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Bala · 01-22-2008, 12:18 AM

ETOWNER,

I fear you may be a good deal more discouraged facing the campus you'll join this coming fall.

I understand your limited exposure to college life, but your skewed expectations are a recipe for disappointment. If you're seeking a student body that wears intellectualism on its sleeve, you won't find it at the schools to which you're applying. They, like the vast majority of colleges, will be much less uniform places. There will be grinders, there will party animals. A handful will talk of little else but Plato, a handful little else but the Packers. Some will live for Abercrombie and Prada, some will be poster children for What Not to Wear. To caricature the schools to which you've applied as you have NU would more likely yield a picture of campuses dominated by alcohol, drugs and partying - certainly not one of intellectual debate late into the night. This caricature is, of course, about as close to the truth as your portrait of the 8,000 students here in Evanston.

If you're looking forward to enjoying these next four years, drop the stereotypes and oversimplification and prepare for diversity - diversity of intellectual interest, diversity of intelligence, diversity on every social level. This is what you’d find at Northwestern if you looked a bit more carefully. Budding save-the-world journalists/blow-up-the-world chemists, express-myself musicians/express-yourself teachers, video-gaming engineers/video-expressionist screenwriters, and on and on and on are the mix that makes life at Northwestern as dynamic and interesting as any place in the country. It is that diversity and the opportunity that diverse body of interests engenders that has helped make Northwestern such a great home to generations of undergrads.

01-22-2008, 12:18 AM	#43
Bala Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Threads: 5 Posts: 130	Oversimplify at your personal jeopardy ETOWNER, I fear you may be a good deal more discouraged facing the campus you'll join this coming fall. I understand your limited exposure to college life, but your skewed expectations are a recipe for disappointment. If you're seeking a student body that wears intellectualism on its sleeve, you won't find it at the schools to which you're applying. They, like the vast majority of colleges, will be much less uniform places. There will be grinders, there will party animals. A handful will talk of little else but Plato, a handful little else but the Packers. Some will live for Abercrombie and Prada, some will be poster children for What Not to Wear. To caricature the schools to which you've applied as you have NU would more likely yield a picture of campuses dominated by alcohol, drugs and partying - certainly not one of intellectual debate late into the night. This caricature is, of course, about as close to the truth as your portrait of the 8,000 students here in Evanston. If you're looking forward to enjoying these next four years, drop the stereotypes and oversimplification and prepare for diversity - diversity of intellectual interest, diversity of intelligence, diversity on every social level. This is what you’d find at Northwestern if you looked a bit more carefully. Budding save-the-world journalists/blow-up-the-world chemists, express-myself musicians/express-yourself teachers, video-gaming engineers/video-expressionist screenwriters, and on and on and on are the mix that makes life at Northwestern as dynamic and interesting as any place in the country. It is that diversity and the opportunity that diverse body of interests engenders that has helped make Northwestern such a great home to generations of undergrads.