I am currently going to be a senior at Bentley College in Waltham, MA so I have a lot of experience and I know how things work at Bentley. As a freshman at Bentley College, you will live in Tree Dorms, Slade Hall, or Miller Hall. If you have a choice, I recommend that you choose to live in the Tree Dorms because this is where most of the freshmen will live, so there will be more activity in the building and you will meet more people. Slade Hall is across the parking lot from Tree Dorms so it would be my second choice and Miller Hall is small and a bit isolated so it would be my last choice for freshman housing. If Bentley offered him the opportunity to live with upper-class men, he would decline their offer and live with freshmen. It will make the transition to college life much easier.

I signed up for classes during orientation and it’s a hectic time. Typically, your first two years at Bentley are focused on meeting your general education requirements, so registering for the first two years is pretty easy. The classes you take will be chosen by you, but you will still have the opportunity to select which teacher you would like to take. I recommend that before attending Bentley orientation you go to RateMyProfessors and SyllabusCentral and do a little research on teachers so that you end up with some good teachers in your freshman year.

As a freshman, you will primarily eat at Season’s Dining Hall, Harry’s Corner, Boloco, and A&W. Their meal plan covers unlimited entries into Season’s Dining Hall, but the quality of the food is not very good. At Harry’s Corner you can use your discretionary money and Harry’s is good for buying a sub, pizza or fried food like mozzarella sticks or chicken wings. Harry’s is also close to freshman housing, so you’ll probably be going there a lot. Boloco and A&W are on the lower campus, which is a nice walk, but I think it’s worth it for Boloco. Boloco is my favorite meal on campus and once again they take discretionary money.

As a freshman, your classes should be pretty easy. After the first year, your classes will get much more difficult, so I recommend that you put on your seatbelt and get good grades to improve your GPA in the first year. It will be difficult to recover your GPA from a bad freshman year. There are two very easy things you can do to improve your GPA as a freshman. The first is to simply go to class and the second is to always do your homework. Even if you are not picking up your homework, I highly recommend that you do so on your own and try to stay disciplined. It’s too easy to put off homework and then get too late and not be able to learn everything before a semester or end. Make sure you keep up the pace throughout the semester and you should do well.