Are Northeastern Admission Stats Skewed?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Northeastern University
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According to a reddit thread of someone asking about this Northeastern is easier to get in than what the class profiles say.
Reddit thread is labeled: Since when is Northeastern so test oriented? Their stats are hella competitive. This is better than most Ivy’s (other than Harvard).

The reason I’m asking on here is because i want to verify if this whole thing is true

According to reddit user FeltIOwedItToHim
"Northeastern is tricking you here. It fudges its stats something fierce.
First of all, that numberyou are reading is for all of the ADMITTED students, not the ones who actually go to NEU. NEU admits a ton of top students that use it as a safety, and who never attend. … Just as importantly, all of the full pay NEU students with lower scores and grades are sent abroad for the fall term and admitted back to NEU for the spring term. "Reddit user FeltIOwedItToHim

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Northeastern, Boston university, USC and others have ways to play around the admissions game to look selective. It’s all about looking like an Ivy… USC also accepts a huge transfer class… BU sends 600 to spring and guarantees transfer to undeclared students in Liberal arts…

It’s all a game until you get caught (GWU knows all about it)

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There’s truth to the post you quoted, but much of it is overexaggerated and with lots of spin.

True. However, the attending stats can be found online, and those are not crazily far off. I believe last I checked it was 33-35 vs 32-34 for the middle 50%. This is still very high.

https://provost.northeastern.edu/uds/facts/common-data-set/

Of course, not all full pay students fall into this bucket. NU.in is the program being referenced, and their stats do not count in those numbers. It accounts for about 25% of the total class, and the numbers are not inherently lower, though they do appear to skew slightly that way. Using limited data from self-reported CC posts, it would appear that including NU.in in acceptance rate and test scores, you would get a 25% acceptance rate (rather than 18) and about 1 point lower on the test score ranges for the ACT. It tends to be more full-pay students since you cannot use financial aid for the abroad semester.

https://www.northeastern.edu/nuin/
Bottom of this page: https://www.northeastern.edu/admissions/application-information/deadlines/

This is also not how it works. You apply and either get accepted Fall, NU.in (which after the first semester there is no difference in undergrad experience), or Reject. If you get accepted NU.in, you either accept or go elsewhere, but there is no “rescinding”.

This is very high school dependent. A school where Northeastern is a safety for half the class also likely sends tons of students to Ivies and similar and likely has a history of many going to Northeastern as well.

In the end, yes and no. It’s not as tough as an Ivy, but very few can truly call it a safety these days, and you’re still going to need 31+ ACT (ideally 33+) + high GPA + course rigor to get into Northeastern. You can check out the RD thread from this year to see what type of stats get accepted/rejected below, as well as on Reddit:

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/northeastern-university/2124140-northeastern-university-2019-rd-p1.html

Note: Picked ACT to standardize, SAT equivalents also apply.

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You’re an international student. Whether or not Northeastern is competitive for US students doesn’t have any affect on your chances. Admissions are competitive for international students, especially those who need aid.

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It’s really hard to get into most US Schools in the top level, comparatively. International students its even more difficult.

Most of the competition on CC is around top schools relative “difficulty of admissions.” For the superstar student.

In the real world, the wider global audience and the vast vast vast majority of students schools like NEU is virtually impossible to get “into” or to “pay” for as a family.

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At a certain point Northeastern’s leadership decided that in order to continue substantive improvements it needed to create greater national recognition through attention to its appearance in specific ranking metrics. This article should give you greater context on its history: https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/.

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@titanrey15 as a parent of a rising sophomore , I can tell you that my student’s stats are in line with this (they are a bit higher actually). Anecdotally, my student has commented on how smart and accomplished his fellow classmates are. Here is a great article that outlines this year’s stats for the current committed freshman. They received over 62,000 applications, so they had plenty of high achieving students to choose from. A quick highlight of the mean statistics of incoming freshman: mean SAT 1459, mean ACT 33.1, mean GPA 4.2. Doesn’t look like much skewing or stat manipulation to me. Take a few minutes to read this. https://news.northeastern.edu/2019/05/07/northeastern-university-to-invest-a-record-296-2m-in-financial-aid-for-undergraduate-students/?fbclid=IwAR15EbdctWmsrrHf9LupSEHWyHQI82uSWbW_VQzC0abs0IJy2_sm5bpgZII

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The true answer is that we cannot know for certain. A bunch of schools including Berkeley are being g sanctioned by USN&WR for not being accurate in their info. This isn’t the first time a school has been cited for this sort of thing.

NE is not the only school to have more than the first semester to home campus option. Some schools simply have some students start second semester, some defer admissions for a year, some guarantee admissions with a reapply as a transfer if certain stipulations are met. I doubt I know all the different options available much less how they translate into admissions statistics

NE appears to me to have increased in popularity around here. I see it more and more on top applicants’ lists. But that’s just an individual observation.

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I think you are being a little too tough on UC Berkeley. They are taken off of the current 2019 list as their sanction because they reported alumni giving % using pledges and gifts in hand rather than just gifts in hand. It is not like they knowingly reported false SAT scores. They found the mistake and alerted US News. They will reappear on the 2020 list. Also worth noting - Northeastern has not been accused of sending any falsified reports in. If we are using your argument, you are saying we should ignore all statistics schools are sending in because some small % have. That is silly. Why bring that up if it has nothing to do with the points in your following paragraphs?