Nicole Jones

Enrollment Management

From disliking the food to loving class sizes, this year’s freshmen and transfer students have different impressions of NKU.

Beth McPartlin’s favorite thing about NKU is the location. “It’s close to home, but it’s far enough away to live here,” she said.

“My least favorite thing is the resident living being separated from campus,” McPartlin said. “There is too much traffic to get across in the morning.”

McPartlin said she likes the class sizes, something NKU prides itself on. They allow students to have better contact with their professors and build relationships, she said.

Jessica Sorensen said her favorite part of NKU is the small size. Originally from Iowa, Sorensen decided on NKU because her mom lives north of Cincinnati. Family ties and wanting to “get away from Iowa” made NKU a prime choice for Sorensen.

“All of the other schools I looked at were huge,” Sorensen said. “This one is small enough that I can walk to class without having an asthma attack.”

She said the campus is a lot smaller than other universities, especially Division II schools.

“I’ve been to other Division II schools, and they’re a whole lot bigger.” She said, “I think it has to do with the number of commuters, this campus stays small because not many people live on campus.”

Campus living is the one thing Sorensen would change. She said there are too many people driving and that’s a lot of pollution.

Chris Berberich said NKU lacks an interesting campus life. The size of campus is his least favorite aspect of NKU.

“It’s pretty boring here,” he said. “I wanted to go to a school with a lot of parties.”

The soccer team attracted Berberich to NKU. Although he stays busy as a freshman soccer player, he’d still like to see more excitement on campus.

However, university staff is taking notice of this situation.

Matt Brown, a housing director, said one of his goals for the residential village is to increase events for residents.

“The quality of programs has gotten better,” Brown said. “The number of programs that we did last year was better than the year before. The number of events, activities and the way that we have collaborated with Campus Recreation, Student Life and even Greek life has gotten better.”

Although the freshmen haven’t had time to see the changes in housing, they have experienced the cafeteria food. Housing is looking for a new food provider when the contract with Sodexo, the current provider, expires this spring, Brown said.

This is good news for freshman Chris Rankin. The transfer student from Rochester School of Technology in New York says the cafeteria food is his least favorite part of NKU.

“I really have a hard time liking the food from a place that has trouble getting hamburgers right,” Rankin said.

The university’s location also played a part in Rankin’s decision. His previous school was 10 hours away from his home, whereas NKU is only an hour and a half away, he said.

Although the location was convenient, NKU was also the only in-state school to offer his major, computer information technology.

For other transfer students or freshmen, Rankin suggests living in the Woodcrest apartments to save money that would be spent on a meal plan.

He also said to make as many friends as possible, because it makes finding something to do much easier.

Rankin said it’s hard to compare NKU to his previous school because it was a private school.

“It was smaller and a bit more personal,” he said. “The biggest difference would be the resources on campus.

“The school had a lot of money to go around, so we had top of the line everything. Here it’s more focused on cost efficiency. There are still computers, but they aren’t the best ones out there.”

NKU’s low student-to-teacher ratio is an appealing aspect to some students. “It’s so small that it gives more focus on education,” Berberich said. “Students get more help from teachers.

“It’s a college where everyone knows your name.”