Bowie, the Beatles, and Bruno Mars on “Uptown Funk.”
  • Visual Arts & Technology
• Business: They offer 8 degrees including:
  • Quantitative Finance (good for people who like both computers and math)
  • Business and Tech (get some of each)
• 

  An engineering and physics academic building

  Computer Science and Cybersecurity (winner of a national award): They’ve seen a huge jump in applications for this school. There are 8 concentrations within Comp Sci.

  • Game design is one of the most popular, and often will double major in VA&T to get the artistic aspects.
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Mobile and Pervasive Computing
  • Students can apply for a scholarship with the NSA in their freshman year. 15 are awarded to fund the rest of undergrad studies as well as graduate (when appropriate), a summer internship, and a job after graduation.
• Engineering and Science: Stevens started by offering only Mechanical Engineering (still one of the biggest majors). All Engineering students take the Design Spine for the first 3 semesters: they all take the same classes and work in groups on projects. This means that that students are qualified to go into another discipline – as an undergrad, in the workforce, or in grad schools – if a job opens up and is appealing. Some of the unusual engineering majors include:
  • A concentration in Naval Engineering: They have a building dedicated to this with a large water tank. The Navy and other governmental organizations come here to use it; there’s a 2-year waiting list to get access.
  • Environmental Engineering
  • Advanced Chemical Biology: this takes 1 year of study off a BS/MD track in conjunction with Rutgers Medical School.

The Arch, the only remaining part of the original estate where Stevens now stands.

Stevens wants students to have academic/technical knowledge and the ability to apply it. They require Professional Practice for all students: 40% complete Internships, 30% participate in Co-ops, 20% do Research, 10% do something else. Those choosing Co-ops take 5 years to complete their degrees. For the first and last years, they’re full-time students; in between, they alternate between classes and co-ops, graduating with up to 2 years of work experience. Study Abroad is open to all majors with programs already designed to enable smooth transitions and transferring of credits.

A statue on one of the quads

The Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship offers an Innovation course, entrepreneurship minor. All students do a Senior design project. Advisors work with students to answer “What do you want to do?” That becomes the basis for the senior project (many continue after graduation). The Innovation Expo and Elevator Pitch Competition is held annually: students prepare a 90 second spiel and present it to a variety of people. The top 3 win money; the overall winner gets a position with a company in Hoboken.

Steven accepted 41% of their applicants last year; 90% were in the top ¼ of their class. The Subject Tests are only required for applicants to the Accelerated Pre-Med programs; those apps are due by 11/15. Admissions is test-optional for Music & Tech applicants; the Visual Arts & Tech students must send a portfolio if they don’t sent scores.

© 2016