The best thing about Northeastern is definitely the co-op program. Unfortunately, it doesn't work out quite as well for some majors as it does for others. As a business major, it's ideal. I can get experience in many different areas and go from there to choose a career path. Some of my friends, however, have had less successful experiences. My friend who was a music industry major said he felt like his co-op was a waste of time, and that he had learned more in the past few years just from being in his band than he had at NEU or at co-op.
For me, Northeastern is the perfect size. I always see a ton of people I know on campus, just walking from class to class, and of course see thousands of people I don't know. After being at NEU for 4 years though, I recognize a lot of faces, even if I don't know names.
The most common reaction I get when I tell people I go to Northeastern is, "Oh! How is it living in Chicago!?" Yeah, we are in fact NOT northwestern. Who knew.
Most of my time on campus is spent in classrooms, in the student center (I like studying there better than in the library) or in the dance studio. Unfortunately, Northeastern decided to screw all the dancers last yeah and tear down the dance studio to expand the law school, so now we dance in a church. It is less than ideal.
One of the hardest things for me to get used to was the lack of school pride. I grew up next to a huge Big 10 school, and so I was excited to experience that kind of school and team pride for myself. It never happened. No one cares about northeastern sports, the huskies, or any kind of pride whatsoever. It's too bad that we don't have at least one sports team that is important to students. I would say the majority of people I know have never been to a Northeastern sporting event.
Administration can go either way. Sometimes I'm surprised at how much they push for things in our favor, but usually not. Especially with being so involved in the dance company here, it is easy to see that they don't care about certain groups. For example, our auditorium is only allocated to students 8 nights a year. The rest of the time, it is rented out to make money for the university. Every year the dance company tries to get one weekend where they can put on the show that they have worked so hard towards. After 7 performances at other venues, all of which all cost us over $1000, and 7 semesters spent trying to be able to perform on our own campus,I finally was able to perform in the Northeastern auditorium for the first time. I doubt it will happen again. Not only that, but in the previous years when we asked Northeastern just to cover the cost of the space we had to rent out, which was to perform dances we had been working on all year,they denied us. Even though this would have cost them only about $1000, we later found out that they had given the northeastern skiing club over $10,000 for one ski weekend trip. Northeastern needs to assess their allocation of money to student groups more carefully, because some people and groups are getting shafted.
One of the biggest complaints at Northeastern is the "NU Shuffle." This is basically a reference to the fact that you can never go to one person and get the answer you are looking for. You always have to go through a million channels, and in the end are often denied anyway.