Possibly Attending UNL Fall 2010

First, "There is no place like Nebraska." Second, I' look at Iowa, Iowa City is a great college town. Don't know much about Mizzou, you could check with Fro or TT. One thing, the work ethic you will learn in the mid-west will serve you well in the city. Good luck.

T_O_B

:)

 
personally having been to UNL, Iowa State, and having lived in columbia for 6 months i would say that there is "no place like Nebraska". I currently live in Ames Iowa and attended ISU for a few years as well as making more than a few weekend trips to Iowa City, Iowa city is more of a drink til you cant go to class type of place and i really dont recommend it. Columbia, i just really did not like to city at all...the campus was ok, but the city kinda sucked.

In my opinion, its either Lincoln or Lawrence and frankly Lawrence doesnt have much on Lincoln. so i guess my semi-professional opinion is The Universiy of Nebraska in Lincoln and forget the rest because if you dont i dare say that you will regret not attending UNL. JMO

 
What's the dating scene like at UNL? Is it mostly random flings/one-night-hookups or is there a legit dating scene at the university?

 
Manhattan said:
What's the dating scene like at UNL? Is it mostly random flings/one-night-hookups or is there a legit dating scene at the university?
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I just graduated from UNL last spring. I grew up 30 miles from Lincoln. My parents and a lot of my friends' parents met at UNL. Many of my friends had many one-night-stands. You can have it either way. I met my girlfriend (of 4 years) in Lincoln, although she was attending a different, smaller college in Lincoln. UNL is very diverse on city campus (which is where you'd be). I was an ag major so I was on east campus the majority of the time which is basically all white farm boys from Nebraska, but I had classes and partied on city and you'll have no problem finding a diverse crowd; just not as diverse as other parts of the country.

 
as far as things to do, lincoln has some good things to offer, but its not an overabundance. however, omaha is only fourty minutes down the interstate and they have a lot to offer. the qwest center in omaha is easy to get to from lincoln and they frequently have concerts/events. also lincoln is considering building a new arena which could bring great concerts/events right to campus, altho i don't think it would be up and running until 2013 or something like that. as far as the other places your looking at, i've been to most of them for football or basketball games but never spent much time in them. the one thing i do know is i've had a blast watching the games and you can always find somewhere to have a beer or ten afterwards

 
Thanks for the replies, everyone.

Some other positives about UNL: It is the only school that I am looking at that receives a "Green Light" rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which means it does not have any restrictive speech codes/policies that infringe on its students' free speech rights. That kind of thing is important to me. At Missouri, you can get in trouble for saying something offensive, as if people have a right to not be offended. They also have an anonymous reporting system where students can report other students who they think are offensive. All I think this PC/Speech Code bullsh#t does is inhibit the "marketplace of ideas" that college is supposed to be and make things even more backwards and less diverse by basically stating that the students are too weak to handle the freedom of free speech. I didn't enlist in the military to defend this nonsense, so I'm not going to accept it when I go to school.

Also, I went to a Missouri forum (it was called tigerboard.com) and it is not very user friendly, or maybe I have some settings mixed up or something. The threads are in a weird cascading pattern and you can only view one reply at a time, so I'm not even going to bother registering. It looks very messy - like a rough draft outline of a paper or something. I like huskerboard a lot better.

 
I obtained my Masters at Unl and worked have worked in nearly every major college town between Chicago and Denver. Iowa City was a nice town, I didn't care much for Columbia, Lawerence Kansas is a very nice town, Lincoln is a very nice town, Manhattan sucks, I could go on. I am sure that the program at Iowa is great, but there are mostly known for their medical school.

But I agree with your philosophy of experiencing something new while you're young. You can always go back home. I wish I could convince my daughter of this. In fact I might just show her your origninal post. She is about to turn down a full ride to Tulane to go to Univerisity of Nebraska-Omaha. There is absoluetely nothing wrong with UNO, it's just I wish her to meet and experience life with people from other areas of the US.

 
Manhattan said:
Hey folks,

I'm from New York, currently living in the West Village out of a friend's apartment. I graduated high school last year and enlisted in the Marine Corps, but I got medically discharged from boot camp after two months, so now I've been back in the civilian world working at a market research agency, which is a pretty good gig. I figured I needed to go to school next fall, and so I applied to a variety of schools in the Midwest and Great Plains area. I meet a lot of people in NYC who aren't from here - a lot of college students at NYU - and a lot of them say that they loved their home state of [insert non-Northeastern state], but always wanted to spend some time in New York City to see what it was like and then go back home; which is college for them. I decided that I would like to do the same thing in reverse. I'm very much a city person, but I would really like to spend time out in the Heartland of this country.

A long story slightly less long, I got accepted into Nebraska and Missouri and I'm waiting to hear from Iowa. At the moment I am leaning towards Nebraska. Thinking of majoring in Meteorology at Nebraska because it is something I am interested in and it is very marketable to the Navy if I chose to return to the military. Actually, I'll put this in list form so it is slightly less painful to read through:

REASONS WHY I WOULD LIKE TO GO TO NEBRASKA

1) Solid academic reputation, good facilities, renowned research

2) Has the major I want (meteorology) in a very interesting part of the country for this area of study. Storm chase team much?

3) Football. I am a very big football fan, and I watched the Big 12 Championship and thought that Nebraska put up one tough fight. Also Nebraska allegedly has great fans with a reputation for being very friendly and passionate about the sport. We'll, see, won't we? ;)

REASONS THAT MAKE ME THINK TWICE

1) I hear the school's administration is very strict compared to other state schools and the students are treated like children (common theme on review sites).

2) Extremely homogeneous population... Will I fit in? I think I'm an outgoing, interesting, and personable person. I founded my high school Rugby Team. But will the New Yorker be too different from Nebraskans? I'm Jewish, are most students hyper-religious (Christian) zealots or is this East Coast propaganda? I'm not terribly religious, by the way.

3) Lincoln, NE does not strike me a good college town as compared to Columbia, MO or Iowa City, IA.

I would just like to hear some of your opinions on my opinions and whether they are completely unfounded or if some points have merit to them. This seems like a great forum you folks have here (I smiled when I saw there is a whole separate forum for meals & recipes!) and I look forward to chatting about football and other things.

Respect,

Manhattan
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I'm a sophomore Sports Journalism major here at UNL. I'll do my best to answer some of your inquiries.

What I think about your reasons to go to UNL:

1) Pretty spot on observation. UNL is a very good university, but you will have to do your work. I know a lot of people that get here and realize the challenge that comes with keeping up with your studies. Given you are a military guy, you shouldn't have any problem staying focused.

2) We get every type of weather here in Nebraska, minus earthquakes and hurricanes. We have tornadoes often during tornado season, but most of the ones that occur in eastern Nebraska very rarely come anywhere close to Omaha or Lincoln. The summer's are hot and full of humidity, and the winters are bitter cold with a lot of snow. Pretty much a feeding ground for any meteorologist.

3) Being here for one Husker game will show you our passion. Don't forget to sign up for tickets as soon as they are available to students. If you can't get any, it's extremely easy to get student tickets. Just join the Husker Ticket Exchange facebook group, where students sell their tickets to each other. It's pretty much impossible to not get a ticket to any game because somebody is always selling.

Reasons you are worried:

1) I wouldn't say they are strict or controlling, but that they want students to do their best. They don't want people who are going to coast by. They want people that will strive for what they want. It's really not that bad. I study sparingly and attend class, and I have a 3.3 gpa.

2) We have a very diverse student population, especially full of asian foreign exchange students. You'll find all types of people from all over the U.S. here. And religion is not an issue, unless you do what I did. The first day of school I filled out this little flyer for this guy at Big Red Welcome, and made the mistake of writing my room number down. Needless to say, he hounded me for nearly a month (stopping by my room asking if I wanted to go to youth group).

3) O street is where it's at, or pretty much the downtown area in general. If you're under 21, there really isn't a whole lot to do other than go to Buffalo Wild Wings or other restaurants in the area. However, once you are legal age, I'm sure this place gets a lot better lol. I'm about 9 months away from being 21.

 
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Manhattan - glad we could help out and if you have more questions, I'm sure all of us will gladly respond. Keep us informed on your status. It will be fun to see where you end up! I, for one, will be happy for you wherever you choose.

 
Just checked out my account at the University of Iowa...

I GOT ADMITTED!

Unfortunately, I also checked my account at Ohio State and found out I got deferred. Oh well.

So now I guess my three main choices are Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri. Still can't definitively rule one out. Can't wait to visit them all, which will be sometime this month hopefully.

 
Also, I'm starting to plan a trip to all of these schools and it seems like it would be hell...

1) Fly to Iowa City (2 Flights) ~ 5.5 hours travel time

2) Drive from Iowa City to Lincoln ~4.8 hours

3) Drive from Lincoln to Columbia ~ 5 hours

4) Fly from Columbia to New York (2 Flights) ~ 5.5 hours travel time

Total time in car, airport, or airplane: ~20 hours. :facepalm:

Normally I love driving long distances and visiting new places, but that is when I am driving and usually accompanied by my friends. I once, on a school night at 11:30pm, spontaneously drove with my friend Tony more than two hours up to Albany to visit friends and then came back at 5am (Neither of us did really well in school...). But this is going to be with my father, who is a cantankerous old Yale man who has almost nothing in common with me. This is setting up too much like a Disney film for me to handle.

So now I am off to see if there are small regional airlines (re: crop-dusters-for-hire) who will fly between Iowa City, Lincoln, and Columbia.

 
Manhatten

Thought you might like this story: I taught in Nebraska with a guy from NYC. Worked in a consolidated school district, lived the town that did not have the school. His father asked how far he lived from work. When he said 7 miles, the father yelled "Seven miles! Its gonna take you 2 hours to get to work!"

Culture shock

 
huKSer said:
Manhatten

Thought you might like this story: I taught in Nebraska with a guy from NYC. Worked in a consolidated school district, lived the town that did not have the school. His father asked how far he lived from work. When he said 7 miles, the father yelled "Seven miles! Its gonna take you 2 hours to get to work!"

Culture shock
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Hahahaha! :rollin

So true. When your world is limited by your legs, the stop-and-go of city pedestrian traffic, and public transportation, it can take forever to get anywhere. It isn't a problem though because nothing you would ever need is really more than a mile square from where you live - usually much, much less - unless it is the theatre district or something. For instance, I live in the West Village and my entire existence is between Houston and Union Square and from the Hudson to the Bowery (to explain it to you huskers, that is like 12 short-blocks N-S and 11 long-blocks E-W). I mean, sometimes I might venture out of that area if there is a very large compelling interest (Sporting event in NJ, Midtown at MSG, or Yankees in The Bronx, a Midtown club, or SoHo party).

 
Another question,

UNL's smoking policy says that you can't smoke indoors on campus or near entrances to buildings or ventilation systems (understandable), but are there designated places that are located indoors where you can smoke? At Missouri, apparently there are designated locations where you can smoke (not entirely certain if this means these designated areas are indoors, but I think they are, since all outdoor locations are free to smoke in...). The reason I ask is because I really enjoy smoking hookah, and while it may be sort-of-feasible if not entirely enjoyable to smoke outside on a nice day, what am I supposed to do in the winter when I am stuck in the dorms? Perhaps people will let me bring it to off-campus parties or something, or if there are smoking lounges off-campus that I can use it. On the bright side, I'll just get an apartment sophomore year.

 
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