Comprehensive NSU Review by Chantal

If you really set out to have a good time at NSU, it would be a blast. I've enjoyed every single day at NSU. Hi everyone, welcome back to another video. This video is long. long long overdue. Today I'm going to be doing an NSU review to talk about my experience and to just talk about NSU. I had intentions of making this video when I just graduated so a year ago and it just never happened but I know it's important. buttons and it's gonna help someone so we're gonna get right in i do have my laptop right in front of me so if you ever see me look down i'm looking at all of the notes that i wrote down so first things first this is an honest and authentic review. No one asked me to make this video. I decided I wanted to make this video so it is not at all affiliated with NSU. These are just my own thoughts. I initially made this YouTube channel when I started NSU back in 2019 to help other students because I realized there was not a lot of information about NSU out there and not a lot of information specific to international students. So I really wanted to help international students but I am happy to help anyone who can benefit from my videos. In the last four years so many people have walked up to me on campus to say that my videos were helpful or they really benefited from it. One person even told me they transferred to NSU because of me. Now y'all don't go that far. Take everything that I say with a grain of salt. My goal is to help at least one person and if I've helped one person I know I've done my job. So because this video is a lot of talking I anticipate that it would be very long. I made time stamps. I'm going to put them on the screen here and they'll are going to be in the description box so if you are interested in seeing something specific like you want to hear about academic life or you want to hear about the financial aspect you can go look for that so you don't have to go look through the entire video lastly before i jump in if you have something specific that you're thinking about or you have a question and it hasn't been answered in this video feel free to leave a comment or send me an email so many parents and students have sent me emails over the years and Most times I respond within a day. Don't hold me to that, but I respond very quickly. So shoot me an email if you're not comfortable putting it in the comments. Okay, let's hop in. First, who am I? So my name is Chantal and I was an international student at NSU. I attended from August 2019 to May 2022. I was born and raised in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. If you don't know about Trinidad and Tobago, we are a twin island republic in the caribbean so this video is from the perspective of an international student so it may not be exactly what you're looking for but some of what i'm saying might be helpful but always keep that in mind that i am an international student so the way that i view things may be different to the way that you view things how did i get to nsu so when you're selecting a university to go through there are many different factors that you should take into consideration some of these These factors are ranking, financial commitment, number of flights away from home, the weather, scholarships, program of choice, university culture, and distance from home. When I chose LSU, there were many factors. that were involved in making this decision. When I chose, I wanted a school that one, had an undergraduate program that would lead to my future career. So my goal was to be a speech language pathologist. To do that, I need a master's in speech language pathology. So I was looking for an undergrad program that had something related to speech language pathology. Thankfully, NSU had a speech language and communication sciences. program that had all the prerequisites that I needed to do a master's in speech language pathology. So that was one for me. Two is the weather. I needed the weather to be similar to home. I am an island girl and I did not want to deal with the snow. I wanted to be one flight away from home in case of any emergencies. I did not want to be hopping on three, four, five, six, seven flights that may have delays, that may have layovers and things like that. I wanted to hop on a plane and be right home. For scholarship, I wanted a school. that he know would give me a little money and five i wanted to be able to financially commit to the school because it is four years like if you have the money for one year it's going to be difficult continuing but i wanted to make sure that once i chose to go to nsu be able to go all the way through. So when you're selecting a school, make sure to find out what is most important to you. Do your research and rank your priorities. Do you want to go to a school that's number one in the country or do you want to pay the least amount of money that you can? you can possibly pay for school? Do you want to do it accelerated? Do you want to have your specific program? Like find out what's most important to you and choose schools based on that. I really recommend visiting the school that you want to go to. to before you commit to the school. I had the privilege of visiting NSU before I committed it and I visited twice. I had the privilege to go in December 2018 and April 2019. I think that helps in your decision. Now if you're not able to fly to another state or another country to view the school, you can do a virtual tour or I recommend watching tons of YouTube videos with student perspectives. When you take a tour, everyone's going to paint this school to be like this perfect, ideal place that you should spend the next four years. Not everything that they say may be true. So find a video with a student who's talking about their experience because they're going to give you the real tea about the school. First, we're going to talk about general facts or things about NSU. In terms of the location, NSU is located in Davie. I know on everything they permit, it's a... says Fort Lauderdale but Fort Lauderdale and Davie are actually a little different. Fort Lauderdale is a lot more east and Davie is a little more central in the Florida peninsula. I loved Davie. Every time I go back to visit my friends I'm like I think when I'm done with my master's I'm gonna come back to Davie because it is like the perfect mix between rural and urban. It's right in between where there's still things to do you can can still go bowling down the street you can still you know go out for a drink go to a nice restaurant but then it's not the hustle and bustle of like miami it's like the perfect blend the layout of the area is also very easy to navigate in terms of things nearby i also recommend if you're interested in going to any school pull it up on a map and then search like walmart or target or anything that It's part of your regular life. See how close it is to the school. So in terms of NSU, there is a Walmart that I believe it could be like a five minute drive away from campus. Target is about 10 minutes away. Broward Mall I think it's about seven minutes away all of these things are located on S University Drive which if you're from Trinidad that's like the Arapeta Avenue of Davie because you could do everything on it there's food there's ice cream there's the grocery stores there's the mall like there's so much that you can do on this one strip and it's so close to nsu there's so many things to eat there's steak and shake pour your tropical chick-fil-a there's a mcdonald's there's a wendy's burger pie what's our pizza place again oh my goodness blaze there's a blaze pizza which blaze is like the subway for pizza so you can make your own thing and there's always like a deal with nsu students like different clubs on campus might have a deal where it's like buy one get one free or because you're an nsu student you can get this there's a menchie's frozen yogurt there's also a place called magic cow it is a small business and they sell ice cream support small businesses the ice cream is so good there but back to menchie's at menchie's you show them your nsu card and you get a discount so there's a lot of things you can do on s university drive and it's close to campus even if you have to uber there it's not going to cost you more than six dollars one way so in total it might be like 15 12 dollars to go and then if you go with your friends you split the class it's affordable in terms of nsu's school size these numbers are rough estimates so the total school size is about 20 000 students only 6 000 though are undergrad there's a much larger graduate population which is around 14 000 again these numbers numbers are estimates but the school is not too big and when you're walking around campus it doesn't feel very big like all the academic buildings are in the same place and then all the residential buildings in the same place to get from the residential buildings to class it might take you at most 15 minutes if you live from going from Mako Hall all the way to DeSantis and that's what like a regular piece if you want to take your time on cruise it might take a little longer and if you have quick feet you move fast it might take a shorter time but that's like the the longest you might go on a walk. somewhere but yeah it doesn't feel crowded when you're walking around you're gonna see a lot of the same faces like if you have um like a monday wednesday friday schedule like You're going to see a lot of the same people. It's going to become very cozy. That's what I'm trying to say with like the school size. It's small enough where you see the same people a lot, but then it's big enough where you can see a new person every time you walk to class. It's the perfect size. In terms of the weather, it is warm. It is sunny, except when it's rainy. In the rainy season, it does get wet. You might need an umbrella. And then it does get chilly in the winter months. The lowest I've seen it. was eight degrees celsius which is around 46 degrees fahrenheit so it does get chilly and if you are not used to the cold it can be really cold like for me eight degrees celsius i'm not used to that but it's not just the temperature it's the wind so i feel like in a lot of cold places like i went when i went to pennsylvania in the winter time it's cold but it's like an ac cold but when it's warmer So it might not be negative something degrees, but there is the wind that is going to blow and blow and blow and it doesn't stop blowing. And that's what makes you like shiver because you are close to the sea. So there is a lot of sea breeze. So the temperature may not be low, but it's going to feel very, very cold. In terms of NSU's vibe, NSU's campus is very friendly. Like I remember when I visited in December, I was like, everybody's just so nice. Like everybody's like, hi, how are you? Like. people are going to strike up a conversation with you if you don't want to talk to them if you don't want to talk to them like it feels like people do care there wasn't a lot of drama no big set of drama or anything like that it's not a party school most students like have their head on straight so it's going to be a little more like i don't know what word for that but it's a little more you know but you can still have a good time friendly academic based not a party school people's heads are on straight in terms of finances nsu is expensive i'm not gonna lie not gonna friend and it's you is expensive when you first apply depending on your grades you might be offered a dean's scholarship when i applied i got one and that covered almost half of my expenses let me not say expenses almost half of tuition right there is a payment plan available when i attended there was no payment plan for international students however my friend alex who was the international senator after i was the international senator he wrote legislation for there to be a payment plan for international students and i believe it got to the approval process and right now it is approved don't hold me on it but i believe it is like it's available to international students as well. Speaking of scholarships, there are scholarships that you can get. So I already mentioned the Dean's Scholarship. There's also the Presidential Scholarship, which is another one of the bigger scholarships that would cover most of your costs. There are two levels. One is tuition and one is tuition on housing. Those scholarships, you need to be offered it. So I'm sorry, you can't just apply for it. I was offered it and I think when I interviewed, I didn't get it. I think they do offer it to a lot of students and it's during short previews so the interviews they're constantly going so i'm not sure how easy it is to get it but i know that you can be a good fit and still not get chosen you know because they're seeing so many people and the person that's interviewing you is not the person that's making the decision so like say i were to interview you but i'm not the ones giving you the scholarship i'm just gonna write it down and that information is gonna go to somewhere else So you can impress that person, but what they write on paper may not impress someone else because they're not feeling your vibe. They don't know who you are, things like that. Another set of scholarships are the Razor's Edge scholarships. I 100% recommend the Razor's Edge scholarships. These scholarships you do apply for and you have to attend an interview for. These interviews happen during Shark Preview weekend. So if you're a prospective student, you can apply to go to Shark Preview and you can interview. different scholarships now these are premier program scholarships so it comes with work it's not just free money I was in Razor's Edge Shark Teach, which was the Razor's Edge program that supported academic excellence. This is me paraphrasing the purpose of the Razor's Edge group. I had to do an academic support role on campus for four semesters. And then you still have to like attend meetings and be involved on campus. It was fun. I enjoyed it. But there are five other programs that you can... look into and it comes with a pretty decent scholarship. Those scholarships again you go to Shark Preview Weekend. When I attended Shark Preview Weekend that's what sold the deal for me on NSU. Mine was pre-covid so I was able to go to campus and stay with a student for two nights, three days, two nights. So your parents would drop you off, you'd take your bags, you would go to the residence hall, they would have like a little cot for you to sleep on. and you would sleep there for two nights and then when your interview comes you would go to your interview go back to the room they would have so many activities planned this was a good way to gauge if you would fit in to this campus environment i know now because of covid i don't think you i don't think they let students sleep on campus anymore i think you have to stay in a hotel but you still get to spend three days at the school interacting with students navigating it on your own so it's a good way to decide if this is for you or if this is not for you and then you get to interview for the scholarships when i attended i interviewed for a presidential scholarship razors edge shark teach razors edge leadership you get to do two razors edge scholarships then i also had dual admissions and then they eventually added fishler academy because fishland shark teach went together at the time Not sure the technicalities right now, but I would look into those scholarships and see which one is the best for you. Leadership, global, research, talent and teach, obviously. There are five options and I would look into them. So those were all the financial things that I think were important about NSU. Moving right along to academics. The first thing, get your credit situation sorted out. If you're from the Caribbean. your cape exams or your cape subjects that you did count for credits i got 30 30 credits from cape which is equivalent to one year if you take 15 credits per semester get your credits sorted out don't let anyone tell you that you can't get your credits but it is possible for you to get your credits situated if you um are transferring from another school or anything like that same thing applies ensure you get your credit however there may be some classes that you did that you may not be able to get credits for so that's a different story but for cape there is a document that tells you every single cape class that you did and what class it accounts for that you can get credits for i will try to find that document and link it in the description most of the things i i'm talking about today i'm going to try to link it in the description like the different scholarships and the CAPE credits they're going to be in the description below. Even if you did just one year of CAPE and then you're going into college, those credits still count. It doesn't have to be two years of CAPE. One year of CAPE can count. For class size, when I first was looking into NSU, they told me the class size was 17 students. It's more like 25 right now or like when I ended my experience. When I graduated it was more 25 students. That is still great because your professors are going to call on you by name. They're going to know who you are. They're going to know if you're missing from class. I think it is amazing because you know that they actually care. You're not in a room with 5,000 people or 500 people, how much effort is, where you feel scared to raise your hand and you don't have a personal connection with your professor or your classmates. I think it's perfect that the class sizes are small, which means they have more class availabilities open with more professors. In terms of professors, I, in my time at NSU, I don't think I had a professor. I was like, I hate this professor. Like, he's the worst, she's the worst, they don't know how to teach. I can't say that I've had that experience at NSU. I would definitely recommend that you go and rate my professor. Type in the professor's names and see which professors are more liked by students than others because some may be hard graders and you might want to just race through the class. A professor may have more assignments and you just want to do exams. Or a professor might have more exams and you prefer to write papers. Like, go read through the comments and filter through and see which professors you're going to like and which professors you don't think you would mesh with too well. In terms of your class schedule, you are completely in control. of how your schedule goes and i think because the class sizes are so small and they have more class offerings with more time availabilities you can customize your schedule however you want so if you want to do only monday wednesday friday you can do a monday wednesday friday schedule where you're off on tuesday and Thursdays. There was one semester I did that so that I could work on campus for the entire day on Tuesday, Thursday and I did a little on Friday because it was a 20-hour week job and I couldn't get 20 hours in two days. But if you want to put all your classes on Thursday, Tuesday, Thursday so then Monday, Wednesday, Friday is free. You'd have basically four days. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday to do whatever you want to do. If you want to fly home, if you want to go to the beach, if you want to go on a trip down to the state, you would have have four days to do whatever you want just know that those other days are going to be long and you're going to have to push through them additionally you can either they are like one class a week classes so if you don't want to do a monday wednesday friday schedule you can do one monday but just know it's going to be like three hours long and you have to be like mentally prepared to sit through that much school me i couldn't do it i prefer short sprints so my monday wednesday friday was perfect to me the tuesday thursday classes they're a little bit longer to account for meeting less times a week i hope i explained that well but you can custom if you want to do mornings only afternoons early between 10 and 4 however you want you can choose exactly however you want to provided that the class is open so for class registration when it does come around someone wrote like legislation to let seniors register first seniors juniors sophomores freshmen so you might have a plan for how you want your class schedule to be and then they may not have those class classes available for you to register for just sign up for it my freshman year class registration was like the hunger games because everybody in this school registered at the same time so the site would crash so we would have like three class schedules that we would break with so let's say you start doing one and you miss a class toss that schedule you start with the next schedule until we found the schedule that we want but i don't think you'd have to go to that stress if you are a i don't think you'd have to go to that stress because you would see like the class is getting full and you would have time to like readjust it in terms of the academic environment i thought it was very healthy it was healthy competition it was never like you feeling like stressed or overwhelmed based on the classes like it wasn't too competitive like people weren't mean like it wasn't like that it was healthy competition where you know everyone is wants to do well but you're not fighting against each other at all earlier i mentioned dual admissions so if you are interested in continuing your education i will highly recommend researching if you're program has dual admissions this was also a factor in why i chose nsu seeing that i had to do a master's in speech language pathology like i was thinking about the fact that i need to continue school so with dual admissions when you apply for it a seat is reserved for you in your master's program so i got accepted so a seat was being reserved for me in the master's program right i would recommend doing this as a safe option option. So I did it with full intentions that I was going to stay at NSU and do my master's at NSU. Now when I got to the point and I saw the cost and they started to get a little scary, I started looking around. So I had the option to go to another school or I had the comfort of staying at NSU knowing that was reserved for me. Now you still have to go through the application process. You still have to have decent grades. You still have to meet the criteria. but that seat could still be yours like it's yours provided that you do everything it's not yours and you can go failing through undergrad and then still get it like no you still have to apply you still have to be a good candidate but it has your your name on it they're holding it for you so i think that was really good and great and you also apply for that at sharp review so look into that there's also the tapes program which is dual admissions dual admissions something something which basically means that you can apply within your first year of undergrad. Once you become a sophomore, you are no longer eligible to apply for it. Now, this is information based on when I was at NSU. I graduated last year. If you want to do dual admissions, either apply before you go to NSU or within your first year, find out what the requirements are for the DAPES program. But it's nice to know that a seat is reserved for you in a master's program. Next, there's also the honors college not sure what that is about i think you got a scholarship for it you can look up the honors college but it's something to be mindful of i was however in the honors in major program which is offered to students with a 3.8 gp when they enter their senior year and you just get to do a special project like either write a paper or do community service like stuff like that and it's noted on your diploma so i think on my Well, they told me it was noted on my diploma. I think that's noted on your transcripts. But it's noted, honours and major, and at graduation there's a time where they say, well, all honours and majors, candidates best stand. And then you get a little medal, and it's a picture of my medal. When it comes to creating your academic plan, you are in the driver's seat. This is something very important. This is for any school. This is not just for NSC. You are in the driver's seat and your advisor is in the passenger seat. A lot of people go to their advisor, they make a four-year plan and that is it. If you want to make a four-year plan and just sit and be content with that, that is totally fine. If you are on a mission to graduate early or to have your plan in a specific way, always remember that you are in control. You are the driver, you know where you want to go, but you just need help with the directions of how to get there. So for me, there was one point where I knew it would take, it could potentially take me three years to graduate. And I was like, let me go to my advisor, tell them what I want to do, and then let's see how we can get there. You know, so don't just take your advisors word for it. Like, don't let them tell you like. oh it's going to take four years or you need to do another semester or you need to do another year or you need to take six classes this semester like you're in the privacy you're in control know what you want i want to graduate early i want to have this minor i want to do xyz and you just communicate that to them so they can help you with what you want to do so overall i would say nsu had a good academic quality i felt prepared for grad school this is based on my program as well i can only speak for the classes that i did which would have been like some i did a major in speech language and communication disorders but a minor in psychology in terms of those two areas like i learned a lot and i liked the structure of the classes and the professors taught well and i would give academic quality five out of five so moving on to professional and personal development. So a lot of people say that college is not for everyone and I 100% disagree. You don't have to go to college to be successful in life but college is for everybody. Like anybody and everybody is capable of going to college. In college, while you're in college, you are not just learning knowledge based on your career, there are also so many soft skills that you are learning. You're learning how to interact with people. You're learning how to interact with leadership. You're learning time management skills, negotiation skills. You're learning how to plan your life properly. Like there's so much. You're learning how to live with people or like to. You're learning how to deal with conflict and conflict resolution. There's so many things you're learning outside of the classroom. You're also going to learn a lot of leadership skills if you do decide to go down a path of leadership. So there's a lot you can get out of college outside of just academics. Now you again you don't need to go to college but if you go you're gonna learn something because a lot of these I may not get into that. Whatever you put in is what you get out and that should be a motto for anything you do in life. If you put in five percent effort you're gonna get back a five percent return on that effort. So what that means is if you don't seek out personal and professional development you're not gonna find it so in my last semester at nsu i took seven classes i was a resident assistant i was in the research ed shark teach program i was in the honors and majors program i was the president of the international student union and i was the vice president of the pre-slp society i always forget stuff because they uh So many things that I did at NSU, but I believe those were the main things and this is while taking the summer classes. RA was 20 hours a week and when you're on duty, someone can wake you up at 3 in the morning. Oh, I locked myself out and you have to get out of bed and go assist them. So it was a very non-traditional job, but what I'm trying to say is like... With doing all those things, I learned so much about myself. I learned a lot of transferable skills, but I put myself in that position. If you sit in your room and say that school is boring and I'm not learning anything and I'm not getting anything out of it, that's on you. In terms of internships, I'm not sure how that goes. My program did not have a lot of opportunities for professional development outside of academics. I believe... Some programs have internships built in, but again, that's something that you're going to have to research on your own. In terms of jobs and leadership, you have tons of job opportunities on campus and even more leadership opportunities. When I was at NSU, these are all the things I did. I was a resident assistant, orientation coordinator, the president, vice president, inter-organizational council chair. I was a secretary of the Caribbean Student Association. IOC chair was with Caribbean Student Association as well. I was an international SHAC mentor. I was a supplemental instruction leader. I was a peer leader. I was a SHAC review leader and I was in the Razor's Head SHAC Teach Program. So I did a lot of leadership things when I was on campus. It ultimately helped me with my grad school application, with me in general as a person, things like that. So there's a lot of room for personal development and professional development. It might be based on your program. In terms of campus food and facilities, I would give campus food a 6.5 out of 10. There are a few chains on campus like Starbucks, Subway, and Einstein's Bagels. Love Einstein's Bagels. And then they have other places to eat on campus like Razor's Reef, which Razor's Reef is like a... buffet style setup where there are different places you can go to buy food so there's like mondo's grill and that place mondo's sub and that place sells like subs and then there is like the salad station there is one station where the food changes all the time so like i've seen mac and cheese caribbean food in the morning there's like eggs and bacon i've seen ribs wings mashed potato like that was my favorite station then there was like the pasta and pizza station pasta was good the pizza was okay like and then there was another station where the food changes all the time so during the day like breakfast and lunch you can walk up to each individual station and buy a meal so you can say oh can i get some chicken alfredo can you put some broccoli or you can go up to the sub place and get a piggly wiggly or whatever you want that's the real of that's the name of a real sandwich but at night i think starting from it might be four i think it's like 4 p.m it becomes one price dining now again this is from when i attended nsu i'm not sure if things are the same where you would pay for one price it was like ten dollars and you would go in and you can either stay in there for as long as you want and eat as much as you want or you can take a bowl to go but then you can't re-enter so if you are a commuter student and you're studying pay the ten dollars at 4 p.m and don't leave until 10 and you have meals for the entire night or if you're a residential student and you just want to go back to your room and get the bowl fill up as much as you want and skedaddle and the food would be decent the only downside with that is like once you go in or once you are at the register you don't know what there is to eat so you might pay to go in and then not like anything but again you know the substation is always there the pizza and pasta station is always there at night they would have like ice cream with toppings they would have cereals and puffies i think the one price dining at night was really good now if you're a residential student It would, you would come with a meal plan and with that meal plan, let's say you had, I think freshman year was the baby, like $1,200. And every time you swipe, it would go down. So like, you start with $1,200 and you swiped at Mondo. You swiped for the one price dining, it would be $1,200 minus $10. And every time you buy something, you go to Starbucks, it will go down. so it wasn't like swipe when you enter it was like you're paying and then on the app you can check to see how much money you had left so if you're living on campus You're not really paying because you already paid for it. Now if you're a commuter student, find a friend who has money and let them swipe you in. Because a lot of residential students will have so much money left over at the end of the semester and then you would just end up buying like a whole bunch of cups from Starbucks or you might... I'd go to, what was the name of the mini mart? I can't remember the name of the, there's like a grocery store in the UC, the University Center. And you would just go there and just buy like, things that you could store with, like a whole bunch of wipes and a whole bunch of toilet paper, a whole bunch of cleaning supplies. if you make i'm not saying to use people to get their money but i'm saying if you have a friend like for me i'll be like yeah go buy something to eat because you don't want to lose that money if you don't use it you lose it then in terms of other facilities the gym was really nice um there was a rock climbing wall the pool never went to the pool i've seen it i've been around it but i've never been in it the pool the there's a volleyball court like an outside volleyball sample bit if you start a few times very fun um oh but the rolling hills pool is really nice the rolling hills rolling hills is a residential community across the street and that pool because it used to be a hotel that pool is really nice i'm gonna insert a picture of the pool so nice i think those were the those are the major facilities that nsu has to offer moving right along to lifestyle so in terms of campus life i think campus is diverse enough it's not the most diverse place that you would ever see but it's diverse enough campus event nsu has really good campus events i went to new school now not to bash this school that's not my intention but nsu's events were really good um some of my favorite events were like waterworks where they would have like fire truck and like slides and foam and like water shooting everywhere with music so it's like a water party kind of vibe i think that was fun i love the water slide then there's winter winterland which happens in the spring semester where there's like ice skating and they make it they bring snow to Florida if you've never seen snow so that's really fun and all of these events have like giveaways and free food NSU has a lot of free food that's one thing I really appreciated there's always a food truck where once you're a student you get a chip and you could go get a plate of food it's not like snacks you're getting actual food so if you're you don't have to be hungry now this is not an everyday thing this might be like once a week but it's still a lot of free food at the school i am now i remember they had food trucks and i was like oh which one's free and they were like none and i was like i'm not used to this i'm used to like everything always being free more even today like usg throws a carnival i'm gonna insert another video of that where they bring like ferris wheels and like all these carnival games and there's free popcorn and cotton candy and like you Amazing. Then there's the annual Raft Race which happens in Homecoming week where like you can build a raft and earn money for your club and things like that. Homecoming week is so much fun. Everything completely free. i have two videos on my channel during homecoming week so if you're interested to see what homecoming week was like i'm gonna link them in there feel free to look at them but like free t-shirts free food free souvenirs like a lot of free stuff There's block painting. I love block painting. If you have a club on campus, each club gets their own block by the library where you can decorate it however you want. It's nice and personal. I have videos and pictures of that. And these are the major events. There's Crunch Brunch, where there's breakfast for dinner. All you need is a chip. You go in, there's waffles, there's chicken, there's bacon, there's... You get drinks, it's an amazing time, you're having fun. I would just say just make sure to have friends to go to the events with and once you go like it's an amazing time. Those are the major events that happen on campus but there are still other events that smaller clubs host that again free food, opportunity to mix and mingle, opportunity to have a good time. Like if you really Set out to have a good time at NSU, it would be a blast. I've enjoyed every single day at NSU. But if you stay in your room and complain that it's so boring, it's going to be so boring. In terms of campus safety, I've always felt safe on campus and as a residential student, you're working on campus. like so many different hours in the day like it could be 11 a.m it could be 11 p.m i've never felt unsafe um oh i also worked as a resident summer housing assistant i forgot to say that why that came to mind is because the only time that i felt kind of weird working on campus is when i worked as a summer housing assistant and i would be working in meiko and i lived in commons because i was going to be on re there i would have to work from meiko to commons at like midnight so that was the only time i would like sprint because campus was was quiet there weren't many people around so that's why it made it a little uncomfortable but there was always a police car parked outside of common so once i could see that police car like inside i instantly felt better so i never really felt uncomfortable and nsu they always advertise like if you're at the library and you don't feel comfortable walking home at night you can call public safety nsu public safety and they will come walk you back to your room there are also tons of emergency stations on campus that you can hit the button and someone's going to talk to you through it immediately and they're going to know your exact location if something happens the police public safety is going to be right there so never felt unsafe on campus and in Davie in terms of housing NSU has a lot of housing options available for students from you Undergrad students, they don't have rolling hills. Used to be graduate housing, like my freshman year and things like that. But as the years progressed, with the increase in class size, it became like, I think maybe senior. junior senior housing don't quote me on that but in terms of newness or in terms of luxury this is how i would rate the different buildings on campus make a wall newest building on campus apartment style you're gonna love it everybody want their mom wants to live there i have a video for make a wall i'm linking it then i would say you the Commons residence hall but it is a freshman building. I lived there my freshman year. If you live in RacesEd, there's a floor reserved for RacesEd students so your housing is secure. Again, I have a video it's linked right here with the Commons. Then I would say rolling hills no i would actually put rolling hills before the comments because rolling hills is more independent like commons is freshman but rolling hills is more independent i have one video where there's like a tiny bit of rolling hills but i did live in an ra room which was a sweet style however i loved rolling hills because it's away from campus you have a bit of privacy like you can go home when you live on campus home and school they're the same same thing when you live at rolling hills woman's school there's a distinction you got to separate school life and your life basically so mako hall rolling hills commons then i would say goodwin then i would say clc ffv that's in terms of looks and prestige i think from like when i was there but all of them i mean it's just for a few months you're gonna spend four months there you're gonna go home for winter break most probably and then you're gonna stay on four months and then you're gonna move out like it's not that big of a deal lastly in the category of lifestyle do you need a car personally i did not have a car and i don't think that you need a car now most people at nsu did have a car because florida is not a transportation city like you New York City or like other places like that or you can't really get anywhere by foot. You need a car to get around but as a student if you're there for school and you are not native to Florida and you don't already have a car, I think you don't need a car. This is if you're living on campus because NSU has resources available for you to get around. There is the campus shuttle. I used to take the shuttle to Walmart. The weekend shuttle would go to Walmart. and Publix so you could choose either one the only thing is that it goes on a loop so you can't just go from campus to Publix and Publix back to campus you have to go from campus to the library to wherever the shuttle goes it probably takes maybe like 15-20 minutes to get there if you don't have a car it's no big deal if you want to spend the money to get a car then fine there's also like the downtown Fort Lauderdale shuttle that used to go to Galleria Mall and it will go to the beach I took the shot until the... mall twice and then i took it down like my friend hi josie my friend josie and i we were going to brunch and we took the shuttle to like a stop where we could walk to our brunch spot and then we ubered back so there is a downtown shuttle and then there's also a campus shuttle that goes around but yeah if you live in campus you don't need a car if you want a car feel free to get one The shuttle would also go to like the NSU Museum and like downtown Fort Lauderdale. I think it was like two blocks from What's that club? One club that a lot of people used to go to like if you're interested in nightlife and Again, they go on a loop though Some of them are on time so like you have to be there at a specific time If you're in a rush to go somewhere, I do not recommend the shuttle It could be running late, it could be missing a stop, like things like that. But if you just have time to kill, like me, Saturday morning I'm going to Walmart, like I could sit on a bench and wait five extra minutes for the shuttle to come. It's no big deal. Last category, social. I think it's very easy to make friends on campus and one, if you're in like a research program, from the day you get there you're already gonna be around people. If you join clubs, if you get active on campus, if you get a leadership position, you're going to become comfortable around more people. I am still friends with all of my friends that I met within my freshman year. Lady, I met Lady on the first day, Razor's Edge Challenge, and we're still very close today. Riley, she was my first friend in my first class from the first day. Still like this. Meredith, we met in Razor's Edge Shark Teach. Met her and we became very close. Along the way, I met other people. Johanna, she's from Trinidad. We became close. Casey, my friend from Jamaica. Big up. I did not need to do that. Still close. Alex, I met Alex when I was a summer housing assistant. We both couldn't go home because of COVID. Both international students, both from the Caribbean. We became close. Josie, I work with her. Erica, I work with her as a summer housing assistant. If you get involved on campus, you're going to easily make friends. If you stay in your room and you don't interact with people and you don't make an effort, you're not going to make friends. So I would say like go to clubs, go to meetings, go to campus events, and go to things that you're interested in so you find people that are similar to you. Not that you only have to be friends with people who have the same interests, but it's as a starting point, it's easier to start with people that you're going to be similar to because more than likely you're going to click. In terms of organizations and clubs on campus, there's a club for everything and then if there's not a club for something you can make your own club. Clubs are measured by something called fin points which is like just tracks what you do. So say you have an event on campus you might have get five fin points. If you go to a sports event on campus you get two fin points. and you would like take pictures for proof when you get to 60 fin points i believe you get to blue fin status and your club can get money so now you have money to buy things you could get t-shirts you could buy food you could do whatever you want with the money provide that is relevant to the club that you have to get approved for but it's so easy to start a club and get funding to highlight nsu i was involved with wave we achieved by education that was related to shark teach Kerrigan Student Association, I was in that for maybe my first year. It was not for me, but it may be for you. International Student Union, I was the president and I helped to like get it up and running and it's first, it was re-instituted and I helped to get it back, to get it back on track or to get it back active on campus. Loved International Student Union. I went to Black Student Union for the first few weeks. Again, it was not for me. There are tons of sororities and fraternities on campus, D9 and Panhellenic. I was not a part of sorority life and I cannot speak for them. Three, four of my friends are in sororities. Three of them are in D9, one is in Panhellenic and they like it. So if you want to be in for sorority and fraternity life you can. I just know that it's not like being in a sorority or fraternity at a big school. It's a little different. Another club that I think worth mentioning is USGA, Undergraduate Student Government Association. I was an international senator in USGA and I love USGA because you have the power to make change. You can literally write legislation for anything in the world and then present it at Senate. There's a vote and it may be denied or it may be approved. And then you have potential to meet with leadership to make change. change. So let's say, I know this was an actual one, someone thought we should have our own shark. Like we should tag the shark and it should be like NSU shark. That's how wild it could be. Not sure if it passed Senate to even go to leadership, but someone thought we should have our own shark or be like Alex. Alex said, why don't international students have payment plans? Like how is it that all these other schools allow international students to have payment plans? All other students have payment plans. So why can't international students? You wrote legislation. You got it passed. It's approved. It's in action now. So like, you can sit around and complain about everything at NSU. Or you can join USGA and say, I don't like this. I want to change this. Now, obviously, you need to have student support. It can't just be like, you don't like that NSU is a Pepsi school. And you're the only person that believes that. and you want to make change like no you need to have some support but it's so easy to make change like the class schedule someone wrote legislation they said i'm a senior and i need one class it's full i can't graduate that's not fair maybe we should let seniors who are graduating who need classes to register first like it's that easy to make change on campus like don't sit and complain like be the voice and then in terms of off-campus like there's things to do socially there's bowling is maybe 10 minutes from campus there's the trampoline park there's a movie theater that's close by the mall is close by if you're interested in like partying going clubbing like um you would go downtown fort lauderdale they have a few clubs that people go to the beach is close by and another thing with being social sharks on the scene if there's one thing you remember you social sharks on the scene i loved sharks on the scene events basically the sharks on the scene committee or club or whatever they're called would put on different would create different events that students could attend so for example one was going to disney world but they would only have like let's say six day slots six euro slots so you would just line up in a line you would be on campus and this would ensure include transportation to the place and missions and transportation back and i think the disney one was like maybe 60 like not a bad price at all to get transportation entrance fee and to come back so it'll be different things like that like going indoor skydiving one was going to the miami heat game i think they went to a concert whose concert did they go to you don't know whose concert i went to the miami zoo i went to the miami art tech house if that's how you pronounce it like they do so many fun things and it's one affordable price and transportation is included so i would definitely look out to that i would put their instagram in fact i'll put so many instagram tags in the description box below so that you can find social things to do on campus but overall coming to the end of this video i enjoyed my time at nsu if i had to rate it i would give it a 9.5 out of 10 i think it only lost points because one i graduated a year early so i feel like i missed a year to have fun now i'm happy i didn't have to pay for more school but like i feel like i was cheated a year that's not their fault too so i'm gonna wrap this video up i know it was really long thank you for listening i hope this video was very helpful to you the last question i would answer was did undergrad prepare me for grad school and i 100 believe like like, OMG, my phone died while I was recording the end of it, and I nearly had a panic attack, but everything's safe. Yes, I believe undergrad prepared me for grad school. That's the end of the video. Thank you for listening. I hope I helped, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.

If you really set out to have a good time at NSU, it would be a blast. I've enjoyed every single day at NSU. Hi everyone, welcome back to another video.

This video is long. long long overdue. Today I'm going to be doing an NSU review to talk about my experience and to just talk about NSU. I had intentions of making this video when I just graduated so a year ago and it just never happened but I know it's important. buttons and it's gonna help someone so we're gonna get right in i do have my laptop right in front of me so if you ever see me look down i'm looking at all of the notes that i wrote down so first things first this is an honest and authentic review.

No one asked me to make this video. I decided I wanted to make this video so it is not at all affiliated with NSU. These are just my own thoughts. I initially made this YouTube channel when I started NSU back in 2019 to help other students because I realized there was not a lot of information about NSU out there and not a lot of information specific to international students.

So I really wanted to help international students but I am happy to help anyone who can benefit from my videos. In the last four years so many people have walked up to me on campus to say that my videos were helpful or they really benefited from it. One person even told me they transferred to NSU because of me.

Now y'all don't go that far. Take everything that I say with a grain of salt. My goal is to help at least one person and if I've helped one person I know I've done my job. So because this video is a lot of talking I anticipate that it would be very long. I made time stamps.

I'm going to put them on the screen here and they'll are going to be in the description box so if you are interested in seeing something specific like you want to hear about academic life or you want to hear about the financial aspect you can go look for that so you don't have to go look through the entire video lastly before i jump in if you have something specific that you're thinking about or you have a question and it hasn't been answered in this video feel free to leave a comment or send me an email so many parents and students have sent me emails over the years and Most times I respond within a day. Don't hold me to that, but I respond very quickly. So shoot me an email if you're not comfortable putting it in the comments.

Okay, let's hop in. First, who am I? So my name is Chantal and I was an international student at NSU. I attended from August 2019 to May 2022. I was born and raised in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.

If you don't know about Trinidad and Tobago, we are a twin island republic in the caribbean so this video is from the perspective of an international student so it may not be exactly what you're looking for but some of what i'm saying might be helpful but always keep that in mind that i am an international student so the way that i view things may be different to the way that you view things how did i get to nsu so when you're selecting a university to go through there are many different factors that you should take into consideration some of these These factors are ranking, financial commitment, number of flights away from home, the weather, scholarships, program of choice, university culture, and distance from home. When I chose LSU, there were many factors. that were involved in making this decision.

When I chose, I wanted a school that one, had an undergraduate program that would lead to my future career. So my goal was to be a speech language pathologist. To do that, I need a master's in speech language pathology. So I was looking for an undergrad program that had something related to speech language pathology. Thankfully, NSU had a speech language and communication sciences.

program that had all the prerequisites that I needed to do a master's in speech language pathology. So that was one for me. Two is the weather.

I needed the weather to be similar to home. I am an island girl and I did not want to deal with the snow. I wanted to be one flight away from home in case of any emergencies. I did not want to be hopping on three, four, five, six, seven flights that may have delays, that may have layovers and things like that. I wanted to hop on a plane and be right home.

For scholarship, I wanted a school. that he know would give me a little money and five i wanted to be able to financially commit to the school because it is four years like if you have the money for one year it's going to be difficult continuing but i wanted to make sure that once i chose to go to nsu be able to go all the way through. So when you're selecting a school, make sure to find out what is most important to you. Do your research and rank your priorities. Do you want to go to a school that's number one in the country or do you want to pay the least amount of money that you can?

you can possibly pay for school? Do you want to do it accelerated? Do you want to have your specific program? Like find out what's most important to you and choose schools based on that.

I really recommend visiting the school that you want to go to. to before you commit to the school. I had the privilege of visiting NSU before I committed it and I visited twice. I had the privilege to go in December 2018 and April 2019. I think that helps in your decision. Now if you're not able to fly to another state or another country to view the school, you can do a virtual tour or I recommend watching tons of YouTube videos with student perspectives.

When you take a tour, everyone's going to paint this school to be like this perfect, ideal place that you should spend the next four years. Not everything that they say may be true. So find a video with a student who's talking about their experience because they're going to give you the real tea about the school. First, we're going to talk about general facts or things about NSU. In terms of the location, NSU is located in Davie.

I know on everything they permit, it's a... says Fort Lauderdale but Fort Lauderdale and Davie are actually a little different. Fort Lauderdale is a lot more east and Davie is a little more central in the Florida peninsula.

I loved Davie. Every time I go back to visit my friends I'm like I think when I'm done with my master's I'm gonna come back to Davie because it is like the perfect mix between rural and urban. It's right in between where there's still things to do you can can still go bowling down the street you can still you know go out for a drink go to a nice restaurant but then it's not the hustle and bustle of like miami it's like the perfect blend the layout of the area is also very easy to navigate in terms of things nearby i also recommend if you're interested in going to any school pull it up on a map and then search like walmart or target or anything that It's part of your regular life.

See how close it is to the school. So in terms of NSU, there is a Walmart that I believe it could be like a five minute drive away from campus. Target is about 10 minutes away. Broward Mall I think it's about seven minutes away all of these things are located on S University Drive which if you're from Trinidad that's like the Arapeta Avenue of Davie because you could do everything on it there's food there's ice cream there's the grocery stores there's the mall like there's so much that you can do on this one strip and it's so close to nsu there's so many things to eat there's steak and shake pour your tropical chick-fil-a there's a mcdonald's there's a wendy's burger pie what's our pizza place again oh my goodness blaze there's a blaze pizza which blaze is like the subway for pizza so you can make your own thing and there's always like a deal with nsu students like different clubs on campus might have a deal where it's like buy one get one free or because you're an nsu student you can get this there's a menchie's frozen yogurt there's also a place called magic cow it is a small business and they sell ice cream support small businesses the ice cream is so good there but back to menchie's at menchie's you show them your nsu card and you get a discount so there's a lot of things you can do on s university drive and it's close to campus even if you have to uber there it's not going to cost you more than six dollars one way so in total it might be like 15 12 dollars to go and then if you go with your friends you split the class it's affordable in terms of nsu's school size these numbers are rough estimates so the total school size is about 20 000 students only 6 000 though are undergrad there's a much larger graduate population which is around 14 000 again these numbers numbers are estimates but the school is not too big and when you're walking around campus it doesn't feel very big like all the academic buildings are in the same place and then all the residential buildings in the same place to get from the residential buildings to class it might take you at most 15 minutes if you live from going from Mako Hall all the way to DeSantis and that's what like a regular piece if you want to take your time on cruise it might take a little longer and if you have quick feet you move fast it might take a shorter time but that's like the the longest you might go on a walk.

somewhere but yeah it doesn't feel crowded when you're walking around you're gonna see a lot of the same faces like if you have um like a monday wednesday friday schedule like You're going to see a lot of the same people. It's going to become very cozy. That's what I'm trying to say with like the school size. It's small enough where you see the same people a lot, but then it's big enough where you can see a new person every time you walk to class.

It's the perfect size. In terms of the weather, it is warm. It is sunny, except when it's rainy.

In the rainy season, it does get wet. You might need an umbrella. And then it does get chilly in the winter months.

The lowest I've seen it. was eight degrees celsius which is around 46 degrees fahrenheit so it does get chilly and if you are not used to the cold it can be really cold like for me eight degrees celsius i'm not used to that but it's not just the temperature it's the wind so i feel like in a lot of cold places like i went when i went to pennsylvania in the winter time it's cold but it's like an ac cold but when it's warmer So it might not be negative something degrees, but there is the wind that is going to blow and blow and blow and it doesn't stop blowing. And that's what makes you like shiver because you are close to the sea. So there is a lot of sea breeze. So the temperature may not be low, but it's going to feel very, very cold.

In terms of NSU's vibe, NSU's campus is very friendly. Like I remember when I visited in December, I was like, everybody's just so nice. Like everybody's like, hi, how are you?

Like. people are going to strike up a conversation with you if you don't want to talk to them if you don't want to talk to them like it feels like people do care there wasn't a lot of drama no big set of drama or anything like that it's not a party school most students like have their head on straight so it's going to be a little more like i don't know what word for that but it's a little more you know but you can still have a good time friendly academic based not a party school people's heads are on straight in terms of finances nsu is expensive i'm not gonna lie not gonna friend and it's you is expensive when you first apply depending on your grades you might be offered a dean's scholarship when i applied i got one and that covered almost half of my expenses let me not say expenses almost half of tuition right there is a payment plan available when i attended there was no payment plan for international students however my friend alex who was the international senator after i was the international senator he wrote legislation for there to be a payment plan for international students and i believe it got to the approval process and right now it is approved don't hold me on it but i believe it is like it's available to international students as well. Speaking of scholarships, there are scholarships that you can get.

So I already mentioned the Dean's Scholarship. There's also the Presidential Scholarship, which is another one of the bigger scholarships that would cover most of your costs. There are two levels. One is tuition and one is tuition on housing. Those scholarships, you need to be offered it.

So I'm sorry, you can't just apply for it. I was offered it and I think when I interviewed, I didn't get it. I think they do offer it to a lot of students and it's during short previews so the interviews they're constantly going so i'm not sure how easy it is to get it but i know that you can be a good fit and still not get chosen you know because they're seeing so many people and the person that's interviewing you is not the person that's making the decision so like say i were to interview you but i'm not the ones giving you the scholarship i'm just gonna write it down and that information is gonna go to somewhere else So you can impress that person, but what they write on paper may not impress someone else because they're not feeling your vibe.

They don't know who you are, things like that. Another set of scholarships are the Razor's Edge scholarships. I 100% recommend the Razor's Edge scholarships.

These scholarships you do apply for and you have to attend an interview for. These interviews happen during Shark Preview weekend. So if you're a prospective student, you can apply to go to Shark Preview and you can interview. different scholarships now these are premier program scholarships so it comes with work it's not just free money I was in Razor's Edge Shark Teach, which was the Razor's Edge program that supported academic excellence. This is me paraphrasing the purpose of the Razor's Edge group.

I had to do an academic support role on campus for four semesters. And then you still have to like attend meetings and be involved on campus. It was fun.

I enjoyed it. But there are five other programs that you can... look into and it comes with a pretty decent scholarship.

Those scholarships again you go to Shark Preview Weekend. When I attended Shark Preview Weekend that's what sold the deal for me on NSU. Mine was pre-covid so I was able to go to campus and stay with a student for two nights, three days, two nights. So your parents would drop you off, you'd take your bags, you would go to the residence hall, they would have like a little cot for you to sleep on. and you would sleep there for two nights and then when your interview comes you would go to your interview go back to the room they would have so many activities planned this was a good way to gauge if you would fit in to this campus environment i know now because of covid i don't think you i don't think they let students sleep on campus anymore i think you have to stay in a hotel but you still get to spend three days at the school interacting with students navigating it on your own so it's a good way to decide if this is for you or if this is not for you and then you get to interview for the scholarships when i attended i interviewed for a presidential scholarship razors edge shark teach razors edge leadership you get to do two razors edge scholarships then i also had dual admissions and then they eventually added fishler academy because fishland shark teach went together at the time Not sure the technicalities right now, but I would look into those scholarships and see which one is the best for you.

Leadership, global, research, talent and teach, obviously. There are five options and I would look into them. So those were all the financial things that I think were important about NSU. Moving right along to academics. The first thing, get your credit situation sorted out.

If you're from the Caribbean. your cape exams or your cape subjects that you did count for credits i got 30 30 credits from cape which is equivalent to one year if you take 15 credits per semester get your credits sorted out don't let anyone tell you that you can't get your credits but it is possible for you to get your credits situated if you um are transferring from another school or anything like that same thing applies ensure you get your credit however there may be some classes that you did that you may not be able to get credits for so that's a different story but for cape there is a document that tells you every single cape class that you did and what class it accounts for that you can get credits for i will try to find that document and link it in the description most of the things i i'm talking about today i'm going to try to link it in the description like the different scholarships and the CAPE credits they're going to be in the description below. Even if you did just one year of CAPE and then you're going into college, those credits still count.

It doesn't have to be two years of CAPE. One year of CAPE can count. For class size, when I first was looking into NSU, they told me the class size was 17 students. It's more like 25 right now or like when I ended my experience.

When I graduated it was more 25 students. That is still great because your professors are going to call on you by name. They're going to know who you are.

They're going to know if you're missing from class. I think it is amazing because you know that they actually care. You're not in a room with 5,000 people or 500 people, how much effort is, where you feel scared to raise your hand and you don't have a personal connection with your professor or your classmates.

I think it's perfect that the class sizes are small, which means they have more class availabilities open with more professors. In terms of professors, I, in my time at NSU, I don't think I had a professor. I was like, I hate this professor.

Like, he's the worst, she's the worst, they don't know how to teach. I can't say that I've had that experience at NSU. I would definitely recommend that you go and rate my professor.

Type in the professor's names and see which professors are more liked by students than others because some may be hard graders and you might want to just race through the class. A professor may have more assignments and you just want to do exams. Or a professor might have more exams and you prefer to write papers.

Like, go read through the comments and filter through and see which professors you're going to like and which professors you don't think you would mesh with too well. In terms of your class schedule, you are completely in control. of how your schedule goes and i think because the class sizes are so small and they have more class offerings with more time availabilities you can customize your schedule however you want so if you want to do only monday wednesday friday you can do a monday wednesday friday schedule where you're off on tuesday and Thursdays. There was one semester I did that so that I could work on campus for the entire day on Tuesday, Thursday and I did a little on Friday because it was a 20-hour week job and I couldn't get 20 hours in two days.

But if you want to put all your classes on Thursday, Tuesday, Thursday so then Monday, Wednesday, Friday is free. You'd have basically four days. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday to do whatever you want to do. If you want to fly home, if you want to go to the beach, if you want to go on a trip down to the state, you would have have four days to do whatever you want just know that those other days are going to be long and you're going to have to push through them additionally you can either they are like one class a week classes so if you don't want to do a monday wednesday friday schedule you can do one monday but just know it's going to be like three hours long and you have to be like mentally prepared to sit through that much school me i couldn't do it i prefer short sprints so my monday wednesday friday was perfect to me the tuesday thursday classes they're a little bit longer to account for meeting less times a week i hope i explained that well but you can custom if you want to do mornings only afternoons early between 10 and 4 however you want you can choose exactly however you want to provided that the class is open so for class registration when it does come around someone wrote like legislation to let seniors register first seniors juniors sophomores freshmen so you might have a plan for how you want your class schedule to be and then they may not have those class classes available for you to register for just sign up for it my freshman year class registration was like the hunger games because everybody in this school registered at the same time so the site would crash so we would have like three class schedules that we would break with so let's say you start doing one and you miss a class toss that schedule you start with the next schedule until we found the schedule that we want but i don't think you'd have to go to that stress if you are a i don't think you'd have to go to that stress because you would see like the class is getting full and you would have time to like readjust it in terms of the academic environment i thought it was very healthy it was healthy competition it was never like you feeling like stressed or overwhelmed based on the classes like it wasn't too competitive like people weren't mean like it wasn't like that it was healthy competition where you know everyone is wants to do well but you're not fighting against each other at all earlier i mentioned dual admissions so if you are interested in continuing your education i will highly recommend researching if you're program has dual admissions this was also a factor in why i chose nsu seeing that i had to do a master's in speech language pathology like i was thinking about the fact that i need to continue school so with dual admissions when you apply for it a seat is reserved for you in your master's program so i got accepted so a seat was being reserved for me in the master's program right i would recommend doing this as a safe option option.

So I did it with full intentions that I was going to stay at NSU and do my master's at NSU. Now when I got to the point and I saw the cost and they started to get a little scary, I started looking around. So I had the option to go to another school or I had the comfort of staying at NSU knowing that was reserved for me.

Now you still have to go through the application process. You still have to have decent grades. You still have to meet the criteria.

but that seat could still be yours like it's yours provided that you do everything it's not yours and you can go failing through undergrad and then still get it like no you still have to apply you still have to be a good candidate but it has your your name on it they're holding it for you so i think that was really good and great and you also apply for that at sharp review so look into that there's also the tapes program which is dual admissions dual admissions something something which basically means that you can apply within your first year of undergrad. Once you become a sophomore, you are no longer eligible to apply for it. Now, this is information based on when I was at NSU. I graduated last year. If you want to do dual admissions, either apply before you go to NSU or within your first year, find out what the requirements are for the DAPES program.

But it's nice to know that a seat is reserved for you in a master's program. Next, there's also the honors college not sure what that is about i think you got a scholarship for it you can look up the honors college but it's something to be mindful of i was however in the honors in major program which is offered to students with a 3.8 gp when they enter their senior year and you just get to do a special project like either write a paper or do community service like stuff like that and it's noted on your diploma so i think on my Well, they told me it was noted on my diploma. I think that's noted on your transcripts.

But it's noted, honours and major, and at graduation there's a time where they say, well, all honours and majors, candidates best stand. And then you get a little medal, and it's a picture of my medal. When it comes to creating your academic plan, you are in the driver's seat.

This is something very important. This is for any school. This is not just for NSC. You are in the driver's seat and your advisor is in the passenger seat. A lot of people go to their advisor, they make a four-year plan and that is it.

If you want to make a four-year plan and just sit and be content with that, that is totally fine. If you are on a mission to graduate early or to have your plan in a specific way, always remember that you are in control. You are the driver, you know where you want to go, but you just need help with the directions of how to get there.

So for me, there was one point where I knew it would take, it could potentially take me three years to graduate. And I was like, let me go to my advisor, tell them what I want to do, and then let's see how we can get there. You know, so don't just take your advisors word for it. Like, don't let them tell you like.

oh it's going to take four years or you need to do another semester or you need to do another year or you need to take six classes this semester like you're in the privacy you're in control know what you want i want to graduate early i want to have this minor i want to do xyz and you just communicate that to them so they can help you with what you want to do so overall i would say nsu had a good academic quality i felt prepared for grad school this is based on my program as well i can only speak for the classes that i did which would have been like some i did a major in speech language and communication disorders but a minor in psychology in terms of those two areas like i learned a lot and i liked the structure of the classes and the professors taught well and i would give academic quality five out of five so moving on to professional and personal development. So a lot of people say that college is not for everyone and I 100% disagree. You don't have to go to college to be successful in life but college is for everybody. Like anybody and everybody is capable of going to college. In college, while you're in college, you are not just learning knowledge based on your career, there are also so many soft skills that you are learning.

You're learning how to interact with people. You're learning how to interact with leadership. You're learning time management skills, negotiation skills.

You're learning how to plan your life properly. Like there's so much. You're learning how to live with people or like to. You're learning how to deal with conflict and conflict resolution. There's so many things you're learning outside of the classroom.

You're also going to learn a lot of leadership skills if you do decide to go down a path of leadership. So there's a lot you can get out of college outside of just academics. Now you again you don't need to go to college but if you go you're gonna learn something because a lot of these I may not get into that.

Whatever you put in is what you get out and that should be a motto for anything you do in life. If you put in five percent effort you're gonna get back a five percent return on that effort. So what that means is if you don't seek out personal and professional development you're not gonna find it so in my last semester at nsu i took seven classes i was a resident assistant i was in the research ed shark teach program i was in the honors and majors program i was the president of the international student union and i was the vice president of the pre-slp society i always forget stuff because they uh So many things that I did at NSU, but I believe those were the main things and this is while taking the summer classes.

RA was 20 hours a week and when you're on duty, someone can wake you up at 3 in the morning. Oh, I locked myself out and you have to get out of bed and go assist them. So it was a very non-traditional job, but what I'm trying to say is like...

With doing all those things, I learned so much about myself. I learned a lot of transferable skills, but I put myself in that position. If you sit in your room and say that school is boring and I'm not learning anything and I'm not getting anything out of it, that's on you.

In terms of internships, I'm not sure how that goes. My program did not have a lot of opportunities for professional development outside of academics. I believe...

Some programs have internships built in, but again, that's something that you're going to have to research on your own. In terms of jobs and leadership, you have tons of job opportunities on campus and even more leadership opportunities. When I was at NSU, these are all the things I did. I was a resident assistant, orientation coordinator, the president, vice president, inter-organizational council chair. I was a secretary of the Caribbean Student Association.

IOC chair was with Caribbean Student Association as well. I was an international SHAC mentor. I was a supplemental instruction leader. I was a peer leader.

I was a SHAC review leader and I was in the Razor's Head SHAC Teach Program. So I did a lot of leadership things when I was on campus. It ultimately helped me with my grad school application, with me in general as a person, things like that. So there's a lot of room for personal development and professional development.

It might be based on your program. In terms of campus food and facilities, I would give campus food a 6.5 out of 10. There are a few chains on campus like Starbucks, Subway, and Einstein's Bagels. Love Einstein's Bagels.

And then they have other places to eat on campus like Razor's Reef, which Razor's Reef is like a... buffet style setup where there are different places you can go to buy food so there's like mondo's grill and that place mondo's sub and that place sells like subs and then there is like the salad station there is one station where the food changes all the time so like i've seen mac and cheese caribbean food in the morning there's like eggs and bacon i've seen ribs wings mashed potato like that was my favorite station then there was like the pasta and pizza station pasta was good the pizza was okay like and then there was another station where the food changes all the time so during the day like breakfast and lunch you can walk up to each individual station and buy a meal so you can say oh can i get some chicken alfredo can you put some broccoli or you can go up to the sub place and get a piggly wiggly or whatever you want that's the real of that's the name of a real sandwich but at night i think starting from it might be four i think it's like 4 p.m it becomes one price dining now again this is from when i attended nsu i'm not sure if things are the same where you would pay for one price it was like ten dollars and you would go in and you can either stay in there for as long as you want and eat as much as you want or you can take a bowl to go but then you can't re-enter so if you are a commuter student and you're studying pay the ten dollars at 4 p.m and don't leave until 10 and you have meals for the entire night or if you're a residential student and you just want to go back to your room and get the bowl fill up as much as you want and skedaddle and the food would be decent the only downside with that is like once you go in or once you are at the register you don't know what there is to eat so you might pay to go in and then not like anything but again you know the substation is always there the pizza and pasta station is always there at night they would have like ice cream with toppings they would have cereals and puffies i think the one price dining at night was really good now if you're a residential student It would, you would come with a meal plan and with that meal plan, let's say you had, I think freshman year was the baby, like $1,200. And every time you swipe, it would go down.

So like, you start with $1,200 and you swiped at Mondo. You swiped for the one price dining, it would be $1,200 minus $10. And every time you buy something, you go to Starbucks, it will go down. so it wasn't like swipe when you enter it was like you're paying and then on the app you can check to see how much money you had left so if you're living on campus You're not really paying because you already paid for it.

Now if you're a commuter student, find a friend who has money and let them swipe you in. Because a lot of residential students will have so much money left over at the end of the semester and then you would just end up buying like a whole bunch of cups from Starbucks or you might... I'd go to, what was the name of the mini mart?

I can't remember the name of the, there's like a grocery store in the UC, the University Center. And you would just go there and just buy like, things that you could store with, like a whole bunch of wipes and a whole bunch of toilet paper, a whole bunch of cleaning supplies. if you make i'm not saying to use people to get their money but i'm saying if you have a friend like for me i'll be like yeah go buy something to eat because you don't want to lose that money if you don't use it you lose it then in terms of other facilities the gym was really nice um there was a rock climbing wall the pool never went to the pool i've seen it i've been around it but i've never been in it the pool the there's a volleyball court like an outside volleyball sample bit if you start a few times very fun um oh but the rolling hills pool is really nice the rolling hills rolling hills is a residential community across the street and that pool because it used to be a hotel that pool is really nice i'm gonna insert a picture of the pool so nice i think those were the those are the major facilities that nsu has to offer moving right along to lifestyle so in terms of campus life i think campus is diverse enough it's not the most diverse place that you would ever see but it's diverse enough campus event nsu has really good campus events i went to new school now not to bash this school that's not my intention but nsu's events were really good um some of my favorite events were like waterworks where they would have like fire truck and like slides and foam and like water shooting everywhere with music so it's like a water party kind of vibe i think that was fun i love the water slide then there's winter winterland which happens in the spring semester where there's like ice skating and they make it they bring snow to Florida if you've never seen snow so that's really fun and all of these events have like giveaways and free food NSU has a lot of free food that's one thing I really appreciated there's always a food truck where once you're a student you get a chip and you could go get a plate of food it's not like snacks you're getting actual food so if you're you don't have to be hungry now this is not an everyday thing this might be like once a week but it's still a lot of free food at the school i am now i remember they had food trucks and i was like oh which one's free and they were like none and i was like i'm not used to this i'm used to like everything always being free more even today like usg throws a carnival i'm gonna insert another video of that where they bring like ferris wheels and like all these carnival games and there's free popcorn and cotton candy and like you Amazing. Then there's the annual Raft Race which happens in Homecoming week where like you can build a raft and earn money for your club and things like that.

Homecoming week is so much fun. Everything completely free. i have two videos on my channel during homecoming week so if you're interested to see what homecoming week was like i'm gonna link them in there feel free to look at them but like free t-shirts free food free souvenirs like a lot of free stuff There's block painting. I love block painting.

If you have a club on campus, each club gets their own block by the library where you can decorate it however you want. It's nice and personal. I have videos and pictures of that. And these are the major events.

There's Crunch Brunch, where there's breakfast for dinner. All you need is a chip. You go in, there's waffles, there's chicken, there's bacon, there's...

You get drinks, it's an amazing time, you're having fun. I would just say just make sure to have friends to go to the events with and once you go like it's an amazing time. Those are the major events that happen on campus but there are still other events that smaller clubs host that again free food, opportunity to mix and mingle, opportunity to have a good time. Like if you really Set out to have a good time at NSU, it would be a blast.

I've enjoyed every single day at NSU. But if you stay in your room and complain that it's so boring, it's going to be so boring. In terms of campus safety, I've always felt safe on campus and as a residential student, you're working on campus. like so many different hours in the day like it could be 11 a.m it could be 11 p.m i've never felt unsafe um oh i also worked as a resident summer housing assistant i forgot to say that why that came to mind is because the only time that i felt kind of weird working on campus is when i worked as a summer housing assistant and i would be working in meiko and i lived in commons because i was going to be on re there i would have to work from meiko to commons at like midnight so that was the only time i would like sprint because campus was was quiet there weren't many people around so that's why it made it a little uncomfortable but there was always a police car parked outside of common so once i could see that police car like inside i instantly felt better so i never really felt uncomfortable and nsu they always advertise like if you're at the library and you don't feel comfortable walking home at night you can call public safety nsu public safety and they will come walk you back to your room there are also tons of emergency stations on campus that you can hit the button and someone's going to talk to you through it immediately and they're going to know your exact location if something happens the police public safety is going to be right there so never felt unsafe on campus and in Davie in terms of housing NSU has a lot of housing options available for students from you Undergrad students, they don't have rolling hills. Used to be graduate housing, like my freshman year and things like that.

But as the years progressed, with the increase in class size, it became like, I think maybe senior. junior senior housing don't quote me on that but in terms of newness or in terms of luxury this is how i would rate the different buildings on campus make a wall newest building on campus apartment style you're gonna love it everybody want their mom wants to live there i have a video for make a wall i'm linking it then i would say you the Commons residence hall but it is a freshman building. I lived there my freshman year.

If you live in RacesEd, there's a floor reserved for RacesEd students so your housing is secure. Again, I have a video it's linked right here with the Commons. Then I would say rolling hills no i would actually put rolling hills before the comments because rolling hills is more independent like commons is freshman but rolling hills is more independent i have one video where there's like a tiny bit of rolling hills but i did live in an ra room which was a sweet style however i loved rolling hills because it's away from campus you have a bit of privacy like you can go home when you live on campus home and school they're the same same thing when you live at rolling hills woman's school there's a distinction you got to separate school life and your life basically so mako hall rolling hills commons then i would say goodwin then i would say clc ffv that's in terms of looks and prestige i think from like when i was there but all of them i mean it's just for a few months you're gonna spend four months there you're gonna go home for winter break most probably and then you're gonna stay on four months and then you're gonna move out like it's not that big of a deal lastly in the category of lifestyle do you need a car personally i did not have a car and i don't think that you need a car now most people at nsu did have a car because florida is not a transportation city like you New York City or like other places like that or you can't really get anywhere by foot. You need a car to get around but as a student if you're there for school and you are not native to Florida and you don't already have a car, I think you don't need a car.

This is if you're living on campus because NSU has resources available for you to get around. There is the campus shuttle. I used to take the shuttle to Walmart. The weekend shuttle would go to Walmart.

and Publix so you could choose either one the only thing is that it goes on a loop so you can't just go from campus to Publix and Publix back to campus you have to go from campus to the library to wherever the shuttle goes it probably takes maybe like 15-20 minutes to get there if you don't have a car it's no big deal if you want to spend the money to get a car then fine there's also like the downtown Fort Lauderdale shuttle that used to go to Galleria Mall and it will go to the beach I took the shot until the... mall twice and then i took it down like my friend hi josie my friend josie and i we were going to brunch and we took the shuttle to like a stop where we could walk to our brunch spot and then we ubered back so there is a downtown shuttle and then there's also a campus shuttle that goes around but yeah if you live in campus you don't need a car if you want a car feel free to get one The shuttle would also go to like the NSU Museum and like downtown Fort Lauderdale. I think it was like two blocks from What's that club? One club that a lot of people used to go to like if you're interested in nightlife and Again, they go on a loop though Some of them are on time so like you have to be there at a specific time If you're in a rush to go somewhere, I do not recommend the shuttle It could be running late, it could be missing a stop, like things like that. But if you just have time to kill, like me, Saturday morning I'm going to Walmart, like I could sit on a bench and wait five extra minutes for the shuttle to come.

It's no big deal. Last category, social. I think it's very easy to make friends on campus and one, if you're in like a research program, from the day you get there you're already gonna be around people. If you join clubs, if you get active on campus, if you get a leadership position, you're going to become comfortable around more people. I am still friends with all of my friends that I met within my freshman year.

Lady, I met Lady on the first day, Razor's Edge Challenge, and we're still very close today. Riley, she was my first friend in my first class from the first day. Still like this.

Meredith, we met in Razor's Edge Shark Teach. Met her and we became very close. Along the way, I met other people.

Johanna, she's from Trinidad. We became close. Casey, my friend from Jamaica.

Big up. I did not need to do that. Still close. Alex, I met Alex when I was a summer housing assistant.

We both couldn't go home because of COVID. Both international students, both from the Caribbean. We became close. Josie, I work with her. Erica, I work with her as a summer housing assistant.

If you get involved on campus, you're going to easily make friends. If you stay in your room and you don't interact with people and you don't make an effort, you're not going to make friends. So I would say like go to clubs, go to meetings, go to campus events, and go to things that you're interested in so you find people that are similar to you.

Not that you only have to be friends with people who have the same interests, but it's as a starting point, it's easier to start with people that you're going to be similar to because more than likely you're going to click. In terms of organizations and clubs on campus, there's a club for everything and then if there's not a club for something you can make your own club. Clubs are measured by something called fin points which is like just tracks what you do.

So say you have an event on campus you might have get five fin points. If you go to a sports event on campus you get two fin points. and you would like take pictures for proof when you get to 60 fin points i believe you get to blue fin status and your club can get money so now you have money to buy things you could get t-shirts you could buy food you could do whatever you want with the money provide that is relevant to the club that you have to get approved for but it's so easy to start a club and get funding to highlight nsu i was involved with wave we achieved by education that was related to shark teach Kerrigan Student Association, I was in that for maybe my first year.

It was not for me, but it may be for you. International Student Union, I was the president and I helped to like get it up and running and it's first, it was re-instituted and I helped to get it back, to get it back on track or to get it back active on campus. Loved International Student Union.

I went to Black Student Union for the first few weeks. Again, it was not for me. There are tons of sororities and fraternities on campus, D9 and Panhellenic.

I was not a part of sorority life and I cannot speak for them. Three, four of my friends are in sororities. Three of them are in D9, one is in Panhellenic and they like it.

So if you want to be in for sorority and fraternity life you can. I just know that it's not like being in a sorority or fraternity at a big school. It's a little different.

Another club that I think worth mentioning is USGA, Undergraduate Student Government Association. I was an international senator in USGA and I love USGA because you have the power to make change. You can literally write legislation for anything in the world and then present it at Senate. There's a vote and it may be denied or it may be approved.

And then you have potential to meet with leadership to make change. change. So let's say, I know this was an actual one, someone thought we should have our own shark. Like we should tag the shark and it should be like NSU shark.

That's how wild it could be. Not sure if it passed Senate to even go to leadership, but someone thought we should have our own shark or be like Alex. Alex said, why don't international students have payment plans?

Like how is it that all these other schools allow international students to have payment plans? All other students have payment plans. So why can't international students? You wrote legislation.

You got it passed. It's approved. It's in action now.

So like, you can sit around and complain about everything at NSU. Or you can join USGA and say, I don't like this. I want to change this. Now, obviously, you need to have student support. It can't just be like, you don't like that NSU is a Pepsi school.

And you're the only person that believes that. and you want to make change like no you need to have some support but it's so easy to make change like the class schedule someone wrote legislation they said i'm a senior and i need one class it's full i can't graduate that's not fair maybe we should let seniors who are graduating who need classes to register first like it's that easy to make change on campus like don't sit and complain like be the voice and then in terms of off-campus like there's things to do socially there's bowling is maybe 10 minutes from campus there's the trampoline park there's a movie theater that's close by the mall is close by if you're interested in like partying going clubbing like um you would go downtown fort lauderdale they have a few clubs that people go to the beach is close by and another thing with being social sharks on the scene if there's one thing you remember you social sharks on the scene i loved sharks on the scene events basically the sharks on the scene committee or club or whatever they're called would put on different would create different events that students could attend so for example one was going to disney world but they would only have like let's say six day slots six euro slots so you would just line up in a line you would be on campus and this would ensure include transportation to the place and missions and transportation back and i think the disney one was like maybe 60 like not a bad price at all to get transportation entrance fee and to come back so it'll be different things like that like going indoor skydiving one was going to the miami heat game i think they went to a concert whose concert did they go to you don't know whose concert i went to the miami zoo i went to the miami art tech house if that's how you pronounce it like they do so many fun things and it's one affordable price and transportation is included so i would definitely look out to that i would put their instagram in fact i'll put so many instagram tags in the description box below so that you can find social things to do on campus but overall coming to the end of this video i enjoyed my time at nsu if i had to rate it i would give it a 9.5 out of 10 i think it only lost points because one i graduated a year early so i feel like i missed a year to have fun now i'm happy i didn't have to pay for more school but like i feel like i was cheated a year that's not their fault too so i'm gonna wrap this video up i know it was really long thank you for listening i hope this video was very helpful to you the last question i would answer was did undergrad prepare me for grad school and i 100 believe like like, OMG, my phone died while I was recording the end of it, and I nearly had a panic attack, but everything's safe. Yes, I believe undergrad prepared me for grad school. That's the end of the video. Thank you for listening.

I hope I helped, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.

Transcript for:Comprehensive NSU Review by Chantal

Transcript for:
Comprehensive NSU Review by Chantal