BU considers campuses in India, Abu Dhabi

The talks are preliminary, said a BU spokesman, and may or may not materialize in an Indian BU campus, though Brown is scheduled to travel to the country in January. India, which has 560 million people under the age of 25, is desperately trying to increase the educational opportunities for its population. Its government hopes to build 14 universities with selected US partners.

“We’re certainly interested if the match is right,’’ said Stephen Burgay, a BU spokesman.

The university is also considering whether to open a medical school campus in Abu Dhabi, which is in the United Arab Emirates, though that, too, is in the “embryonic’’ stage, Burgay said.

Going gender-neutral
Emerson College students will soon be able to bunk with members of the opposite sex. Starting next fall, the university will pilot a housing program that assigns roommates without regard to gender.

The new policy, which follows a push by the student government, would allow students to choose to live with whom they are most comfortable and provide housing options for students who identify as transgender or who are questioning their gender identity, said Ron Ludman, dean of students.

All students, except freshmen and first-year transfers, could apply; those selected would mutually agree to share a room or suite.

More than two dozen colleges across the country provide or intend to provide gender-neutral housing, including Clark, Brown, Brandeis, Hampshire, Harvard, and Tufts.

Mean streets to college
It can be lonely at times being a first-generation college student. And as a low-income high school student applying to college, the experience can be overwhelming.

Students can now turn to a new blog launched by the Center for Student Opportunity for support, advice, and inspiration. Four of the 10 bloggers attend New England colleges:

There’s Jesse Sanchez, who said he overcame gangs and poverty in San Diego to become the first in his family to attend college - at Harvard, no less. He hopes to become the first Latino mayor of San Diego.

Khadijah Williams, a Harvard freshman, writes of being a homeless high school student who used education as her way out of Los Angeles’s Skid Row.

Duylam Nguyen-Ngo, a budding entrepreneur, credits his single mother with inspiring him to enter Babson College despite growing up in a dangerous Richmond neighborhood.

And Lysa Vola, who was adopted at age 5 along with five of her siblings in Jensen Beach, Fla., is attending Williams College and hopes to become a pediatrician.

The students give candid accounts of their college experience, including their struggles adjusting to and juggling the increased workload as well as the highlights of freshman year so far (like meeting Chicano civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, cofounder of United Farm Workers, who recently spoke at Harvard.)

“When I first got here, the workload seemed impossible, but it just takes getting used to,’’ Sanchez wrote in a recent post. “I’m feeling WAY better now that I’ve learned to balance things out and really find ways to make time for the things that really matter.’’

Sanchez said he grew up with a single mother, who sustained the family on less than $7,000 a year. “Yet I was not going to hold our economic status or her absence as an excuse for failure,’’ he wrote.

He searched for opportunities while his friends succumbed to violence and drugs.

“Seeing how these influences had the power to tear families apart, I strived for a better way of life, put academics first, and made it to college! . . . I hope to be a role model that many of the students in my community lack. I want to prove that academic success is possible, no matter what obstacles one may face.’’

The blog can be found at www.csopportunityscholars.org.

The Quad highlights doings on local campuses. For online updates, go to www.boston.com/ MetroDesk and click on The Quad. To submit tips, e-mail Tracy Jan at tjan@globe.com.