My Boston Experience was a great opportunity for me to get an in-depth look at my transfer options. My group went on three tours at Northeastern University: the General Information tour, the International Village tour and the Athletic Recreation tour. During the visit, I learnt a lot about this college in several aspects.

Northeastern University is composed of eight schools.  The college is renowned for their business programs and computer science programs in which students gain hand-on experience through their Cooperative Education program.  On our trip, we spoke with one of the tour guidez, Elisa, who is a 5th-year student in the six-year pharmacy bachelor/master combination program at the College of Health Sciences. She had a great passion for pharmacy and thought Northeastern would be a great choice for students who are aiming for careers in Health-related fields because they could benefit from the combination program. Unfortunately, the College of Health Sciences, in which students specialize in pharmacy, nursing, physical therapy and etc, doesn't accept any transfer students. But Northeastern does provide pre-med and pre-dentistry tracks to transfer students who have to finish certain prerequisites at their community college.

At Northeastern University, 95% of students participate in the highly acknowledged co-op (Cooperative Education). This signature program is designed to expose students to real working environment prior to their graduation. The great thing about the co-op is that students only need to pay for room and board if the co-op placement is local in Boston. Meanwhile, many co-op internships are paid. Most of the students that I met could cover their expenses with compensation from the co-op program. Another attractive feature of the co-op program is that students get to work globally. This feature especially allows students to envision themselves working on global issues in their future career paths.

In terms of the student body and the campus, Northeastern University has a 21 percentage of students of color and many international students, which gives the school a degree of diversity. There are some minority student organizations. Having lunch in the student center, I was able to identify more than 5 languages spoken by Northeastern students who sat near me. The many buildings in the campus have been recently rebuilt.  On that day, the athletics center and the recreation center were full of students working out in the gym, playing games as a group, taking fitness classes etc. The recreation center has almost every type of equipment.

Overall, I would recommend Northeastern to transfer students who have already determined their career paths and/or are able to envision their passions falling in business and computer sciences. Also, financing is a huge factor.  Nonetheless, transfer students will ease their burden through work-study, transfer scholarships and co-op programs in which students are paid or who work voluntary, but don’t pay for their tuition. The co-op program is the major feature of the school; therefore, Northeastern is a great choice to make given that students have a clear picture of their careers.