Hey! Current NEU sophomore here All great questions and I’ve been meaning to answer this for a while but kept putting it off.
- Tom covered co-op pretty well in terms of logistics. It's a full job for 6 months with no classes unless you choose to take one as an extra for any reason (most do not). Absolutely no tuition. There's a lot of great advantage of it. First, you can graduate college with up to 18 months of real experience in your field - both useful to you in getting a job and to get to try out your major's career, not just it's academics. If you find you don't like your career via a co-op, you still have time to change and that's a great thing: co-op is about finding out what your major translates to in the real world. Co-op also builds great connections: about 50% of NEU students graduate with a full-time job offer from a co-op.
- Boston is AMAZING. It's my favorite city so far out of Seattle, San Fran, NYC, Philly, and Chicago for reference. Boston isn't the biggest city or the tallest city, but it has a lot of nice advantages. The city is very young, academic, and the buildings and style is very clean and cohesive through the neighborhoods. It has amazing food (except Pizza: NYC, of course, beats Boston there), a great public transportation system (the T) that's simple and easy to use, partially due to the very nice size of the city.
NEU has an incredibly great location: we have the Fenway neighborhood a 10 minute walk away, the Prudential center is 15 minutes away walking, downtown is a 10-15 minute T ride away (NEU has two of the 4 main subway lines connected to campus). Cambridge is 30 or so minutes by T.
Boston Landmarks and Schools and Travel Time:
-Fenway Park - 15 Minute walk
-Aquarium - 20 Minute T Ride
-Boston Commons - 10 Minute T Ride
-Downtown - 15-20 Minute T Ride
-North End (Little Italy) - 20 Minute T Ride
-Harvard Square - 30 Minute T Ride
-Newbury Street - 15 Minute walk
-MIT - 20 Minute T Ride
-BU - 20 Minute Walk/T
-Fanuiel Hall - 20 Minute T
- I love the school. The co-op philosophy, the classes, the location, everything. I can't speak higher of it. If all this sounds up your alley, I would go in a heartbeat. I am a CS major, and I love my classes - the school is improving all around, and they are improving the faculty as well and it is showing. There's also a great tutoring network, and professors are very easy to talk to and approach about just about anything.