Student bloggers Tori Martorina (with back turned) and David Alexis are sharing their observations about campus life.

The week of October 19 started off really badly for Tori Martorina.

First, she got sick in her room on College Avenue, and worried that she might wake her roommate. Then, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, she boarded the wrong campus bus and was late for her Monday morning “expos” class on Busch, where she handed in “the worst [paper] I’ve ever written.” Back on College Avenue, Tori and her roommate headed for breakfast. But unfortunately, “Brower and breakfast don’t really get along,” so she vowed to stick with blueberry yogurt or eat at Au Bon Pain, never mind her costly dining plan.

This tiny snapshot of a morning in Tori’s life might never have appeared on anyone else’s radar save for one important detail: She blogged about it for the world to see.

Known as Tori M. in the Rutgers blogosphere, she is one of seven first-year students who share their observations about grades, professors, buses, food, parties and more at least once a week on the Undergraduate Admissions student blog website.

The bloggers, who represent the New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden campuses, are unpaid volunteers who were chosen last summer through a competitive process to share their thoughts and experiences as new Rutgers undergraduates.

Their primary intended audience is an important one for Rutgers: prospective students who are seeking the unvarnished truth about campus life before they decide where to apply or enroll.

Lee Ann Dmochowski, a senior admissions officer who administers the blog site and maintains a cordial, hands-off relationship with the writers, said thousands of incoming first-year students were invited to apply for the blogging spots based on their SAT or ACT writing scores. They were asked to answer, in 300 words or less, “Why should you blog for us?”

A surprisingly large number responded, considering they were about to embark on a new and potentially stressful passage in their young lives.

 Meet Rutgers' student bloggers.  

“We wanted first-year students to blog, so we would capture their first impressions of move-in and college life. That’s what prospective students are thinking about,” Dmochowski said.

Nearly all of the applicants were “fabulous,” Dmochowski said. “These students, however, really stood out as having an interesting take on things as well as the self confidence to write into a void. You really have to have a little chutzpah to do this.”

Despite writing for an official university website, the bloggers are told to be “authentic.” While they must adhere to the student code of conduct and avoid profanity and comments that might be deemed offensive, they are free to be candid about their experiences as students.

“We want that because it’s real,” Dmochowski said. “We don’t want spokespersons, we want bloggers.”

Rutgers invites readers to interact with the bloggers, unlike closed blogging sites at many other universities. Currently, the blogs are averaging about 1,200 hits per week. The number has been rising as the admissions cycle gets into full swing, Dmochowski said.

The bloggers have avoided few topics, not even the revelation of a first campus crush. Their public voices are pointed, sometimes tongue-in-check and occasionally poignant. They often include photos and videos.

After only a month at Rutgers, Tori already had some advice for her readers: “Don’t go on Facebook or AIM during a large lecture,” even if the professor is “going on and on about something boring;” don’t lose your room key because “losing your key sucks. You have to pay about $75 for a new key;” and “DO NOT TAKE MORE THAN 15 CREDITS” because “college is not high school.”

Meanwhile, David Alexis, an arts and sciences student who describes himself as an “aspiring pediatric cardiologist and professional hip-hop dancer,” shared his thoughts on the buses (“As long as they aren’t crowded, taking buses isn’t too hard anymore…”) and dining halls (“most of us have established a favorite and least favorite…”). Jennifer Rubinovitz, a student in Camden, had these wise words after finishing her first college paper: “Always have someone read over your writing assignments.”

Phyllis Lee, a student at the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, lamented that “[having] at least one professor know me” is her biggest challenge, since it is “ridiculously hard to stand out in a lecture hall of more than 100 students.”

But William Tomaskovic, who writes as Will T., summed up his introduction to the college whirl as perhaps only a first-year student could:  “Think of the most hectic week in your life and then multiply it by 4, add some friendship and finish it all off with the knowledge your life has only just begun.”