C-
Average Depending on Your Major
Don't get my wrong the professors are amazing and truly care. I'm just a freshman (2nd semester) engineering student and I've noticed that most people find it hard to find a job afterwards, even those who have 3.5gpa+ and did clubs, job fairs and what not. NIU doesn't really have a lot of big companies recruiting from it. There are a lot of unknown private companies, and most engineers seem to go straight to John Deer or Catapillar but that's about it. A lot of business majors go to Kholes, or Sears. You really get what you pay for I guess. Go to an average school and average companies recruit from it. Nothing wrong with those companies, but the majority of grads go to these companies from what I've noticed. I want something more.
Back to the academics. Gen eds are a joke. What kills Northern is it's chance program. It caused a huge flood of inner city kids from Chicago who didn't do well in HS in the University. Thus we have a "ghetto" reputation. As a result a lot of classes are dumb'd down a lot, and you won't feel challenged here at all, unless you choose a difficult major.
What Northern should have done was let the kids from the inner city go through a 10month program at a junior college before throwing them into a university, and instead of lower the universities academics for them, they should've brought those kids up to their level.
It boils down to this. If an employer had two resume's on his desk, both applicants had the same gpa, and qualifications and one was from NIU and the other from ISU or UofI, NIU would get thrown away.
which is why i'm transferring