<p>Hi, current Northwestern sophomore here. In all likelihood, you’ll be assigned to a single room in Plex, a pretty anti-social dorm mostly full of international students and quite awkward upperclassmen. TRY TO AVOID PLEX AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. Unfortunately, since transfer students apply for dorms after all the rooms are assigned to returning students, the chances of getting a room in a vibrant, social, well-desired dorm is, albeit not nill, quite low. One way you can avoid that is to apply to residential colleges, such as Willard RC (quite a quirky group, cool kids though). There aren’t a lot, but a few successful cases where transfer students make it into those. Or you could check out Northwestern Housing group on Facebook page, where you can find tons of subletters/sometimes even people looking for new roommmates in dorms/apartments/houses in place of people suddenly transferring OUT.</p>
<p>Making friends in fall quarter can be hard if you’re placed in an anti-social dorm, in which few have any real group of friends willing to expand too far. However, if you join a sorority/fraternity, that will be remedied very easily in the winter quarter, since you will be meeting ridiculous number of people and, let’s be honest, you’ll be so busy pledging (oops, I mean bro/sis bonding) that the weight of social life will feel like taking another course. If you’re not a greek person, there’s still a whole bunch of social outlets and groups that you can join and make great friends, spanning from sports clubs to business frats to a capella groups.</p>
<p>I happen to know a couple transfer students who came to Northwestern last year, and I’ll be honest, they do say that fall quarter was quite lonely/boring. But I can guarantee that that will not last long if you give minimal effort in trying to find friends. Another great thing -if you can manage to hold onto this- is that your PA group during the Wildcat Welcome Week will be a ‘transfer student group,’ so you’ll at least know a bunch of other transfer students who can cry lonely tears with you.</p>
<p>I hope you find your next year in Northwestern pleasant enough, and get pumped for the Wildcat Welcome Week, the week that NU campus scene turns into exactly what Hollywood movies portray American college life to be!</p>