Rutgers University-New Brunswick Top Questions

first state college of US

It's diverse with 4 different campuses. The facilities are great, and there's a library, gym, cafeteria, and student center on each campus.

Football, city, big classes, thousands of students

School spirit, diversity, diversity of campuses, friendship, academics.

Lots of oppurtunities and a true collegiate experience.

The amount of school spirit is out of control. On gae days the town is devoted to our team. Also the teachers are very encouraging for students.

There is a really friendly atmosphere at the school. The campuses vary from being spacious with a lot of open areas to being in the center of downtown New Brunswick. There are many different majors available, contributing to diversity, and the university is very involved with ongoing research in many different fields.

its the most affordable

This school is not only on an urban setting, having food, clothing, and healthcare and hospitals very accessible. There is also the availability to relax away from the city. The school also has the farm, the community parks, and the gardens which are a lovely place to spend an evening.

Diversity

It is a state school with an ubiquitous amount of students of all different ethnicities.

It's big, and it's in New Brunswick. I don't think there's much that is unique.

Sports have developed into a big part of the school's identity recently.

IT SPECIALIZED IN THE FIELD I WAS LOOKING FOR (PHARMACY)

It's a great place to get exposed to different cultures and as long as you try and look , there are many opportunities in getting involved with a great research program. Rutgers is very research-focused and includes quality instructors and centers. There are many links to especially to the pharmaceutical industry, some of which have their headquarters just 10 minutes by. You really need to be careful of what you take and how you do on your own. Academic independence and maturity is a must to survive here. Some deans are helpful while others just waste your time.

More research-oriented school.

While I am originally from California, I felt a stronger connection to New Jersey, and I wanted to be close to home. It is one of the oldest schools in the country, founded a year before the Revolutionary War. Rutgers is also unique in that it has 3 campuses in the state, so I wasn't restricted to choosing just one. The University makes it convenient and easy to take classes and get library books from these other campuses without students having to hunt them down, and each year is dedicated to making student life more enjoyable.

Rutgers University was named the most diverse school in the country. There are so many different religions, ethnicities, races, etc. that it really opened my eyes to other people of the world. It also gives the opportunity to become friends with and learn about people different from you.

The RU screw. "Hey, we canceled that lab you were counting on to graduate because not enough people signed up" or "Sorry, your professor barely speaks English." Rutgers is famous for screwing over it's students (and faculty) in ways unique to each individual. If you need something done get it in writing from someone who has the authority to give you whatever help you need. The RU screw only happens once in a while, but there's just lots of little problems that can make the simplest thing very complicated and drawn out. Also, the housing situation is a bit of a mess. Some students are living in converted common rooms and dorm kitchens right now or are being shacked up in hotels a few miles off campus, only to be bussed in. The dining halls are good on Cook/Douglass, okay on Busch and terrible on College Ave and Livingston. If you want to lose weight, start eating at Brower on College Ave. Otherwise the student facilities are pretty good. The gyms on Busch and Rockoff/University Center on College Ave are very new. The Busch Rec Center even has a bunch of squash courts. The campuses are cyclist friendly but on Cook/Douglass and even College Ave a lot of bikes get stolen so don't ride anything but a beater. There's some crime on and off campus, but it's not North Philly. A student got whacked in the head with a pipe and mugged but it was a few blocks off campus and was very unusual. Was in the student paper for a few weeks; it was that unusual. A few kids got mugged for their wallets and iPods on campus but there's little violent crime. Most of the theft, vandalism and violence is between the students.

Well Rutgers is considered the public ivy so to me rutgers is more of an under-rated school. It really provides me with a lot of life learned lessons. Also it is very popular in new jersey and since i plan on staying on the east coast it will help me get a job if people know where i went to school at.

Two Rutgers students discuss their general positive impressions of Rutgers.

Interview with a fourth-year English major taking a break from setting up a barbeque at the Center for Latino Arts.

Interview with a biomedical engineering major and an art history major.

Interview with a Rutgers Student

Interview with a Rutgers Student

An interview with a sophomore civil engineering student who loves Rutgers.

An interview with a sophomore math major who aspires to be a teacher.

An interview with a Poli Sci major who left BU for Rutgers to save money. He aspires to be a professor.

If you are lazy and like to be told what to do and have your hand held, don't go to Rutgers. If you are looking for a really highbrow, sheltered, utopic college experience in a serene setting, don't go to Rutgers. If sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, don't go to Rutgers. If you do not have at least an inkling of what you might like to study, don't go to Rutgers. If you do not get along well with people from very diverse backgrounds and interests, or are only comfortable around people like yourself, don't go to Rutgers. Rutgers is best for people with a great deal of self-motivation and an idea about what they want out of school. It's great for highly social, open-minded, hard working types. It's great for people who are unwilling or unable to go in to serious debt to pay for school. Rutgers is less like a cloistered college experience and more like the real world. Lots of kids at Rutgers work while going to school, live in houses rather than dorms, and carve their own paths academically, with little or no guidance. The downside is that it's very hard and lonely sometimes; the upshot is that you come out of school better adjusted, wiser and tougher than when you went in. It's best for the fiercely independent and the innately practical.

I think that Rutgers has helped me to grow as an individual in multiple ways and has helped me to understand people more. I was always able to let people be who they wanted to be but wasnt able to understand the way I interacted with them at times but Rutgers has allowed me to see that I was fine all along (yeah I know false advertising!!!). Seriously though Rutgers is a great place to find yourself and to nurture who you are in order to function more freely in the world.

If you're out of state...it's a lot of money for little value. In state...great deal. I have developed an extreme love/hate relationship towards RU...Great place to go to school, but the RU Screw is prevalent.

nah im good

Just like all huge universities, Rutgers has its advantages and disadvantages. Classes in almost every subject: check. Frustrating bureaucracy: check. You get the idea. If you know for sure what you're doing, you might want to go to a smaller, more specialized school. But if you're still unsure, maybe you should come to Rutgers. It's a state school, so it's not too expensive, and it's still pretty prestigious, as far as academics go.

All that being said, Rutgers is really, really cool. You have everything you could possibly want--food, drink, girls, boys, a city, THE city (NYC), sports...anything. I definitely don't regret coming here.

Rutgers = Bureaucracy. Good luck getting anything done through the school. I tried to change my major sophomore year multiple times, filled out the form multiple times, turned it in multiple times, and not until last semester did it actually get changed. This, among other things, is known as the RU Screw. People are often de-registered for classes for no reason, grades get lost, housing gets messed up, etc. Paperwork for everything. That is all you need to know. As far as New Brunswick goes. It is not the cleanest or safest city around. Like I said earlier, homeless people everywhere but near the classrooms. And they aren't asking for spare change, they wait outside of 7-11 and demand you give them your change. Very uncomfortable. Friends cars are broken into, people are mugged. Not friendly.

I spent freshman year at Fordham in NYC and my peers were much less focused on partying there than at Rutgers. I feel that on weekends there aren't many campus events and there aren't many places to visit in New Brunswick that do not involve food or shopping. Students do not have a lot of money to begin with and they are not going to spend it on a $10 movie each week or a new outfit. Students like attending cultural events, but they like to do them on their own time. Many of my friends would like to attend the RUPA trips to Broadway or the zoo, but they can't go on Thursday at 7 for example. If this school offered large transportation discounts, I think that our reputation as alcoholics would decrease. Many people drink and party because there's nothing better to do at night in New Brunswick. This city is not safe to be walking around at night in. Free NJ Transit week should be every week.

Absolutely not.