David LinckI am currently going to be a senior at Bentley College in Waltham, MA, so I have a lot of experience and know how things work at Bentley. As a freshman at Bentley College you will be living in the Tree Dorms, Slade Hall, or Miller Hall. If you have a choice I would highly recommend that you choose to live in the Tree Dorms because this is where the majority of freshman are going to be living, so there will be more activity going on in the building and you will meet more people. Slade Hall is across the parking lot from the Tree Dorms, so that would be my second choice and Miller Hall is small and kind of isolated, so that would be my last choice for freshman housing. If Bentley offers you the opportunity to live with upper class men I would decline their offer and live with freshman. It will make the transition into college life a lot easier.
I registered for classes during orientation and it is kind of a hectic time. Usually your first two years at Bentley you are focusing on satisfying your general education requirements, so registration your first two years is pretty easy. The classes that you take will pretty much be chosen for you, but you will still have the opportunity to select which professor you would like to take. I recommend that before you attend the Bentley orientation that you go on RateMyProfessors and SyllabusCentral and do a little research on professors so that you end up with some good professors your freshman year.
As a freshman you will mostly be eating at Season’s Dining Hall, Harry’s Corner, Boloco, and A&W. Your meal plan covers unlimited entries into Season’s Dining Hall, but the quality of food there isn’t too good. At Harry’s Corner you can use your discretionary money and Harry’s is good for getting a sub, pizza, or fried food like mozzarella sticks or chicken fingers. Harry’s is also close to freshman housing, so you will probably be going there a lot. Boloco and A&W are on lower campus, which is a good walk, but I think it is worth it for Boloco. Boloco is my favorite food on campus and once again they take discretionary money.
As a freshman your classes should be pretty easy. After freshman year your classes will become a lot more difficult, so I recommend that you buckle down and get some good grades to boost your GPA freshman year. It will be difficult to recover your GPA from a bad freshman year. There are two very easy things you can do to boost your GPA as a freshman. The first is to just go to class and the second is to always do your homework. Even if you homework isn’t going to be collected I still highly advise that you just do it on your own and try to stay disciplined. It is too easy to put your homework off and then get really behind and not be able to learn everything before a mid-term or final. Be sure to pace yourself throughout the semester and you should do fine.
