This past fall, about 190 transfer students arrived at Northwestern facing the prospects of Seasonal Affective Disorder, the quarter system and Chicago’s unpredictable, and at times unforgiving, weather. Why then, did they choose to come to NU?
For Communication sophomores Lauren Armstrong and Gabriel Cooper, both transfer students, location was a factor.
Cooper, a Lake Tahoe, Calif., native, said he was content at the University of California – Berkeley, but the college’s proximity to his hometown motivated him to transfer.
“Unlike many transfer students, I was very happy at Berkeley,” Cooper said. “I just wanted to get away from home.”
Armstrong said she previously attended Butler University in Indianapolis, which was very close to her hometown.
“I felt like I was in high school all over again,” Armstrong said. “I started coming home every weekend. I needed a change.”
Margaret Miranda, the transfer student coordinator for the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, said about one-third of the more than 1,000 transfer applicants were admitted this year, a higher percentage than in previous years.
“In the past (the acceptance rate) has been on average about 20% to 25% and some years as low as 15%,” Miranda said.
However, the increase in acceptances was not the result of a drop in admission criteria, but instead was brought on by qualified applicants, she said.
“Despite the fact that we increased the numbers, we did not see a drop in the quality of our enrolling transfers,” Miranda said.
Weinberg sophomore Allister Wenzel said NU’s campus and people were what encouraged him to transfer from University of California – Los Angeles.
“Being right on the lake, having Chicago right there but not having a cramped feel like in city schools like NYU – that’s an ideal situation, I think,” Wenzel said.
He said he lived in Allison Hall during Fall Quarter and made close friends on his floor but found the dorm wasn’t the “social utopia everyone had talked about.”
This month, he moved from his dorm to an off-campus apartment in Evanston. He said he prefers his current living situation to on-campus housing.
Other transfer students found it harder to adjust to NU’s lifestyle.
Weinberg junior Matt Nusko, who transferred to NU from Purdue University in 2006, said living in the Transfer House with other transfer students presented its own challenges. He said the transfer student community is close-knit, and transfers often have a difficult time meeting non-transfer students at NU.
“(In orientation activities) you’re stuck with freshmen and sometimes the age difference does make a difference when you meet new people,” Nusko said. “A lot of times activities are geared towards keeping transfer students kind of segmented off so that it’s much more difficult to make non-transfer friends and be fully integrated into the campus.”
Nusko said he believes transfer students who don’t live in the Transfer House have an easier time adjusting to NU. He added that administrators should eliminate “transfer only” activities when possible.
For some, getting acclimated to NU student life means joining groups and Greek houses.
“I would never have thought that I could meet 60 girls who would accept me for who I was,” said Armstrong of her Pi Beta Phi sorority sisters.
Reach Sara Peck at [email protected] and Matt Spector at [email protected].
