Northwestern University Top Questions

Professors are all the best in their fields and are extremely approachable. Be prepared to learn a lot and spend a whole lot of time studying outside of class. There is NO room for slacking at NU. No skipping classes. And good luck getting an A in any math/science class, as most of them are curved on a B-/C+.

As a music major, my classes are very small, usually no more than fifteen people. Some have only four or five, and those are always the best! It seems to me that the people around me are constantly studying, but I can't say I study that much unless I have something pressing like a midterm, final or project. Professors and T.A.'s, regardless of teaching ability are very approachable and are always experts in their subjects. Research projects abound at Northwestern and researchers and professors are often looking for subjects or assistants. The music school is strong in many areas (except, sadly, world music) but especially the contemporary era; the graduate student composers teach the aural skills and theory classes. The voice program is about as competitive as you make it: if you fall behind or fail to practice, no one will eat you out (especially since there are so many double-majors and double-degree students in the music school). Northwestern really supports its students in travelling abroad and in studying many different subjects.

Freshman Seminars are good for getting to know a teacher.

The professors are awesome. I know a lot of professors that know my name, and the classes I've taken with them have been fairly sizeable. They are understanding if you need an extention on a paper or if you have some other scheduling problem. The theatre dept is, in my opinion, the best in the country because it not only offers a world class education in your area of interest (performance, design, etc), but it also gives students an opportunity to study other subjects, which are important to know in this field. they encourage the intelligent artist. the actual theatre-related classes are fantastic. I love my acting class and the design classes I've taken have been very insightful.

For the most part the Academics are strong but many people are unsatisfied with the liberal arts program. Weinberg does not offer a lot of guidance and the professors are not very approachable.

I'm going to focus on research opportunities: It's incredibly easy to get involved in research of some kind here. If you want to, you can! At the end of my freshman year your final General Chemistry Lab was to propose a Biosensor for anything you liked. After my class presentation, the Lab director came up to me and asked if I might be interested in actually creating one. I said yes and this year I am working on that very sensor. Everyone has been very helpful and supportive of me in my endeavor. I think that speaks great volumes about the academic environment here.

Most teachers are good; you can get as much out of the school as you want. If you don't feel like working hard, you can easily get A's and B's without trying much. If you want to learn a lot, you can do that too.

Academics are great, but not all students take advantage of that.

Most classes freshman year are giant lectures. Pretty much no one attends these classes, however, as you move up into the 300 level classes they get tiny and are mainly round table discussion style, which makes attendance a necessity. I can't tell you how many times, though, that I've emailed a prof or TA after doing poorly on something and they are nice enough to work something out with me. Just come up with a great excuse, thats all i gotta say ;) ;)

Top-notch with most professors willing to spend time with you and have conversations. There are a lot of late night conversations on a variety of topics. STudents are competitive, but also generous with their time and will help out others