Dear Great Class of 2024,

This is an open letter from me, a jealous senior, to all the incoming first-years. Congratulations! You’re about to embark on the journey of a lifetime in a beautiful place I’ve been lucky to call home for the past 3.75 years. On behalf of all the bloggers, I’d like to welcome you to Princeton. There will be ups and downs, but you’ll soon learn that this truly is the best damn place of all.

Princeton is full of new opportunities, experiences and memories that you will cherish forever. My advice to you is this: take advantage of every single opportunity, experience and memory that comes your way. This is a once-in-a-lifetime journey, and as I know many of you can relate as high school seniors, it can all change in a matter of seconds. Cherish your time here. It really does fly by, I swear. It feels like just yesterday I was moving into Butler 1967 Hall, meeting my roommates, getting my bearings on campus and looking forward to the four years to come. Instead, a few days ago, I moved out of my cute little Patton Hall dorm room and said goodbye to everyone who made Princeton feel like home.

But enough with the sadness! This should be a happy time for you all. Be open to new experiences! Meet new friends; it may take a while to establish your core group, but you’ll get there! Get to know your professors; they can be great mentors and they’re there for you. Thank your dining hall workers! Explore the campus; Princeton is gorgeous, and it’s yours to take in. Try out every coffee shop in town. Call your parents ⁠— they’re anxious to hear from you! Stay in touch with your high school friends. Cope with stress in healthy ways; watch the sunrise, go to the gym, try out a new restaurant, take a walk. Take your time. Get to know some upperclassmen; I know they can look scary sometimes, but I promise they aren’t!

Last, but certainly not least: believe in yourself and trust in the process. You’re meant to be here! You’re meant to be a part of this amazing community. Good luck, and have fun!

Once again: welcome to Princeton.

Sincerely,

A jealous senior who wishes she could do it all over again.

Navigating around Princeton—both on campus and in the surrounding communities—is an important part of the Princeton student experience. 

First, some caveats: I spend almost all of my time here on campus and in neighborhoods within walking distance. This isn’t the case for some students, especially student athletes who travel frequently for competition. When I leave campus, I usually do so by car or train — I usually only leave campus by plane during the breaks, but it’s an extremely common experience for students to fly during the normal year.

Like on most college campuses, people walk here. A lot. Bring your best walking shoes — you won’t be wearing high heels on your hike to class! Campus isn’t that big, so most students get around solely on foot. A substantial number of students do have bikes and scooters (both the traditional kind and the electric ones— I don’t quite understand these). There are bike racks near most dorm buildings, and scooters have to be stored in your room in order to keep the campus as accessible as possible. Don’t think you need these things, though — unless you’re a resident of Forbes College or a student-athlete frequently traveling south on campus to Jadwin Gym, you’ll easily be able to make it everywhere on foot, on time. If you ever don’t feel like walking, Tiger Transit (the campus shuttle system) can take you to different hot spots on campus. 

Tiger Transit also runs shuttles off campus for students. The most commonly utilized service they offer is the Weekend Shopper, which loops students from campus to a variety of different shopping centers in the larger Princeton area. Highlights include Trader Joe’s and Target, two of my favorite suburban spots. Something important to note is that students aren’t allowed to keep cars on campus, meaning that you’ll have to find another way to get around. In addition to University services like Tiger Transit, students frequently use the Enterprise Car-Share service offered on campus (easy to use, and pretty cheap!) or use a ride-share app. 

If you’re looking to get out further into the world, your ticket is the ‘Dinky.’ The ‘Dinky’ is a train station on campus that provides shuttle service to the larger Princeton Junction station. From Princeton Junction Station, you can mainly catch NJ Transit trains and Amtrak trains. Trains branching off from these can take you to New York City, Philadelphia or even Newark or Philadelphia airports, which is a passport to anywhere in the world! 

Princeton’s unique residential culture means getting around can seem daunting for incoming students. The reality is that it’s pretty easy — you’ll find your way around in no time at all!

There is endless food on Princeton's campus: late meal, Nassau Street, study breaks and free food from events. However, you're likely to eat most of your meals in the residential college dining halls. Check out my guide to dining on campus.  

Forbes (my residential college–go Forbesians!)

• Environment: Forbes’s dining hall is quiet for breakfast and lunch, great for studying or doing homework. Since Forbes is the furthest residential college from most classes and activities (a bit of an exaggeration – my longest walk is only 15 minutes), the dining hall is never that crowded during the day when students are out and about. On a nice day, you get plenty of sunshine in the dining hall, and when it’s warm out, you can eat outside with a view of the golf course in Forbes’ “backyard.”   
• Best Known For: “Sunday Brunch” (with a huge chocolate fountain!), special dinners for Valentine's Day, Mardi Gras, Thanksgiving and other holidays). It's the only dining hall that offers omelets during lunch, and you can order a quesadilla anytime at the grill
• Best Food: Paella, tortellini, potato bar (all kinds of potato), avocado bar (all types of avocado pairings), waffle cones with fresh fruit & whipped cream at Forbes Flexitarian Night
• So Underrated: Saturday’s brunch (with breakfast quesadillas & açaí bowls)

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Roma (Rockefeller (Rocky)/Mathey)

• Environment: A common place to meet friends for lunch or dinner because of its close proximity to Firestone Library and several academic buildings. The dining hall is so big that even when a lot of people are there, it still doesn’t feel overwhelming. There are two connected seating areas in this dining hall, one on Rocky’s side and the other in Mathey. If your parents ever visit, take them to this dining hall and they’ll surely be impressed with the Harry Potter/castle-like structure.
• Best Known For: Only dining hall with fried chicken sandwiches offered daily, grilled cheese trio, and two cheese options for omelets – cheddar & mozzarella (most just have cheddar)   
• Best Food: Creative quesadillas (apple, brie & arugula is my fave!), chicken nugget bar, shell mac & cheese
• So Underrated: RoMa’s house chicken soup

WuCox (Wilson/Butler)

• Environment: The name “WuCox” comes from the seating areas in Wu Hall (Butler) and Wilcox Hall (Wilson), which are connected by one dining hall like RoMa. WuCox has the most booths out of all our dining halls. Many student groups meet here because there are booths available for even large groups. WuCox is in a prime location close to the biology and math departments, as well as Frist, our student center. 
• Best Known For: “Beans, Greens & Grains” station offered for lunch and dinner (a pasta and ramen bar: choose your sauce, pasta – ramen or penne, and add chicken and veggies), breakfast 
• Best Food: WuCox breakfast muffins, corn bread, perogies, southern fried chicken
• So Underrated: pesto ravioli 

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Whitman 

• Environment: Much like RoMa, this dining hall is quite a sight with its beautiful architecture. Whitman is made up of mostly long tables and a few booths in the back. The dining hall also has one of the best private dining rooms for teams, clubs or language tables. Lunch gets very popular on certain days (such as chicken pot pie day), and dinner always draws a crowd. You can never go wrong with Whitman because there’s so many options to choose from. 
• Best Known For: Amazing salad bar, specialty bars (ramen, mac & cheese, burritos), Whitman lunch 
• Best Food: Naan bread, orzo pasta salad, pizza & garlic knots, sautéed veggies
• So Underrated: Spinach artichoke hummus

Students can go to any residential college dining hall – not just their own. They can also eat at the Center for Jewish Life (CJL), which houses our kosher dining hall on campus. I typically eat breakfast at Forbes, lunch at Whitman and dinner at RoMa or WuCox. If you’re considering Princeton as your new home, hopefully this guide gave you a sneak peek into what eating in the dining halls is like.

When it’s warm and sunny, my friends and I love to go the backyard behind Forbes College and toss around a frisbee. On weekends, we bring our brunch onto the patio, sit on the red lawn chairs and look out onto the golf course and the gothic spires of the Graduate College beyond, where at noon the chimes of its clock tower can be heard across campus. From our window, my roommate and I wake up to this wonderful view and a still sleepy sun.

In the evenings after dinner, we pass by the game room and are often tempted to go inside for an hour or more. Over games of pool, we watched James Holzhauer’s record-breaking run on “Jeopardy” here. On midweek afternoons, I cheer on my soccer team in the Champions League, and I am often joined by a member of the staff, many of whom are always willing to have a conversation, whether over a game of soccer or when swiping in for a meal.

Forbes is a small residential college, and it feels even homier because of its unique setup. As a repurposed hotel, it is the only residential college where you can walk from one end to the other in your pajamas without ever stepping outside. There are also so many cozy nooks and crannies: a TV lounge in the annex basement with murals on the walls; the sci-fi library adjacent to the sunken lounge; and the Forbes Café, always open late and offering a place to study, relax and get ramen for 25 cents a package.

No matter how early or late, Forbes always seems to be bright and warmly lit, and its “Forbesians” are always around. I love the community here, with a shared bond over our campus-renowned weekend brunches and the distances we have to walk – Forbes is as close as you can get to the Wawa, a local convenience store, the Graduate College, or art installations by Maya Lin and Ai Weiwei, but as the joke goes, a bit far from anywhere else.

Nevertheless, I’ve loved every second of living in my residential college and being a part of this community: Forbes really is worth the walk. And maybe I’ll see you around next year: I’ll be sticking around as a residential college adviser! I’d be happy to grab some chocolate covered strawberries at Sunday Brunch and talk over a game of pool.   

It is often easy to stay on campus for long periods of time without stepping out of FitzRandolph gates. Students at Princeton are busy with classes, extracurriculars and a social life. However, there are many things to do in the town of Princeton that I encourage current and future Tigers to make time for and enjoy.

The most common reasons to venture through the gates and onto Nassau Street involve a craving for food and drinks. Princeton has four ice cream shops in a very small vicinity. My personal ranking is Halo Pub, Kilwin’s, Bent Spoon and Thomas Sweets. Everyone has their own personal preferences for where they go to satisfy their sweet tooth.

The town of Princeton also has a variety of coffee options. Regardless of if you’re a Starbucks person or a Dunkin’ Donuts fan, you can get your favorite coffee. If you want a coffee that doesn’t come from a chain, I would recommend Small World Coffee, a local brand with two locations, one on Nassau Street and one on Witherspoon Street.

The Princeton Public Library on Witherspoon Street has a great selection of books available to students for free. I got a library card pretty soon after coming to campus. With that card comes access to the library’s collections, as well as free tickets to museums in New York City and Philadelphia.

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Princeton Garden Theater offers multiple movies per week at a discounted price for students. Princeton Undergraduate Student Government (USG) screens movies at the Garden Theater every weekend for no cost at all if you’re willing to wait in line for the free tickets.

While all the activities I described above are in walking distance from campus, there are also some fun destinations within driving distance. TigerTransit has a Weekend Shopper shuttle that takes students to shopping locations, such as Wegmans grocery store, Walmart and Trader Joe’s. The shuttles often get crowded as students refill their rooms with snacks and cleaning supplies.

If you’re willing to take a car share service and go a little farther from the campus, there are multiple malls in the area. I’ve seen a couple movies at an AMC movie theater at the MarketFair Mall and Quakerbridge Mall is also quite popular with students.

We have our own train station on campus with a one-car train called the "Dinky" to take us to the Princeton Junction station. From there, it’s an easy ride to New York City and Philadelphia. My friends and I have taken several fun trips to New York City to explore the museums and see shows on Broadway. 

The Princeton campus is often described as the “Orange Bubble,” but I do my best to get off campus every so often. Princeton is a great town with lots of fun activities. Pretty soon, you’ll have your own list of favorite spots off campus.

New Jersey can be one of the most weather-confused states. Whether it's 60 degrees in January or 35 degrees in April, New Jersey has some interesting weather patterns. Season-relevant attire is important because Princeton is a walking campus and I don’t know about you but who wants to be caught in the rain with socks and slides? Here are some tips I find helpful to have throughout the school year.

• Coat with a hood: Any hat plus coat combo is fine, but a hood keeps you warm, is easy to put on and can’t really be forgotten. No worries if your coat doesn’t have one. Water Resistant Shoes: Rain is a pretty common forecast on campus. Rain boots work perfectly. Snow boots would also fall into this category for the colder months.
• Gloves: Gloves are also necessary for a cold winter breeze or an autumn downpour! Your fingers can get cold holding up your multipurpose umbrella or sometimes your pockets are full and your hands can’t fit into your jacket pocket. Regardless of the reason, gloves are pretty handy. No pun intended.
• Warm Socks: I thought ankle socks would be fine, but turns out fuzzy socks and crew socks keep you warmer. Fuzzy or thicker socks are great for comfortable walking sneakers because your feet can get cold from walking everywhere. New Jersey often has some vicious winter winds.
• Umbrella: This works not only in the rain, but also in the snow. A raincoat is an alternative, but an umbrella can also protect your bookbag. 
• Scarf: Scarves are a nice touch to your look. They can be repurposed as a head covering to warm your ears or cover your face during windy, cold days.
• Stay Hydrated: This includes your skin and hair. Many people find the winter months to be dehydrating, so make sure you keep some moisturizer, water bottles and hair products close.
• Short & Sandals: Although New Jersey can be a pretty cold state, when it's warm, its WARM. I would highly recommend bringing some clothes for warm weather in the early fall, because it can be notoriously hot and humid.
• Sun____: Sunglasses, sunscreen and other sun-related items like hats are also nice to have in the fall for protection from the sun's harsh rays.

This is an opinion-based article and none of these items are an absolute necessity. These are just a few useful tips I find helpful to keeping warm, dry and comfortable during the school year. I hope these tips help to prepare you for your time at Princeton.

After winter break here at Princeton people everywhere are trying to figure out their plans for the summer.

I spent the summer after my first year interning for a nonprofit in Boston for ten weeks, and I loved it. My internship was part of a program called Princeton Internships in Civic Service, or PICS for short. PICS offers internships at a variety of nonprofits across the nation; when I came across Boston SCORES, I knew it was perfect for me. SCORES is a nonprofit that works with students from elementary to high school, integrating poetry, spoken word and soccer into its after-school curriculum. This quite literally checked all the boxes for me: I love soccer, and two of the things I was most passionate about in high school were working with kids and leading my slam poetry club.

I greatly enjoyed my summer in Boston. I stayed with a wonderful and kind host family, and worked with amazing kids every day (and also played so much soccer with them!). I was also able to apply the knowledge I learned in one of my computer sciences classes, “Computer Science: An interdisciplinary Approach (COS 126)” to create a program that streamlined a time-intensive task.

Although I missed my friends, I wasn’t lonely! Princeton organized events that brought all local Boston interns together, and the regional alumni association was constantly involved and active. I was also given an alumni mentor who met with me throughout the summer. Through PICS, I met new friends, ate ramen at niche Cambridge restaurants and biked along the Charles River. One friend and I even road-tripped to back to New Jersey on a whim to watch the Fourth of July fireworks on top of the Prudential Center.

There are countless other summer opportunities at Princeton as well: my best friends went outside the country, taking Global Seminars in Berlin; teaching high schoolers in Vietnam; and immersing themselves in Argentine culture in Buenos Aires. One of my friends spent the summer with lemurs in Madagascar as well through the Princeton Environmental Institute. Princeton also offers opportunities with startups in New York, Tel-Aviv and Shanghai. They also offer opportunities to conduct research with professors on-campus.

Whatever you choose to do, you can be sure that you’ll find the summer as rewarding and enjoyable an experience as I did, and there will be people there for you every step of the way.   

In the fall of my first year, I took my soccer ball to Poe Field one afternoon looking to get some practice in. A wide concourse of grass curving around one corner of campus, Poe Field is wedded between the colorful gates of Butler College’s Bloomberg Hall and the glass walls of Carl Icahn Labs.

That afternoon, I’d anticipated only some solitary practice with the all-weather-worn goal posts. But to my surprise, there were already a dozen or more people in the middle of a pickup game. I recognized none of them but took a gamble and asked if I could join. Within minutes, I was right in the thick of it.

Writing this provokes another memory: The first day of my time at Princeton, I wandered by the gentle slopes in front of Whitman College where some other first-years were playing an improvised game of soccer with their shoes marking the goals. To this day one pair of my socks are still stained faintly green.

In high school, I’d never found a soccer community. With the exception of my best friend, very few people were as invested in the game as I was, and when he moved away after sophomore year, I no longer had anyone to talk to about one of my greatest passions.

I now play games of pickup at Poe Field nearly every Saturday. With a few friends I met during these games, we also formed an intramural team called the Poe Fielders. When the weather gets too cold, I have one-on-one training sessions with one of my best friends in the squash courts of Dillon Gym, an improvised location that we’ve found highly rewarding, nonetheless.

It seems like such a small thing – people who treat soccer as more than just an after-school sport but, instead, as a lifestyle; people who I can watch games and play FIFA video games to unwind. Soccer may be big where you come from, and this may seem unremarkable to you. But I guarantee that if you have a passion that you’ve been aching to share with those around you, you’ll find that community here at Princeton. There are so many clubs here; more than that, it’s impossible not to find groups of people who share your interests.

For me, it was as simple as wandering past a soccer scrimmage, asking if I could join, and having the ball at my feet seconds later.      

Some of you reading this may attend high schools where many seniors go off to attend Princeton and other similar colleges every single year. Others might not know anyone from their school who’s ever attended Princeton before. I’m very proud of the fact that I’m the first student from my high school ever to be admitted to Princeton and I think it’s given me a unique perspective on campus life.

I won’t lie — deciding to come to Princeton was a touch nerve-wracking because I had no idea what to expect and didn’t have any past graduates from my school that I could ask. Unlike many of my high school friends, who were all attending local colleges together, I didn’t have anyone to ‘twin’ shirts with on College Decision Day or to discuss first-year orientation with. Looking back, however, I wouldn’t have done it any other way — coming to college without the friend groups from high school allowed me to grow more as an individual from the moment I stepped on campus.

My worries about not having built-in support here were unfounded too. The first-year experience at Princeton is loaded with opportunities to meet and ask questions of upperclass students and professional University staff, who oftentimes are absolutely overjoyed to meet you! Every first-year is assigned a Residential College Advisor (RCA) and a Peer Academic Advisor (PAA), two junior or senior students in your residential college who can offer student-to-student advice on everything from course selection to social troubles. Each student also gets a faculty advisor in their area of study and has access to their college’s director of studies for a second opinion.

There are also several resources on campus meant specifically for students who come to Princeton from underrepresented or otherwise unique backgrounds. One that comes to mind is the Scholars Institute Fellows Program (SIFP), whose website notes that SIFP “offers mentorship, academic enrichment, and a welcoming scholarly community to students hailing from backgrounds historically underrepresented at Princeton.” Another is the First-Generation Low Income Council (FLiC), which also offers similar resources.

What I’ve found is that there’s no “right way” to come to Princeton. For maybe my first week of classes, I was afraid I wouldn’t have a network of juniors and seniors to turn to for mentorship.  Pretty soon, though, I had carved out my own place on campus. The diversity at Princeton has given me the experiences to meet hundreds if not thousands of other students with whom I share much more crucial interests and values. There’s nothing to fear in blazing your own trail!

Packing up and moving to campus is not easy for anyone. It typically involves the painstaking process of deciding which sweater comes and which stays behind, an overstuffed suitcase and leaving behind friends, family and home. Yet, when it finally comes time to move onto campus, some of my peers will hop in a car or on a train with their families in tow, but I will hop on a flight traveling across the country from Portland, Oregon. 

I am not complaining. I know that many students at Princeton travel even longer distances to receive the incredible education we are all so lucky to have. If anything, I like the fact that I am from a place so unique on Princeton’s campus. That said, it also means that my Princeton experience is different. I go home for fewer breaks. Move-in and move-out days are a little more stressful. When I forget to bring my graphing calculator, my parents can’t just pop over and deliver it on the weekend. 

While I may not be from the Northeast, over my time here, I have learned to lean into my difference. When I tell people where I am from, I usually get excited follow-up questions and inquiries. On breaks that I haven’t been able to go home, I have been welcomed into the homes of the incredible friends I have made over the course of my time here. So, while I occasionally wish my parents lived just a tad closer to campus, I will always be a proud Oregonian at Princeton, living far from home.

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