“Throughout my time at Northwestern, I became close with a group of roughly 8 or 9 new friends. We created a group chat and still message daily, minus our one international friend. We’ve also created a fantasy football league to hopefully continue our conversation for years. Because of Northwestern, I’ve found friends for my whole future.” –Noah K., Summer ’23 CPP
“Move out day was one of the saddest and sweetest moments of the Northwestern experience. One of the first outings my friend group made was to Colectivo Cafe, when we were all still getting to know each other. We found that their pride lemonade was delicious, and made frequent stops through the weeks in Evanston. To end our time right, we decided to visit Colectivo one last time as a group that last morning. Fitting with the moment, they had stopped selling their pride lemonade, just as our time at NU had ended. After begrudgingly trying other drinks, we said our goodbyes at the dorms, filled with lots of tears and laughs. My friends even made the effort to say goodbye to my mom as I left, and I truly never felt more loved.” –Amelia P., Summer ’23 CPP
“I wrote this the night my two weeks ended: 7/1/23 Said goodbye today. I met some of the coolest people here, and now we’re splitting ways and by tomorrow we’ll be thousands of miles apart. My roommate went back to Indonesia last night. She even gave me a gift, a little Tokyo banana before she left. Tears came falling as soon as she left our dorm. This morning we went to the dining hall for breakfast. One last time. We didn’t stay long because we thought it was only fair to hit Colectivo Coffee, again, one last time. It’s easy to be sad about leaving new people you really connected with, but I tried my best to be grateful for the experience I had and the chance to build great relationships. Through social media, I know we’ll stay connected, and we already have plans for a reunion!” –Elsa V., Summer ’23 CPP
“One of the most exciting parts of my Northwestern summer experience was meeting incredibly bright classmates, with whom I share similar interests. Through various class assignments, I made some great friends and will continue to stay in touch with them as we begin our school year. Our final project was particularly memorable as I worked with my new friend Camille on assessing the relative value of brands through publicly available statistics and math calculations we learned in class. It was so much fun presenting our findings to the class, while learning from other team members’ presentations! I will really miss my new friends – but who knows, maybe we will meet on campus again if our dream of becoming full-time Northwestern students comes true!” –Samantha S., Summer ’23 CPP
“Our final project in the Biomedical Engineering project was great. The assignment itself was very open-ended and allowed for a lot of creativity to design our own projects and build whatever we wanted to using the skills we had developed throughout the weeks of class. I built a “smile sensor” that translated the electrical signals generated from the muscles of my face into a visual readout of an emoji that smiled when I did. It was a challenging but fun mix of engineering and coding which made it a perfect capstone to my experience in the class.” –William B., Summer ’23 CPP
“After a fleeting two weeks of learning, participating in events, and living together, we all had so much fun together and learned about each of our distinct backgrounds. I was the earliest one leaving due to my flight. Everyone in the RA group gathered around when I was doing some final packing, and escorted me all the way from my dorm to the entrance of Willard Hall. We took pictures and hugged each other. They all said they are going to miss me, and good luck when we all return to our own lives. Some even said that they would come to Shanghai to find me!” –Henry D., Summer ’23 CPP
“It’s a microcosm of life. Friendships formed within hours, by the end of the two weeks it was as if we’d know each other for years.” –Zaida B., Summer ’23 CPP
“I was glad to be done with the homework, but I was actually really sad to not get to talk with peers and teachers once the class ended. I remember the Monday after my class ended new news on the Biden administration came out and I desperately wanted to have the discussion I knew we would have had in class if the news had come out a week earlier. I was able to connect with a few classmates via social media and I plan on continuing to stay in touch with them.” –Ava M., Summer ’23 CPP
“At the CPP, our last day was a perfect culmination of all that we had learned in our past two weeks. With all that we had learned, we constructed a final project. Thanks to the course material written by our TA, we were able to refer to the content of our classes easily, and use it to build a biomedical device of our choosing. After the build, we presented what we had made with short slides presentations to the whole class. It was a satisfying end, because I got to see a tangible representation of what my peers and I gained in our past two weeks. We cheered each other on, and even though some had more difficulty than others, they were not judged. It was a safe space for us to gather and to share the skills we had acquired.” –Ayan P., Summer ’23 CPP
“We spent the last day reflecting on the course materials and going back over what we learned. We got a chance to go back into the groups that we had been working in for the last week and it was really special. We got a chance to thank each other for all we learned from each other and say goodbye. We all exchanged information to stay in touch. It was bittersweet because I felt accomplished completing the course but I really enjoyed the class. It was a fun and productive way to end the day everyday and I got to know all of my peers in a short time-span.” –Nahlia U., Summer ’23 CPP
“During my stay at Northwestern, I made a significant number of friends from across the country as well as outside of the country! I remember on the night before we all had to part ways, we wanted to spend as much time as possible with each other, so we played games in my friends’ dorm and laughed the night away, truly enjoying the moment. The next morning, move-out day, we all met up in my friends’ dorm again for a final goodbye and we took as many pictures as we could. It was extremely difficult to say goodbye because we made so many memories together in a small amount of time and no picture could truly capture the friendships formed during the program. Eventually, we departed but even though we are all scattered across the world, we still manage to keep in touch every day. The college prep program truly created the summer and friendships of a lifetime.” –Vivian A., Summer ’23 CPP
“On the last day of class, all of my classmates spoke about how the class had spoken to them. It was awesome to see how the class had impacted everyone differently, and we all exchanged contact information so we could stay in touch. Our TA took a picture of the zoom call and shared it with all of us so we could keep a visual memory of the class. We went way over the time the class was supposed to end, but I’m glad we did. A lot of people, including myself, opened up over the course of the class, and I made some good friends. The final goodbye definitely felt like it had come too soon.” –Conor M., Summer ’23 CPP