<p>This is a good question. First, you should know a little about BU's history. Before John Silber, BU was a much more local school. He turned it into a national school but he also alienated almost everyone in academia - and a substantial part of the BU faculty, which divided into pro and anti- camps. Silber left the President's job but his influence remained for several years. Brown is the first real President since Silber and he will make massive changes that will raise BU's prestige so it approaches the quality the school actually has. </p>
<p>The US News rankings are absolute bull. For example, 25% of the score comes from a 1 to 5 scale on a questionaire filled out by college administrators. Many schools are now circulating a petition to stop the use of these rankings because they say administrators don't know about other schools. I have two slightly different takes. First, Silber's divisive legacy has likely affected how BU is ranked by peers. Second, what the heck good is a 5 point scale? I have not seen the data set but US News doesn't describe how large the differences are, nor where in their methodology the differences arise. What if you get tiny differences between vast numbers of schools but those then will lay out as 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. as though those tiny differences are meaningful? Without those disclosures, the rankings are useless - and they won't disclose them because they want to keep the methods proprietary because they make money from them.</p>
<p>The rest of the methodology uses stuff like alumni giving and financial resources. BU only recently hired a real development director and never pursued alumni giving like many other schools. </p>
<p>BU has many colleges and these include pre-professional and even part-time schools (like MET) that use adjunct, meaning part-time professors. That counts against - assuming that US News actually gets accurate info about BU since Silber was adamant that he hated rankings. </p>
<p>Let me give you one more example. Northeastern is a school that's getting better. No one in Boston would consider it equal to BU or BC, but it has some good programs and they've done a nice job building a campus and converting Northeastern from a commuter school. But Northeastern appears more selective than BU - and more selective than Chicago and some other fine schools. Why? My guess is that more people apply to BU and Chicago as back-ups, meaning a person applies to Harvard or Berkeley or some other fine school - where the odds are long - and chooses that one. If Northeastern is more selective, it's because kids apply to it more as a top choice, which means - giving Northeastern's actual status in this area - that they don't believe they can get into a BU or BU or Tufts or other school. Another school that's selective is NYU, but when you look at their numbers - which they only partly reveal - they're admitting large numbers from NY schools, followed by NJ schools, which means they're "winning" the contest for local kids. Think about the competition in NYC, which is such a bigger market than Boston, and that makes sense: there are more students at more quality colleges in Boston than in much larger NYC, so BU isn't going to win as often as NYU will in its market. From what US News discloses, the odds are low that they appropriately consider factors that influence the raw data.</p>
<p>BU is very much a work in progress. Silber wouldn't even allow cable in the dorms - meaning no network! The guest policy was from the 1950's. Your degree will become more and more "prestigious," for whatever little that means, as time goes by. </p>
<p>As for comparable schools, BU is comparable to NYU, Michigan and other large public and private schools. It has a solid core liberal arts college, a number of quality pre-professional schools and good graduate schools in the major professions. I grew up in Michigan and went there for law school. I would say BU is similar to Michigan or the other better Big Ten schools - though it is actually a little smaller than most. </p>
<p>For some reason, BU has a reputation for being more expensive. It's actually about the same as any other school - the differences betwen costs at private universities is in the low thousands. BU is more generous than most with aid, which is significant considering that BU doesn't have a giant endowment. </p>
<p>I have to say that where you go to school is not very important for the rest of your life. It's up to you, not the name on your degree. If people want to go to Syracuse - which is in a true pit of a city which gets 116 inches of snow a year - then power to them. This is a big country and a bigger world. I went to a top Ivy. I've said many times that if you pull out the kids who started rich, then you have a few real high achievers, maybe a couple more than chance, and the rest are just normally successful people. The stuff about "future leaders" and "the brightest" that you hear when you go to a Harvard or Yale is bull: the country is full of bright people, some at community colleges as they work for a living, and some God knows where. Al Gore went to Harvard but that didn't make him a Senator; his father was a senator (and that's why he got into Harvard in the first place). </p>
<p>It's normal to have "buyer's remorse" about college decisions. Relax.</p>