I have a very different transfer experience than most. It’s technically not a transfer experience at all. 

Credit-wise, I’m considered a sophomore at Rowan, and I started here in the spring 2025 semester. But it starts earlier than that for me. 

I applied to eight colleges, and the choice ended up being between Rutgers University–New Brunswick and Rowan. I lived around the corner from Rowan, and they had offered me a large scholarship, but Rutgers had name recognition, and I was desensitized to Rowan’s exponential growth as a school. 

After visiting Rutgers once, I said yes to attending, and I would start there as an English major in the fall of 2024. Rutgers was out of my comfort zone. But, talking it over with my parents, I knew it would be a lot easier to transfer into Rowan from Rutgers than the other way around, should I decide I didn’t like it. But even so, I was convinced that straying far out of my comfort zone was the obvious choice. 

Rutgers is an incredibly large school with a complicated busing system and an overall hands-off approach. For example, most of my classes were in large lecture halls with hundreds of kids, and I didn’t even realize that I had an academic advisor until I got to Rowan. I’m not a big partier, and Rutgers had laughably fewer events going on for the number of students that go there compared to Rowan. 

It was a depressing environment for me. Rowan has a reputation for being a suitcase school, but my Rutgers campus felt deserted on the weekends. I would walk around the Rutgers Cook-Douglas campus, where my dorm was, feeling like I had been left behind in the apocalypse. It took my extended family coming to visit me for a Rutgers football game to realize how much I had missed my life in southern New Jersey – of all places. 

While Rutgers had never adjusted to being a new home to me, I still miss my friends there with our study sessions in the student center and being able to see horses when I left my dorm next to the campus farm each day.

I was depressed, and I dropped out of Rutgers after Thanksgiving. I couldn’t take it there anymore. I drove back to pack up my room that Sunday, and I dropped off my room key a few weeks later. 

I had already planned on starting Rowan as a freshman and not a transfer, so I didn’t lose anything by dropping out of Rutgers. For one, Rowan would only take ten of my 16 credits from Rutgers. Second, applying as a freshman meant I would get my full yearly academic scholarship back, while I would gamble with scholarship money as a transfer applicant. Ten credits or ten thousand dollars off your yearly tuition? I know what I’d pick. 

Going to Rutgers and growing to dislike the environment made me appreciate Rowan University on a whole different level than I think a lot of students here would say. Nothing is ‘far’ at Rowan. If I wanted to walk from one side of Rowan to the other, it would take me thirty minutes. Rutgers was so spread out comparatively. If you wanted to take classes on different campuses, you would have to leave an hour in between for bussing, because of rush hour traffic on Route 18, which separates the campuses.

Rowan has a shuttle system and different campuses, but it is genuinely nothing compared to how vast Rutgers is. 

Rowan is also much more hands-on and offers a lot for the number of students here. I feel like I also get my money’s worth much more at Rowan. The third spaces and even the seating available at Rowan are much more than I found at Rutgers. We as students often complain about Rowan parking, but it’s nothing compared to whatever is going on with Rutgers’ bussing system. Some days it felt like the whole freshman class was trying to squeeze on a crowded bus. 

I think any college is what you make it to be. But the environment can be the key to your success or the cause of your shortcomings. The biggest difference between Rutgers and Rowan, to me, is that at Rutgers, you have to go out of your way to find events going on, but at Rowan, you almost stumble upon them, which can actually be really fun. I also find myself often overwhelmed by choice, so this is a major bonus for me. 

I’ve only been here a semester and a half, but I’ve accidentally attended a bunch of events, like a lettuce-eating competition, a random film screening for a club I’m not in, or the recent performative contest. I find Rowan to be a much more creative and free-flowing environment this way. 

Being comfortable in where you are makes you more comfortable in who you are. Maybe when there’s less school, you can make more of it. I still say Rutgers has cuter colors than Rowan, but Whoo RU is really growing on me. 

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