alright hello everyone and thank you all. much for joining us for our virtual event today wherever you are around the world we really appreciate you taking some time out of your busy schedules to hear a little bit about Boston University as well as the early decision process before we get started though my name is Randi Jose I’m one of the assistant directors on the board of admissions here at BU and again on behalf of our team thank you all for being here. as you may see on your screen we have a few topics we’re gonna go through today. just to run through that really quickly I’m gonna do an introduction sort of of the program following them and talk a little bit about our bu community afterwards we’re going to talk briefly about the application process and what that means for early decision is specifically early decision 2 and then towards the end we’re actually going to bring on two experts if you will to terriers on our campus new students current students who are going to talk a little bit about their journey and about their experience here on campus and there will be time during that portion where you can send in questions to our panelists and. if you want to submit a question there is a question box where you can go and submit that question and we’ll try our best to answer as many as we possibly can also just know we only here for about an hour or. so please after this program has ended if you have further questions feel free to reach out to our office via email or telephone or even reaching out to your regional representative that may be able to answer some more of your questions after the program and also to please continue to be in contact with our office in any form of fashion whether that’s coming to an open house in the future of course when you apply to bu reaching out to your specific regional rep or going to a high school goes in the future wherever you may be in the application process we want to continue to be engaged with you throughout this cycle now to kick us off and sort of a little bit about who we are as a community here at Boston University we have roughly a little over 16,000 undergraduate students who come from all 50 states and over 100 countries worldwide our our community here has all of our students are pursuing one of over 300 programs of study that reside in ten undergraduate schools and colleges. all of you applying to BU in the future if you are applying to for enrollment in the future you’d want you designate which school that you’re interested in and that school will open up then those majors that you that are available for that school that you can choose from and our schools range in sizes from our largest in the College of Arts and Sciences down to some smaller pre-professional schools like our school of hospitality administration our relock College of Education human development and of course. much more now our students are coming from again all around the world and roughly 24 percent of our population is from an international background. we really strive each and every year to build a global community and also a global campus both in the programs that we offer as well as the population that is occupying this 1.3 mile stretch here in Boston on Commonwealth Avenue now when you’re starting your BU career here of course you’re gonna dive right into your academic pathway and. that pathway can take many different forms whether that’s through just a big major they have in a specific school if you come in as an undecided major you’re more than welcome to use those first two years to sort of figure out what you want to do in that time and you will get an advisor to help you navigate the academic you know portion of our campus and then once you land in that major perhaps even at a minor as well you can pursue things like a double major within the same school or college you can also pursue for certain programs maybe a dual degree track which allows you to pursue two bachelor’s degrees typically within a four-year timeline from two separate schools now please note that not all programs will match up together as well when it comes to getting it accomplished in four years. you want to really talk to your advisor once you arrive on campus to make sure that is a possibility for you but the programs that you’re interested in now in terms of the folks are gonna be learning from write our faculty are tremendous not only advocates for our students but just incredible resources for all the terriers that are here on campus we have a 10 to 1 student to faculty ratio with an average class size of roughly 27 students. our students have a real great opportunity to engage with our faculty on a much deeper level as someone as an extension of the classroom and also just maybe a lifeline on campus to help you with maybe future recommendation letters or perhaps maybe recommending you for a job or an internship or something to that effect when you are part of the BU community and they’re gonna be here learning alongside of you as well because if you didn’t know Boston University is the fourth largest at teaching research university in the country and and with all the grants and funding that we have for all of our students as an undergraduate you can absolutely get involved with things like research whether that’s do an independent research through your program of study whether that’s through in-class research or even through some directed programs like our undergraduate research opportunities program or we call it here Europe or just simply pairing off with Professor and really just taking a hold of a subject and going forth that way we also want you to study here in our campus but also want you to go out and explore the world right we are a global community and. Study Abroad is really a big part of our community we’re almost half the student body well go abroad at least one semester and we’ll talk a little bit more about the process of studying abroad in just a little while but our students really take advantage of that opportunity and mind you every single school in college here at BU undergraduate wise has at least one opportunity for students to go abroad. note that whatever program you end up starting in each school will have an ability to go abroad and and they’ll you’ll work with your advisors and the Study Abroad Office to make sure that as a possibility if you want to take advantage of that work experience this is also a part of sort of overall this experience your learning piece that I’ve been mentioning the last few minutes where perhaps you’d want to work maybe overseas somewhere which in terms of studying abroad I’m doing an international internship is something that our students really love to do and it’s actually one of the more popular ways to study abroad here at BU. our students have worked for Parliament over in London due to doing some student teaching in New Zealand to doing some marine science research off the coast of Belize to perhaps doing some art galleries over in Venice and then there are some students who of course want to maybe leave bu but not necessarily the United States. there are students who might study abroad in places like Washington DC New York City as well as Los Angeles California where we have some directed programs in those three cities as well but note that your overall experience here the community is really engaging and in all aspects of that of the word really from academics to experience you’re learning and of course getting involved with student clubs organizations in our community here we have over 450 clubs organizations that our students participate in there are also students who are participating in our NCAA Division one sports go terriers and of course there are students who are involved in a myriad of things from from theater to community service to maybe some of the Greek life organizations that we have here and. much more and all these experiences have led to our students really having a fulfilled engaged and and and passionate experience while they’re here on campus and developing relationships and friendships and memories that were truly last a lifetime and and bu really provides that platform for you to explore and to dive into subjects into programs into opportunities that you may not get anywhere else and. our community is really striving to leave really bu but also leave this world a better place and to really strive for academic excellence and having that unique engagement with Boston in the world we really are game changers here on campus and that’s something that we’re really passionate about. again that’s a little bit about our community we’re gonna get a lot more in detail about that but I want to go quickly now through the application process and some of the things that we are considering in this process here and just to note that not all this information can be found on our website but also again reach out to us if any of this doesn’t make sense or if you have more questions about this we’re certainly here to help now when it comes to the process we really are seeking to bring together a very diverse group of students who are academically accomplished intellectually curious and. on and we as a member myself really as a member of the board of Admissions in my and our staff here are really conductive thoughtful and comprehensive review of your academic and extracurricular achievements inside and outside of the classroom and a many factors played into the decision of a student’s application and and and no two pieces of information are the same and they really tell us a lot about a student in different ways your your your GPA your test score is the curriculum you take all tell us one part of your of your application but of course your recommendation letters your I should Crick their activities and anything you’ve done outside of that your your application essays we’re all tell us a different part of who you are overall as an applicant now I mentioned before that we have a global community here we really strive for that global presence and. just to give you some context of where our applicants are coming from this past year we had over 62,000 210 applications from all 50 states and over a hundred and 63 countries worldwide and. when it comes to our students and we’re there and and where they’re applying and one of things that we have to do as the board of Admissions is to to go out to those communities and really learn about your schools learning about the community are coming from and. we have a domestic international team that really go out into into the world really to to hear about your experiences here a bunch of communities talk to your school counseling offices and your college counseling offices to know as much context as we can about what you come from. then bring that information back to then have that as part of our review in the future now if you’re following along on the PowerPoint here you can see this is a little bit of demographic information of the BU first-year students this is based on this fall right here in 2019 and. you can take a look at some of these demographics here but one of the places I want to highlight is that fifteen percent of our students did identify as a first-generation student to go to college and I myself was first gen to go to school as well and. if you identify first gen you know please let us know about it you know we really are trying our best each and every year to make bu and that’s in that transition to be you as seamless as possible from high school to college we know this process is not easy not for all applicants of course but especially for our students who are first generation you know definitely let us know we’d love to see how much more we could do to help in the future now we are typically looking overall for a class size of a little over 3,100 students overall and last this past year we had around 790 transfers join us for the fall semester when it comes to students applying to BU there’s really two options for for many for all of our applicants the first is of course early decision which as of now our first early decision deadline had passed over in November first. we are now talking about early decision two which is coming up as a deadline of January 6 and we’ll get some more deadlines in just a little bit just to let you know in terms of difference between IDI one versus ET two is simply the name and the deadline of which those application types are due but both early decision applications are both binding the early decision of courses of binding agreement and binding program and. II D 2 is the same exact way as you can see on the pie chart here we had roughly 45 percent of our class come in through the early decisions cycle but again 55 percent then came from the regular and pools. again two really great options for applicants of thinking that bu could be in their future now in terms of the profile for an early decision student what do they look like academically. as you can see on the screen here last year just to give some context of how many students apply we had a little over 4600 students applying through early decision both one and two altogether again 45 percent of our students were enrolled from the early decision class and then the average rank from high school was around 10 top 15 percent of their class they had an overall GPA average on an unweighted 4.0 scale elba 3.6 the middle 50% range for the SAT was between a 13 20 and a 1430 and then the middle 50% range for a CT was between a 29 and a 32. still a pretty competitive class and we’re really proud to share these statistics just because we can we see the the type of accomplishments you all have had in your classrooms and you’re just overall in your high school career and we’re really proud to say that our students in the early decision are really great just on the surface level here academically they’ve done such incredible work to get to this point of course now this is what we typically recommend for a high school curriculum and just note that no two curriculums are the same right a student’s curriculum and your transcript that you can may get for example from Ohio will be very different from someone who might have a transcript from California or from Florida or even in England’s over in India. I’ll just note that this is what we recommend for a high school curriculum but there may be some little tweaks and caveats depending on where you want high school you attend. you can take a look at sort of a checklist here but a couple of things I do want to highlight is if anybody here is interested in the question School of Business or the College of Engineering just note that we do need to see you’ve taken calculus in some capacity in high school and those between freshman and senior year and calculus can be just standard level calculus of course we have some students doing honors calculus and AP calculus where there’s a B or B C those are all great classes to take but we do need to see calculus taken in some capacity for you to be considered for either the question of school business or the College of Engineering if you do not have calculus and and we do obviously highly recommend precalculus but again if you do not have that class they might be you might want to have an opportunity to discuss maybe some other options for bu in terms of a school to start with here and then if you have an international baccalaureate degree or a French baccalaureate or German art or some sort of international curriculum we actually go through trainings to make sure we can understand those curriculums and to bring forth those credits and those classes to make sure you get all the credits you deserve while we’re reviewing your application here in the process and then just again just reminder for the deadlines for if any of you are thinking about applying to bu in the future January 6th is the big deadline for early decision to applicants if anybody here though realizes that maybe Edie may not be for you we still have Regular Decision which is also a January 6th deadline and that is the application for admission as well as need-based aid and. when it comes to this process for early decision to your application is due on January 6 and we are asking if you want to apply for for need-based aid that both the FAFSA and the CSS profile are also do the same deadline as your application. in this case it’ll be January 6 but those two documents to be submitted to us in order for us to consider you for for financial need from bu and then in terms of a notification date February 15th is when we’ll notify our students for early decision – with regard to the decision on their application and then late March or. is when we will announce for and release those decisions for students in the Regular Decision pools. but for early decision – and purposes of today January 6 is the deadline for all documents February 15th is when you’ll find out exactly the decision on the application and then just in terms of financial assistance but if because of course we cannot talk about this process without financial assistance. when you look in the screen there you can see that we are now meeting 100% full need for admitted first-year students in this process and we are primarily a need-based aid University but there are two merit scholarships that students could apply for unfortunately that deadline has passed here on December 1st but again need-based aid we are meeting again 100% for those first-year admitted students and we are trying our best to make BU as affordable as we can to as many students as possible of course if any further questions on this please feel free to call our office or also all the financial assistance office they’ll be more than happy to assist you and in this financial aid review okay I went through a lot of that really fast. I do apologize but you want to kick off now with our next portion here of the program and. we went through a bit of the beyou community the application process for applying and now I want to bring on – as I mentioned – s perks – Terriers who are living the life day-to-day on our campus to talk about their journey. I’m gonna have our panelists come on with me. forgive us we’re just gonna do a little shifting here hello team how are you oh well yeah awesome alright. again thank you all I think you both for being here we really appreciate it. first things first why don’t we just do some quick introductions. if you don’t mind stating your name where you’re from what year you are here at BU and then your major that you’re currently pursuing. yeah my hi guys my name’s Ria’s but Garcia I’m originally from Revere Massachusetts I’m a current sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences and Pardee school of global studies and I major in international relations and minor in economics all right everyone my name is Valerie and I’m currently a senior here at BU I am from Lawrence Massachusetts and I’m studying health science as well as working on my master’s of Public Health over at BU School of Public Health awesome I’m. excited that we’re both raising valor here because they have some unique experiences and of course being in two different grades here at BU have a lot of experiences a lot of things to talk about. first things first I just want to start off by talking a little bit about sort of the big question here why did you both of you it why did you ended up choosing to come to Boston University. who wants to start I’m. actually I grew up in a city that’s about 30 to 40 minutes away from Boston. I’ve always kind of known the area been to Boston a few times but I think I wanted to get away from my hotel and explore what was kind of familiar but also still a little bit unknown to me. on my tour here at Boston University actually I also took the time to explore the city and in that moment I kind of just knew that bu offers you the chance for. much exploration. on campus you can do. much with your academics and with your extracurriculars and whatnot but you also have the city right there for you in your hands in the palm of your hands and I knew that with that that meant a lot of opportunities for my career and also just for personal exploration sure that’s awesome but what you’re asking I think for me when I was looking at schools I was actually looking a lot in the Boston area as well and. for me one of the things that drew me to be you specifically was that I felt aside from just having like students who always like excelled academically or wanted to be liked challenged academically we have like a really strong community of students who are really passionate about whatever it is they do outside the classroom and. whether it’s someone was like really involved with different clubs just shooting organizations or like a sport or an instrument I felt like having that community about around me was something that was gonna push me to really explore things that I was passionate about maybe like finding passions along the way and. that was what drew me to school awesome great and obviously when we start off when it comes to the BU career here is of senior academics. each of you has a really unique program that you’re pursuing. really start with you if you don’t mind can you talk about sort of how you really kind of landed I get of course in international relations and having the money that you have but really the concentration as well that you’re pursuing at this point yeah. for me coming into view I would say I was definitely one of those students that had a pretty good sense of what they wanted to study in high school I was involved with like my supposed to be a team and Model UN team. I always knew I was a little bit interested in international relations and. having had the chance to like take those classes my freshman year definitely solidified that I like absolutely love my major one of the things that I really enjoy about I are here at BU is that by the end of our sophomore year we do have to declare it to concentrations within the majors. you pick one in a part of the world and then also one in a specific field within the iron. for me I concentrate in Latin America and then also foreign policy and security studies. it’s been a nice way for me to really hone in on like what I’m specifically interested in I really get that likes if I’d sort of aerial study and then in terms of my minor I’m currently working towards a minor in economics and. that’s sort of been away from me to still do a subject that I’m really passionate about my favorite subject has actually always been mad despite being in our major. it was a nice way for me to maybe not have as much like intensive math then also still see how it will apply out into the real world whether like people like when they purchase things or like how trade worries and things like that. yeah it’s a really intense subject but you say. myself but it really cool this awesome value have a bit of a unique program in the sense that you’re doing what that’s called Lea for plus ones or a track and. what’s the program and what does that four plus one mean yeah sure.
I’m basically going to be earning my bachelor’s degree in health science which is a program here at Boston University’s Charles River campus but I also will be spending an extra year over at Boston University School of Public Health and there I’ll be working on earning my master’s of Public Health what got me there really was my background and again I’m really my hometown means a lot to me and. actually freshman year I really didn’t really know what I wanted to study until I went back home that summer between freshmen and sophomore year and I was just home in Lawrence for the summer and I realized that the community that I grew up in and that I live in is very disadvantaged I’m represented and just faces a lot of interests and hardships. and knowing that I knew that I wanted to kind of move into the public health field and luckily do you it is offer obviously the mph program. I’m glad that I have the opportunity to do that and it’s only one next year. that’s always a plus absolutely it seems like both of you had sort of whether that’s upbringing or just environments of which you want to pursue kind of passions you’ve already had but maybe help realize here at BU too which is awesome. to be able to pursue both that’s great now for some students coming to college one of the things that might be something that is a little either unnerving or maybe folks get nervous about is housing and actually living with somebody for many folks out there they may not actually either live with anybody you know them a growing child or perhaps just hasn’t really shared a room with someone else they’ve never known before. okay hope you or when you talk a little bit about sort of the housing process and how has housing work for you yeah. in terms of the housing process here at bu the way it works as an incoming student you get to rank where you want to live on campus. it’s pretty much you’ll list out your preferences like one through five. there’s no like set building for any of the incoming students or any specific like class here in terms of my personal experience. I actually lived in our western portion of campus during my freshman year and. I really enjoyed living there just because it was closer to a lot of our like athletic facilities um. like our campus gym and then also like our outdoor fields and our like again it’s arena we’re like the men’s and women women’s hockey teams play. it was really nice in terms of like being really close to a lot of the student life sort of stuff that we have on our campus and then in terms of my like actual roommate experience I actually went completely random until the way that that works is that it’ll prompt the short little questionnaire to like get to know your living style and ask me things like what time do I go to bed at night like what time do I wake up in the morning and. my experience actually ended up working really well my freshman year roommate coincidentally our home towns like border each other and. it was really nice in terms of just bonding over like different places we went to like growing up like restaurants or like different fun things we did in the area and. we just got along like extremely nice and you started out in West you know what’s the saying for folks you start in West what’s the little rivalry that happens I can yeah. here in campus for anyone living in West we would say West is best in terms of the layout of views campus a lot of the like academic buildings fall in our eastern portion of campus. it sort of depends on if you want to be close to them like waking up every morning and just being a five-minute walk from classes or if you rather be like closer to the gym. that way you can force you supposed to do that.
Eastern West sort of feelings on. I actually had the whole five minute situation I lived in Warren tower’s but yeah I know Warren tower’s is like one of our largest dormitories here on campus and like I said it is kind of in the center central portion of campus where you are kind of close to most of the academic buildings. I think it was just it was very convenient and I’ve had something that you prioritize that it may be that’s a better choice for you but there are tons of options on campus in terms of housing for all types of students sure sure you know I think one of the things that we’ve always talked about here EU is sort of funding your community a medium to large high school right at sixteen plus thousand students sometimes I could be a little daunting for some students joining a community of that size and. I’m actually gonna start with you fill minds you talk about how you found your community here whether that’s through academics extracurriculars or otherwise if there’s one moment club program that really set this off for you if you don’t mind sharing that’d be wonderful yeah. I think I was lucky enough to find my community through one of the student organizations here on campus actually it’s called Asian Student Union and what’s really cool about it is instant union is that it’s actually an all-inclusive organization. you don’t necessarily have to identify as Asian or Asian American to join any of our events on things like that and that was really helpful for me because I actually attended I as Cambodian and be you nothing I know of doesn’t have a like Cambodian Student Association or something like that. I felt like ASU was really perfect place for me and again ASU being all inclusive it means that you get to meet people from all different cultures and ethnicities and races. you’re learning a lot from them while also expressing yourself and sharing you know your language and your food and your culture.
I’d be very grateful for them and I’ve been with them all three or four three years now. that’s great yeah I would say similarly definitely through getting involved with like a lot of the different student organizations that we have on campus here I’m really involved with Alianza latina. that’s used Latin student organization now I’d say one of the things that was really helpful for me was that within our club we do have our own bigoted little program I know the cultural Sunni groups have similar programs but. ours is called the anonymous program and my big Augustine is from Atlanta he’s actually at the same major as me. he was always a really good just like in terms of like giving me advice on like maybe what to take or just like different ways to prepare for like my different classes or things like that but then also just outside of that like we will go out to like eat in the city we’ll go it’s pretty funny because since I’m like from the area instead of him showing me around the city it’s like me showing him around the city but yeah it’s just been a nice way to really get to know a lot of people from like similar backgrounds as me and then also just have sort of like that meant mentor on campus sure sure and we again speaking about community folks want to gravitate to something really kind of bond together on the campus and. I think sometimes like campus traditions can tend to do that some things are a bit more unique to a certain community whether it’s in Boston or otherwise and. do either of you have a favorite sort of BU tradition that is around here I can tell you from me one of the things I’m looking forward to Anneli is being a staff member here on campus but also I’m also pursuing my master’s degree is the the graduation sort of a tradition of the BU seal that’s on marsh Plaza. I’ll tell you about that little bit later but yeah either of you have any future traditions you like to share yeah. my biz actually that’s. I mean you seal it’s basically the legend around it or the seal it’s in the center of our campus. no matter what you’re probably been walking by it every year are every day but the legend behind it is that if you step on it during your time as a view student you won’t graduate within like four years or I guess however long you’re supposed to or suspected to be here and. for me that definitely means a lot just being like one of the first people in life and will need to go to college it’s always sort of like reminder that like one day I walk by her one day when it gets to graduation day that I’ll be able to get sort of that infamous like the youth graduation picture yeah one of my favorite things about it is that they roll out like a big red carpet for like all the seniors. towards the end of the year you’ll see all the upperclassmen like there with their families taking that graduation nice nice I need sort of opticians you like I have a favorite tradition a nice clearly I love the first is lobster night and the second is the midnight breakfast that is open to all first-year students. I’ll start with lobster yes lobster night is basically and I think earlier in the year like in September where all of our dining halls are just giving out lobster and the lines are massive to get to the dining halls on this they’re on the specific night but it’s such a fun experience because you get to just kind of you know take apart the lobster and get messy and everyone has like little bits and gloves. it’s expected that you know you’re gonna be a little bit of a mess but everyone’s doing it and it’s fun especially if you’ve never had seafood before never had lobster before and in my case that was the situation. you know I got to the dining hall and I was like oh how do you but it’s a fun little tradition that we have here at you and then secondly is the midnight breakfast which actually I think it’s coming up pretty soon it’s typically on the last day of classes during the fall semester and we’re all first-year students are invited to have breakfast but also to engage in tons of activities that are kind of like stress relieved me because finals are approaching. on this last night you get to play Mario Kart with your friends or stuff a stuffed Terrier. like fun things like that yeah and since we’re on the topic of food obviously that’s a big part of the college experience. I’ll make it to you don’t mind since you love food keep talk about sort of the several dining options here on campus whatever merits of students and perhaps maybe within the dining halls themselves whether it’s a boot three being in like template meals they may find in the cafeteria one for sure yeah. there are three main dining halls here on campus and three of them are spread out throughout the campus. you know there was certainly going to be one in the area that you’re resigning or the area that you are in just about time of the day and I would say that all three of our dining halls have great options you know if. options in regards to like what you’re actually enjoying that day. you can have Pizza one day and like chicken pot pie the next and I’m really getting tired of the food and there’s it’s always changing up but also if you have any dietary restrictions or allergies or food preferences we have all those options too you know we have a gluten-free station vegan options and if you have any allergies that you’re concerned about the video Dining Services will definitely work with you on that and I believe there’s a curbing from wrong is there a sergeant choice option and. what is sergeant choice if they see this in the dining hall yes sergeant is actually the school that I’m enrolled in. okay I’d love to talk about it but it’s a sergeant choices basically they’re meals that are designed by actual nutrition students here at video and they’re basically creating meals that are you know a little bit healthier for you and if you want to be more conscious about that then you have those options there for you it’s not obviously the only thing that the dining hall is serving. you can have options and that’s just really great because not only are students having the opportunity to create these meals for their friends and their peers but we also get to enjoy them as well yeah and if you have a shellfish allergy don’t worry they’ll be options for you I’m for love tonight we can talk about for a long time but we should here’s just for a second. really you don’t mind as I was mentioning before my comments I do you think one of the big parts of the community that I think is important to know to sort of the relationships you may form with the Faculty of what you learn from whether that’s in your major even classes otherwise that you might take and. is there a faculty member or even adviser that you’ve been close to since being here to you yeah I would say for me one faculty member that I was really connected with was Professor shell day. she was the she’s one of the professors in our party school Global Studies. she teaches our introductory international relations course one of the things that I really appreciated about her was that she was always really inviting in terms of coming to talk to her regardless of whether it was like about the material or just like anything maybe like career related she really loved talking about like different jobs that we could go into within it within IR. that was really helpful for me just because like as an incoming fresh a student it can seem a little bit like daunting to go to like meet one-on-one with your professors in their office hours and. it was really nice to just be able to go into her and chat with pretty much anything like about anything. within our department like we do have a few former like CIA office areas and like FBI officers and like performance fasteners. she’s a really great like pinpoint person depending on what career paths that we were interested in or different like interest we had and being able to connect us with them and different people that she knew. nice. really extending themselves saying stuff to like to really connect with you and be honest um and Valcke sort of similar question but maybe also a professor or a faculty member that kind of took the class material and really made it something that you couldn’t miss each week like what was something different about the professor and how they taught the class that you were taking. actually a professor that insulin came to mind is a professor I had when I was abroad is that okay. of course yes because we’re gonna do something yeah. professor dr. Verma he was Professor that I had for my public health courses when I was abroad in Geneva Switzerland last semester and what was really unique about him is he was really encouraging of us to kind of have a global perspective you know when you’re attending school and United States and for me I’ve grown up in United States it’s kind of all that you know. each week in order to encourage us to have more that global perspective is he would actually implement a quiz on the news global world news each week I will say in the moment it was a little bit stressful because of course you know you’re gonna be thinking about your grade and whatnot but it really pushed you to be reading news articles from the moment you wake up instead of going on Instagram or snapchat you know you’re reading all this information that is I think really important to know. reflecting back on my experience with him I am very grateful that he pushed us to do that because I did gain that global perspective and now think that way and it’s really important obviously when it comes to my studies in my career any thinking about public health sure sure and while we’re on the topic of just global community and and the programs that we offer here studying abroad and and and that experience for you why did you go did you enjoy it and sort of what was the process of getting there I guess was the rustling. as I mentioned I I went to Geneva Switzerland during the spring semester last year and I was on the public health truck but was also on the import in the internship program. the way that works is in the first half of the semester you are taking a couple of horses and then in the second half of the semester you are actually going to be having an internship abroad which is I think one of the coolest parts of this program. the internship part meant a lot to me because I again was having more of an opportunity to gain that global perspective I was working with a nonprofit organization called graduate woman international and they are actually associated with the United Nations. every now and then maybe once every two weeks I actually got to travel to the United Nations Office in Geneva and be surrounded by delegates and just really important people and I got to sit in on like the Human Rights Council. this is just one example of something that you could do when your are there are tons of things to do I definitely highly encourage considering studying abroad especially if you’re interested in things like international relations public health and fields like that wonderful gosh whatever experience and when building this global class of course we’re gonna get students from all over the world or even in United States as well some things we always experienced though and realize I’m gonna keep this question to you being in New England the weather can be a bit fickle if I do say. myself even something like this week and went from a 35 degree day to a 61 degrees and raining and tomorrow I heard it’s gonna go back to 35 degrees. if the weather fluctuates every time every year all spring and. do you have any advice on things that students should pack buy before they get to campus while they’re here just our sort of prep for all types of the one other and the things they’re gonna experience especially for folks who may have even never seen snow before is there anything you give advice for those students yeah. one thing that I always recommend to people especially if you’re coming from let’s say like the west coast or like Florida or places like that definitely don’t buy your jacket over there because in terms of like the coats like definitely just gonna be designed a lot better over here just because like the weather we have you’re in New England but then aside from that definitely I always recommend dress in layers and then also have like good like hats or gloves and pretty much just like comfort all parts of your body to stay warm yeah of course and when it comes to just living here in the city right weather is obviously one thing as soon as we have to think about but I think also this urban environment I think it’s gonna be sort of a new stage for some students maybe some new environment that they’re gonna be introduced to and. how did you both sort of acclimate to living in the city is there anything that you really enjoy about living in the city is there anything that you were surprised by living in Boston and I guess what Boston means to you like. transitioning to Boston definitely was interesting for me because the high school that I attended was very suburban green fields things like that and definitely not in the city. the way that I activated to it I would say actually did this thing with my friends where each weekend if you were available and the beginning of the year we would go to a different neighborhood of Boston because again you know I’m I was kind of familiar with Boston at the time but they were deafness. things I didn’t know about in areas I didn’t know. we kind of challenged ourselves to go to Newbury Street and then the next week go to the Commons and just see what all that Boston has to offer now that’s something that I know that we did for fun and maybe not feasible for everyone but I really just I encourage exploring because there’s. much that Boston has to offer and even now as a senior I feel like I still haven’t you know got into all the different neighborhoods and areas sure and I think like similarly I’m also from a little bit outside of Boston but I think at the end of the day we can both agree there’s nothing like having Boston like right next there to us in terms of like views campus right on our eastern portion of campus you’re like about a 5 10 minute welcome like the Fenway area of Boston and then from there about like a 15 20 minute walk is also like the Back Bay Area boxing. like Prudential Center in Newberry Street Boston Street. it’s really nice to be able to just walk and get to those places like really easily I’m from our campus and. one nice thing that they do is they will offer us like a lot of things in the Boston area just for being be used to things. we can get into like a lot of the different museums in the city for free we can get like Red Sox tickets for nine dollars where some of the games that they don’t sell us yeah there’s just a ton of great stuff to do and. there’s always something going on like in the city first an estate manager now what about getting around the city or even here on campus hey can you have a car in campus and not if they don’t have one how do you actually get around to different parts of the city of Boston I would personally say that Boston University’s pretty blockable and it’s not walkable there are tons of options for transportation Boston University actually has a free shuttle that they offer to their students and all you have to do is hop on hop off there’s no card or payment system at all and it really takes you wherever you need to go you know Medina goes over to our medical campus which is about 20 minutes from a main campus. that’s one option and then also as we as mentioned we have the subway we call it the tea here and that actually runs straight through our campus yeah. definitely an option yes no I mean I’m definitely a big proponent of the bus because it has stops in front of pretty much like all of the academic buildings and all the different dormant residences. regardless of its whether you like you’re going back to your dorm or like going to class it’s definitely definitely very convenient especially once like the weather starts. I get pretty rough like rain or snow. it’s a nice like thing we have on it yeah sure sure now you kind of going a little bit deeper within our community of course with academics with exponential learning opportunities you know folks that we’re going to talk to students that want to connect with to help with some of these opportunities. are there any offices on campus that you’ve used in your time here at BU whether that’s for academic support for professional development or anything in between those yeah I think one resource that was really helpful for me especially like professionally was our Center for Career Development. I actually had the chance to take a course taught by someone working in the CCD during my freshman year and it was focused. they have a bunch of different sections that will focus on different like career paths. it could be like careers in health and nutrition in there like careers in education. my section we focused on careers in government and public service and basically throughout the semester what they would do was just bring in view alums in the Boston area and just have them come in with like their resumes and pretty much just dedicate the whole class to chat with them about their career paths and different things that did after they graduated. it was really nice for me especially my freshman year in terms of like figuring out what I might want to do. they were really helpful resource and then they would also just work in a lot of their different resources they have in their office as well. like mock interviews we did a resume workshop day they did a mock networking day. it was a nice way to really acclimate myself with like all the things that they offered I was just about to agree and the one thing that I’ve been able to utilize from the CCD is actually the resume workshops that you had mentioned and also cover letter reviews I definitely did not have the skills in the first couple years that I was here at bu but I thought that they were definitely important when applying for internships and things like that. it’s really nice to have that opportunity or you have a opportunity for someone to review and look over your resume and cover letter and give you some feedback on you know how you can present yourself the best way possible sure sure and I think for folks who maybe may be looking for some other academic support of course within your schools and colleges they’re gonna have folks of course your academic advisors great place to start with regard to you realize those services there’s also students who might be teaching assistants that may help with the course with study sessions and folks might be in the sign is maybe doing some lab pre lab work if you will to sort of make sure everyone’s up to date and up to speed of what’s going on within those classes and. all those resources are available here on our campus – just want to highlight that wave quickly now we’re gonna switch gears a little bit I’m gonna start off there’s a little fun segment I like to call the speed round. within this segment I’m gonna ask our students a quick question either a one word or one phrase answer and that’s it no explanation and it’s up to you all to sort of go online sort of figure out what’s going on if there’s anything that piques your interest look it up it might be a fun little thing you can do after the session today all right you guys ready helps out here we go. obviously as quick as you can a favorite place to study on campus Siskin lounge this skin lounge School of Theology library School of Theology library I haven’t heard that one that’s very nice okay yes favorite place to eat on campus none favorite events that you like to attend at Boston University what’s a social event it’s pretty much this tournament that happens I believe it’s towards like the spring every year but it’s among all the major like Boston area schools. it’s among all of our like ice hockey teams and. I think right now currently our women’s ice hockey team is actually the we wanted this past year. that’s that’s something to be proud of but in terms of that it’s sort of a nice way to have bragging rights over a lot of the other schools splash splash alright pause splash is an event it’s a very very large one at the very beginning of each academic year where all the clubs of student organizations basically at a table and promote their organization all of the new students. first year and transfer students and really anyone is welcome to come and see what all these clubs and student organizations have to offer and whether or not they want to join it’s huge I mean over a thousand students plus write come to this event I mean it’s it’s incredible new Kristin field gets filled yeah it’s just that’s a swag freestyle every step absolutely okay now they replace favorite event to attend in the city of Boston the Boston Christmas tree lighting with ice skating I personally love the Boston Marathon when it comes to and I will start with you if there’s one class that you think if they were any suits our interests in your programs or in one class that you think student Austin should have taken of the class that you’ve taken what class would you want to tell everyone did you take. it’s HP 353 which means the organization and delivery of us health care very important yeah I’m gonna go with the IRA 271. it’s the introductory international relations course I think it’s a nice way to spark the interest if anyone is considering and all of them were are our majors now and if what is one thing you hope to still accomplish in your view career up to this point or maybe thing to do you haven’t done yet that every student should do I was gonna go with the EDS challenge basically on campus Rhett’s is like our I guess the easiest thing to compare it to would be like five guys. in terms of the red challenge it’s pretty much where you’d have I believe it’s a triple cheeseburger like I’m eight scoop ice cream sundae like a root beer that you have to eat like all under 30 minutes what if you finish it you get I believe they have like this little trophy and you get the meal for free. I mean unless you want to pay you better finish the while sauce I believe they even hang your picture up like I’m like one of their walls they hug their but it’s like a nice little like challenge oh my god do you are you are you prepping for this coming up Sam.
I definitely want to do it I think I’m probably gonna have to do it like toys the either early of the year like the end of the year when I’m not too many people are around yeah just alike case I don’t finish it like yes I would they stay underground which is kind of like a restaurant option that we have underneath our Baystate dining hall and they’re open like in the late hours of the night just never been but I’ve heard they have great food including like ramen now oh nice yes we do all right well thank you for playing the speed round I really appreciate this we’ll go back to some traditional questions here I mean that was actually a question cuz you had mentioned about the morning breakfasts correct yes excuse me and that happens closer to finals time yeah and I think when folks were socially on campus for my finals it can kind of be a stressful time and I think that the midnight breakfast and other things that you might do to sort of Bolivia’s some of that stress you talked a little bit about how bu sort of tackles some things like mental health but even just to see what for the students and making sure that they feel comfortable on campus and knowing that they have supportive services here. we do have the student health services here on be use campus and you can go to them for anything related to health but we do offer behavioral health services a couple things came to mind I think that in general bu is doing a great job of really paying for mental health awareness and one of the things that they have done in the past and they actually did this past semester is they offered screenings in our George Sherman Union. the George Sherman Union is definitely a central place on campus for like all students go and to have the opportunity to do a screen there and such a public space really I think shows be is initiative to say that you know the conversation on mental health is important and it’s okay to have they also the student health services also offers really cute stress relief kids where you can get things like a stress ball or like a coloring book little things like that they can help you believe any stress that you may have that’s awesome that’s great and I know that’s a conversation that we are continuing matching having on campus and even just as a staff member we we also on the employee level have to go through major trainings and awareness of understanding of meaning that the means needs and demands of the students today and making sure that we can also be advocates and resources for students to. that’s something that is literally university-wide which I really appreciate that someone who works here is also that’s just awesome now switching use a little bit we as I know we’re kind of winding down time here you know obviously this is a program for early decision to interested students and. but when you think about your time apply an easy-to vu did you find that applying EB gave you was there any advantages to that with for you specifically with regard to maybe timing finding out decisions sort of the process itself but was there any event you felt when you’re applying Edie yeah I think one of the things for me especially in regards to like the timing in my case like I think one piece of advice that it was actually when I first toured to you that my tour guide gave me was that if I knew that at the end of the day that like view was always going to be my first choice to apply early decision and. like as senior year came around and I ended up applying it Edie in terms of like being able to just find out find out a lot like sooner than the rest of my peers in terms of like where I was going next year like I always knew I was gonna pick to you and. having had sort of like that sense of relief and like comfort really early on during my senior year was something that I was like grateful that I did well sure sure and with regard to just literally within the process of apply easy you know we talked about as the mission staff how you know we’d track demonstrated interest in the process and applying early decision even early decision to is really the ultimate showcase of interest designating that be you is that first-choice school right this is the only place you you want to attend be very very like bought the sweatshirt maybe dog read you know you did these like that where you might want to consider applying Edie I think that could be a great option for many students who want to showcase that yes is the only place I’m considering really for my college career in the future. I know value I’m in the ad with regard to the new pi D D and I think one advantage is that you know you get to know early as we have said where you’re going and with that you have the time to really get to know Boston University for me it was great because I took the time to do a lot of research and I learned all the traditions all the chance that we say at our BU hockey games and it really just gets you a bit more excited and more enthusiastic to attend your school absolutely for sure and some students when they apply they may have a program that they’re already interested in they’re applying as you know some students may want to perhaps when they get here maybe change them I along the way I had mentioned that in the first two years is when you have to sort declare that program of interest free to move forward in the process here at BU but in terms of just sort of any program changes or additions right. really I know you guys wanted to add the minor to your program was that easy for you do you know friends or even you’ve mouths you know friends that either added programs change their major like how to switch schools like was that giving examples of baggers friends I experienced that too yeah in terms of declaring like a minor. the way that that works is that it’s pretty much just a meeting with your advisor and then also just filling out a form where you formally like declare it. some students will either declare it first and then take the classes towards it or the other way around would be just take all the classes for the minor and then declare it officially. pretty easy process in terms of transferring like majors or switching within any one of the different schools or colleges I think one of the things that’s made that really easy is our bu hub. it’s like they use general education program and. one thing about it is that regardless of like what school or college you’re in here at BU we’re all fulfilling the same general education requirements. when you do transfer over you’re not losing like any credits or like courses that you had previously taken in the past. that’s really helpful I believe the only requirement to switch majors in any one of the school colleges is to take the introductory class and I believe get above a like B – I actually was undecided my freshman year sorry it wasn’t like in a program or a degree or anything like that and then I decided to declare my me and health science and how the same thing it was a pretty seamless and easy process it really did require just a conversation with my advisor at the time and really going over you know the credits I already had and what I was going to be future I’m just kind of planning things out for the next few years sure and then after path there was like an essay component and just making sure that you have the grades for it but I think the otherwise it was pretty simple and that that additional year just happened to be part of the program. that wasn’t anything yeah. the plus one year actually is an additional application I believe you can apply either in your sophomore spring or turn your fault I applied a junior fall and that application did require a couple of you know recommendations and. I do recommend giving to your professors and giving to your employers things like that on campus. that you are prepared for that application great yeah and that’s that’s one unique program there are a few on campus that you might have a plus one that you can add. that specific to that program. definitely check out the website for any of those additional details as we write it down here you know one of the things that I want to highlight is we talk about all these programs of study to academics and and involvement on campus off campus Boston study abroad internship there’s. much here any small piece of advice with regard to sort of sort of navigating social life as well as doing your academics and sort of balancing all of that together I would say one time management if he were on top of your academics you know if you work hard then you can play hard but also I found that mixing actually both kind of works for me personally. if I have a very big exam coming up and I’m super stressed about it I can get together with my friends who are also in that class or you can study together that way you know you still have company and you can order takeout for your dinner and while you guys are principally studying away but that’s been kind of my solution for that yeah I’m not really sure how ahead in my advice goes with like time management but I’m really just saying yes to like everything for me like coming into college was really helpful was just approaching everything was like an open mind in terms of like maybe like different people you meet are just different like things you might want to get involved in well being Europe for you and. that’s sort of a nice way for me to have been able to like stumble and like come across like different interested interests that I had and just like different things that’s great and my final question for our panel tonight and if you don’t mind we’re narrowed down to just one sound bite if you will okay if you had one piece of advice for everyone watching here this evening about sort of a college mission the application process any piece of advice or even just applying IDI any one piece of advice you want to walk away will have them walk away with here. I think we as long as that with you yeah I would say definitely stay organized like there’s a lot of dates and like deadlines and things like that especially if you’re considering like a number of different schools. it’s always helpful to keep that I would say reflect on yourself and what you would like and we need from a college or university great nice the final nail of the senior of our group here who is in art the same last year. thank you all. much for joining us in our program I just want to slide to with our final slide here just please again stay connected with us in any form or fashion in the future follow us on social media live it on the website we’d love to continue to have the conversation and of course be here for any sort of questions or concerns you may have in the future until then this is Randy Rios and foul thank you. much for joining us good luck have fun with the process and we’ll talk to you all soon thanks. much