I have a kid at Rutgers, and based on what I see in the parent forums every year it seems that a lot of people don’t research and know what they’re getting into.
A few things we learned from experience… the bus system is pretty bad - for the first few weeks of class you will be late. You will have bus drivers just stop in the middle of a route and get off to smoke for 15 minutes (mandated breaks at certain time intervals, doesnt matter if it messed with the schedule, and certainly doesn’t matter that it will make you late for class). You’ll be leaving 2 hours before class just to make sure you get there on time. This year seems worse than usual, as I still see complaints and the semester is almost over.
As someone in the computer field for 30+ years, I can say unequivocally that the Rutgers computer systems are trash. Most of them look like they were written 20+ years ago and half of them don’t talk to each other - “oh you submitted your form in the other system, well this system won’t know about for 2 days so we can’t let you do what you want to until then”.
Based on how bad/ugly/antiquated half the various sytems seem to be, if my kid were going into computer science I’d seriously have reservations about sending him there, since in my mind (though prob not fully reasonable) if your own systems stink, why would I trust you teach me in the field that creates those systems.
Be prepared to do things on your own. If you haven’t heard of the “RU Screw”, google it. I see posts from parents of seniors that can’t get classes they need to graduate becuase they’re full. There seem to be WAY MORE dorm issues than the schools my other kids are at (temparature, mold, no hot water). Seem most people also don’t like the food options, unless you go to the Livingston campus, which is not very convenient if you’re dorm is on another campus, a 45 mins bus drive/wait away.
I’m not trying to convince anyone to go elsewhere, just to do the research to know what it’s really like!
Wow. My kid has not experienced any of this. He literally sparkles when you ask about Rutgers. He loves it there. We are so thrilled with every aspect of RU. I have personally eaten there and thought the food was great. I have seen some families complain that their kids do not use the meal swipes and have so many leftover and I have also see parents complain that their kids run out before the end of term. I guess you can’t please everyone. Oh and PS my kid loves the bus! Less walking in bad weather, it stopped right in front of his dorm. He has had a lot of luck getting classes. The above is such a long negative review of a school my kid and we love. Just had to add some positive.
Gonna have to agree with the original post. Daughter is a current student and we would not have had her go to Rutgers if we had known what we know now. I went to a large state school for undergrad and grad school. My wife went to a large state school for undergrad. Our other two kids went to large state schools. I am shocked by the number of parents who reply to complaints on parent pages that all of this stuff happens at all colleges. Simply not true. The shuttle system truly is horrible and that is a big deal for a campus so spread out and dependent on the shuttle system. Even if you have a shuttle stop at your dorm and one happens to be there right when you walk out, it will take you a half hour to get where you are going. At busy times, the travel time is worse than that and compounded if you miss a shuttle by a minute. Early in a semester, you are likely to take well over an hour to get to class if your class is not on your campus. The campus has a major commuter feel to it and the dorms tend to empty out on the weekends. Since there are not many students on campus on the weekends, they limit the shuttles significantly and it will take you an hour to get anywhere. I have experienced the weekend shuttle myself where we waited 45 minutes for a shuttle, then the driver took a 15 minute smoke break when we were halfway to our destination (for a total of one hour and twenty minutes to get where we were going). You will have to plan on an uber/lyft budget for weekends and getting to important classes.
Don’t even get me started on the OneStop system that is supposed to be used for solving problems. We had to deal with financial aid issues the last two years and it takes weeks and you never get an actual person with contact information to deal with. There are parents who have been trying to get their tuition bill fixed this entire semester.
The food is not good. It is the worst dining hall food we have experienced for all of our kids and our own experiences. I really pity people if they go to a school with food worse than Rutgers’ food. They also closed the dining hall on the College campus during the school year to rebuild (most well run institutions would do this in the summer if it is the only food option) and have a fast food atrium as the only food option on that campus for the mandatory $18 per meal dining hall plans (see earlier discussion on nightmare shuttle if you need to go to another campus to get food that is not garbage).
Most of the dorms don’t have air conditioning and they are behind the times compared to a ton of other schools with building new housing. No A/C might not be a problem for long, but they have a really hard time turning off the actual heat in the buildings during heatwaves in the spring. Kind of crazy.
If you want a school that embraces that state school government bureaucracy vibe where you feel it is impossible to get some actual customer service, and you want a really spread out campus in a relatively unsafe area where most NJ residents seem to live at home or at least go home on the weekends for a commuter school feel, Rutgers will be fine for you.
New Brunswick is the only campus we have experience with. It is spread out into four smaller campuses with two on each side of the river. Not easy to get between campuses without the shuttle. Even if you have a car, they only let you park on one campus. You can’t drive from one to the next if you have classes in different locations because your parking permit will only work in one place.
I have two daughters at Rutgers at moment here are my thoughts:
Honor college dorm is really awesome and makes transition to college lot easier
bus system is bad first couple of week but kind ok after that.
food is bad specifically at College Ave. other campuses are slightly better. Livingston is pretty good for food
classes are crowded but I guess that is norm for all state school
pretty good opportunities available if you look for them in terms of research and other programs specifically if you are girl. DRC is pretty useful.
large career fair but not sure how useful it is
haven’t had any issue with fin aid but heard people had troubles getting it sorted out
All in all I am not sure any other state school would have given any different experience (except top school for CS like GT, UIUC , UCB). No hand holding . You need to be go getter.
My husband and daughter are Rutgers graduates, plus being 45 minutes away my kids have many friends there. Definitely no hand holding, the food is near the top of my kids’ colleges (6), and it was very easy for my daughter to get a junior year internship (she graduated in 2016 and is still there). She was able to get her 5 year masters in accounting in 4 years. The only university with 100% air conditioned dorms my kids have experienced is Clemson (the rest are/were northeast), although Clemson still has very old tired dorms.
My daughter is a grad student at Rutgers, which I realize is a completely different experience. I still have a few comments:
She experienced or knows of some disorganization with FA and transcripts. The FA dept messed up a few things with some of friends but did fix the problem quickly. My D experienced frustration with transcripts and delayed email responses, almost to the point where she was not going to rank them highly. This was the school, not the dept. Everything was resolved.
One of the posts above briefly mentioned safety. We have been to the campus multiple times and none of us ever felt unsafe. My daughter lives in a residential area within walking distance to one of the New Brunswick campuses and feels safe. I don’t feel that Rutgers is any less safe than where she attended undergrad.
She loves it and overall I find Rutgers to be an excellent school with strong academics, despite any issues that might be common.
Well, “I” wouldn’t have sent/not sent my kid anywhere, that’s their decision. There are a lot of schools I thought they’d like better and have better experiences at, but really that’s more about me reminiscing and putting myself in their place and projecting where I think I’d like to go. My kid loves Rutgers - BUT - he does dorm on the campus where ALL of his classes are so it’s very convenient… Also turns out he’s just not into the college “scene” like I was, so it didn’t matter that any club he may have been interested in would have always been a bus ride to get to, or that the better food options were a bus ride away.
I completely agree with most of your points, except the two below. In particular, the whole multi-campus thing spread out over two sides of the river and highway with bussing in between seemed like a terrible situation from the start. It’s the only college we toured where the entire tour is in a coach bus.
I don’t think it works that way. In my experience, the comp sci facility at any given school want absolutely nothing to do with helping the administration with their computer issues. They have better things to do. So as a state school the the admin gets what they pay for from third parties with crappy systems. I wouldn’t judge the actual academic discipline one way or the other based on this.
Certainly not defending the food, but having toured at least a couple dozen colleges with my kids and making it a point to eat on campus every time as part of that experience, I would put Rutgers easily in the top half or even top third versus the campus food at other colleges we visited. College food is often not great, so perhaps the bar is low, but trust me it gets much worse than Rutgers food. And often the worst food is at extremely well known, super selective and super expensive schools. My current college son’s food is often epically bad – think finding cockroaches on your food or having all the food be hours old stale under heat lamps, etc. He’s taken to just buying a lot of cereal for his dorm room since its often more appetizing than what’s available on the meal plan… I personally liked our brunch buffet when we visited Rutgers – tons of options.