Im considering to ED1 Boston University, was wondering if anyone had anything to say about the social scene there? If I wanted to do greek life, is it something that’s big? I know it’s a big school, and one thing is that everyone from what I’ve heard seems to be very independent. How did you guys find friends? Just wanted a summary of the social scene!
Tagging @TomSrOfBoston and @thumper1
My DS graduated from BU in 2007. He absolutely loved his time in Boston. The city IS the college campus. He took advantage of a lot of what it had to offer. My kid was a music major so he had an immediate cohort of friends from day one. He actually roomed with another musician who he had met at a music festival.
There is a LOT to do at BU. Great fitness center…well worth going to. Hockey is big there. Those games are fun. Plenty of concerts, other arts things, sports, etc in Boston.
IIRC there were intermittent great deals on some of the event tickets, and my kid took advantage of those.
He was not interested in Greek life so I can’t tell you about that.
But in the four years, I never heard a peep about not having something good to do.
BU also has well oiled study abroad programs. Look into those too.
If you want to go to college in an urban place, my kid thought BU was the best!
1 Like
thumper covered everything pretty well, so i can talk about the one thing they didn’t which is greek life. here’s the thing, it isn’t huge here percentage wise and as cliche as it might sound it’s a very good way to make an otherwise large school feel so much smaller. then again, it isn’t like greek life is tiny. if a 20k undergrad population has anywhere from 10-20% of people involved in greek life, it’s around a 2k-4k person community. MIT has a comparatively bigger greek community because of their brownstones, but after them it’s probably us in terms of popularity. Nightlife isn’t like NYC or NOLA, but it’s fine for sure. Biggest upside of going to school in Boston imo is that you can make friends with a ton of other people. MIT, Harvard, NEU, and BC are the biggest ones that aren’t a pain to get to. Tufts is a bit further but you’ll still be able to find friends from there. And finally you have people in Suffolk, Emmanuel, Berklee, Babson, and Emerson around.
Will you ever have the tailgates that they have at state schools? No. It isn’t a typical American college experience. But you can absolutely find fun anywhere you go to college. And I promise that there are tons of worse off places for fun. Also one other thing, nights ends pretty early imo. As in like 1-2 am. but that isn’t a bu thing it’s really a boston thing.
if you’re worried about friends, you need to put yourself out there. that isn’t a bu thing it’s a college thing. join clubs, talk to the people on your floor, and if it’s your vibe rush. Everyone eventually finds their people you can for sure count on that.
TLDR;
It isn’t hard to make friends if you put yourself out there. Boston is not a big nightlife city but it still has a presence. Greek life isn’t big for the school, but it still has a large amount of people. Don’t compare BU to other schools because it isn’t like that.
1 Like