Reflection: Transferring Rutgers campuses is worthwhile, even with culture shock

Like much of my cohort, the transition from 12th grade to the first year of college was rough, to say the least. In addition to all of the typical stressors one must endure during any significant transitory period in their life, I also had to navigate a worldwide pandemic hellbent on altering all aspects of life as I knew it.

Schools were still largely operating online at the time, meaning where I enrolled would be somewhat irrelevant as all it would change would be the extension of my invariable student email account, and maybe where I’d get to physically attend someday, assuming this whole plague thing cleared up in a timely manner.

Needless to say, while I could have attended some fancy, out-of-state school for an exorbitant amount of money, what would have been the point if, regardless of where I enrolled, I would end up attending the same place: my grandmother’s living room, on a Zoom call, listening to a trepidatious professor, equally as nonplussed as their students about the jarring change in classroom setting.

This was the set of circumstances that led to me enrolling at Rutgers—Camden, a fine enough school in its own right, but not one without its drawbacks. It was small, with the majority of the campus being housed in one area no larger than a city block — a city block directly across the street from its three student housing buildings.

Even then, housing was never an issue as the majority of the minuscule student body commuted anyway. This perhaps, as a result, led to what I felt were lacking student organizations.

These complaints are all minor, of course, and as I mentioned previously, Rutgers—Camden is a fine school, with fine classes, being taught by mostly fine people. But I had my sights set on something bigger, so around mid-February of my sophomore year, I applied to transfer to Rutgers—New Brunswick.

Fast forward four months later, and I got my decision letter: I was in. And an additional five months (and a stupidly complicated transfer process) after that, here I am.

But even after finishing the transfer process, there were some things that I know now that I wish I had known back in May about New Brunswick, if for no other reason than to better prepare myself for attending this new school.

It’s much bigger

This is what I feel I can’t properly convey to people I meet up here who haven’t seen the Camden campus with words alone. Rutgers—Camden is positively tiny compared to New Brunswick. It’s a small part of a decently sizable city, while Rutgers—New Brunswick is, in and of itself, a city.

Even if one were to keep in mind the disparity of sheer campus numbers (New Brunswick is five campuses spread out, while Camden is just one), Rutgers—Camden is smaller than any of the given campuses up here at New Brunswick. 

Rutgers—Camden may have been small, and that may have led to me feeling somewhat cramped, but it did make getting around much easier.

It’s more worth it to have a car on campus

Since Camden was so small and so close to multiple train stations (and by extension, Philadelphia), it made the prospect of bringing a car to college unappealing to say the least.

Why go through the hassle of paying for a parking permit, experience the unease of owning a car in an unsavory location like Camden and deal with city driving when everything and anything I’ll ever need is only a quick train ride away, where the trains run 24/7?

With that being said, I opted not to bring a car to campus and thought I’d continue that policy at New Brunswick, figuring that since it was also largely urban, it would feature the same transportation options.

Suffice it to say, it did not. 

A quick train ride into the city to grab groceries became claustrophobic, behind-schedule bus ride to make it to class. And that’s assuming you live in an area where you’re fortunate enough to have a singular bus route to take you wherever on campus you’re looking to go and don’t need to daisy chain multiple bus rides in order to reach your destination. 

And unless by some freak accident all of your classes are on your home campus, you can forget about walking. My apartment on the Cook campus is 2 miles from my closest other campus class, on the College Avenue campus. Not a Herculean task to walk, I suppose, but certainly a lengthier journey than walking across the street, as I was accustomed to at Camden.

Seriously, those buses are really packed 

And they’re unreliable to boot. I’ve counted several instances in just a month’s time where a bus scheduled to arrive in 10 minutes inexplicably turned to 30. And when a bus does show up, it’s not uncommon for there to simply be no space for you onboard, resulting in you having to wait for the next one and pray it’s emptier.

I’ve been told the bus load tapers off as the semester continues, and although that seems to somewhat be the case, I still have the occasional experience of desperately gripping an overhead handle, trying not to collide with the three people not an inch from me, as I’m now 20 minutes late to class due to traffic.

There are a lot of people

If for some reason this point was not made clear with the overcrowded buses, far more people attend Rutgers—New Brunswick than Camden. For reference’s sake, Rutgers’ own website reports that approximately 6,500 students attend Camden, while New Brunswick features a student population of more than 50,000 including Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “How could this be a surprise? Didn’t you transfer to New Brunswick specifically because it was bigger?” Well … sure. But it’s not until you’re sitting in a lecture hall with 80 other students and go home to your three roommates that you didn’t ask for do you realize the true jump in scale between the two locations. 

If you want your own bedroom, you probably won’t get it unless you’re a resident assistant or sign the housing contract as soon as it’s available.

There’s opportunity around every corner

A bigger school with more people means more than just crowded dorms and long transit times, you know. It also means you have a greater chance to meet people with more activities on offer given the more vibrant community.

One of my biggest complaints about online classes is the complete lack of chance encounters: Sitting next to someone in English 101 who ends up becoming a lifelong friend who you would have never talked to otherwise, seeing a flyer for an interesting club in the hallway and just showing up to see what it’s like, trying something new just for the fun of it only to have it develop into a passion, getting involved with its respective community — these are the reasons I transferred up to New Brunswick.

Although I suppose this was all possible at Camden, the active student life at New Brunswick as a result of its size and student population means you’re almost guaranteed to meet someone new and discover something about yourself you may have had no idea about before.

And although I kind of knew that way back in May, I wish I could go back to then and reaffirm to myself that I’m right, and that at least for that reason, it’s a good idea to move on.