Current Northeastern CS student here, happy to answer any questions!
As mentioned, three important factors here:
- Calculate and include the cost of travel back and forth
- How do you feel about Northeastern’s strong co-op emphasis?
- Nail down where the loans would come from if Northeastern
In this case I think for 6K a year in loans Northeastern would be a steal comparatively. Here’s a great essay on the unique aspects of the program:
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/Thoughts/Developing_Developers.html
These are two or even possibly 3 very different paths. For industry, it is not usually recommended to do a masters. For a Ph.D, research then becomes a lot more important. Ph.D.'s in CS typically skip over a masters degree. I would think on this a bit more before making a decision as well.
In terms of research, Northeastern is an undergraduate-focused school where I think you would find a lot more research opportunities. You can see good data on this at the link below, even filtering by specific subtopics.
In terms of industry, Northeastern does very well because of co-op but CS grad success isn’t as reliant on the school as with most majors. That said, 67% of Northeastern CS grads have a full-time job offer from a previous co-op employer when they graduate which is a pretty staggering statistic. They also are one of the top 25 most hired new grads hired in Silicon Valley by the top firms there (by volume). The data tends to favor larger programs and ones on the west coast, but it’s still another interesting data point, particularly since Northeastern is one of 15 non-west coast region schools on the list.
https://www.scribd.com/document/346963694/Hiringsolved-Ideal-Hire-Report-in-Tech
While CS students can generally succeed anywhere given the skill focus of the field over name value, being surrounded by top research and teaching certainly helps students, as does the co-op program. I think there’s a notable difference in this case.
Hope all that info helps and again happy to answer any specific questions!