Rutgers University–New Brunswick: An Overview
Bigger Than Most Towns
Walk across the Rutgers campus on a weekday afternoon and you’ll pass more people than live in plenty of New Jersey towns. The New Brunswick campus has 52,269 students in total, and nearly three-quarters of them, about 37,985, are undergraduates. The rest are in graduate and professional programs.
Almost all undergrads (96 percent) go full-time. Only around 1,400 take classes part-time. The gender split is nearly dead even, with roughly 19,000 women and 19,000 men.
A Home-State School with Outside Visitors
Rutgers is the state university of New Jersey, and the numbers show it. About 76 percent of students are from in-state, while the other 24 percent come from elsewhere in the U.S. or abroad. If you’re from out of state, you’ll still have plenty of company, but you’ll be hearing a lot of Jersey accents.
Who You’ll Sit Next To
The student body is mixed. Asian students are the largest group at 33 percent, followed by white students at 29 percent. Hispanic and Latino students make up 15 percent. Black or African American students and international students each account for 7 percent, and 3 percent of students identify as two or more races. Another 2 percent didn’t report. Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students each make up less than 1 percent.
No one group holds a majority. That means your lab partner, roommate or group-project teammate could come from a very different background than yours, and for most students that’s a big part of what they take away from college.
Making It Work for You
A school this size can be tricky. There’s always a club, event or game going on, but nobody is going to walk you through it. Students who do well here tend to be the ones who go out and find things on their own, whether that’s a research position, a campus job or a friend group.
Course choice is wide, and switching majors is usually easier at a big university than at a small one. Rutgers also competes in the Big Ten, which gives game days some real energy.
Who It Fits
If you like a busy, noisy campus and don’t mind being one student among thousands, Rutgers could suit you well. If you’d rather have small classes and a quiet quad, it may feel like too much.
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