<p>2009 Princeton Review gives BC an Academic Rating of 88 and Notre Dame an Academic Rating of 92.<br>
Test</a> Prep: GMAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, SAT, ACT, and More | The Princeton Review</p>
<p>Stop the presses!</p>
<p>By comparison, Harvard's Academic Rating is 99 and College of the Holy Cross' is 98.</p>
<p>As a 2006 BC alum I wanted to offer my perspective on the BC vs. ND debate. In my opinion these are the two top Catholic universities in the U.S. (Georgetown is basically secular at this point). I will be the first to admit that ND is slightly better in terms of overall academics. Emphasis on slightly. Notre Dame averages about 30 points higher on median SAT scores for admitted students. It ranks #18 in U.S. News and World Report vs. #34 for BC. (both schools are underrated due to anti-Catholic bias....look at the Peer Assessment category....they both score below schools like Wisconsin and Georgia Tech, which is a joke). ND scores a 98 in "Admission Selectivity Ranking" from the Princeton Review whereas BC scores a 97. So by the numbers Notre Dame comes out slightly on top. I think it would be unwise for a college senior to decide between the two schools based solely on that criteria. It would be like an NBA general manager drafting Player X because his college field goal percentage was 47% and Player Y's was 46%.</p>
<p>I was accepted at both schools, chose Boston College and couldn't be happier with my decision. The biggest advantage that BC has over ND, and the biggest factor in my decision, was location. I grew up in a small rust-belt city that peaked economically 50 years ago, very similar to South Bend, Indiana. The thought of spending my college years in the same type of environs was not intriguing. Boston is called the ultimate college town and I second that notion. I still live in Boston today and have no plans to leave any time soon. I developed friendships with kids from Harvard, Tufts and BU, all of which are a few miles away. And not only is BC in the ultimate college town, it is situated in idyllic Chestnut Hill. On one side of the campus are the beautiful, stately, million dollar homes of Newton and on the other side is Boston's Brighton neighborhood, with easy access to downtown, Cambridge, etc. I know I sound like a pitchbook for BC but, im my opinion, the location really can't be beat.</p>
<p>The second reason I chose BC over ND was that it is Jesuit. 90% of you probably do not care about this but to me it was important. I went to a Jesuit high school and was really drawn by the Jesuit approach to higher education. The Jesuit presence on campus is by no means means overbearing (BC is usually considered "less Catholic" than ND) but for those who want the Jesuit influence, it adds a great dimension to your college education.</p>
<p>While Notre Dame won a million college football championships before any of you were born, you would be hard pressed to find a university that has had more success in the big three college sports of football, basketball and hockey than BC has had this decade. Hockey has won two national titles and makes the tourney every year, basketball has made the big dance 6 of the last 8 years and football hasn't lost more than 3 games since 2004 and has beat ND five games in a row. So while they can talk about history and tradition all they want, BC has clearly been better for awhile now.</p>
<p>I think Notre Dame is a great university and I am not one to get into the stupid shouting matches about who is better. For me, BC offered the better location, the Jesuit heritage and the better sports scene. I just wanted to offer my perspective. Good luck on your college decisions.</p>
<p>BC is really only good at one sport and that's hockey. unfortunately no one really cares about hockey very much so i don't it's very relevant. as for football it doesn't matter how good BC is (btw they suck now without matt ryan), you just can't beat the ND football experience. basketball, they're in the acc so they have to compete against teams like duke and unc where they just get rocked. i guess they're decent at basketball but then again so is ND so they sort of offset.</p>
<p>as for boston yes it is a great city and there's a lot to do but i certainly wouldn't characterize it as a "college town".</p>
<p>and i find it difficult to dismiss a 16 place difference on usnwr rankings as negligible. by that logic harvard and notre dame are practically the same school.</p>
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as for boston yes it is a great city and there's a lot to do but i certainly wouldn't characterize it as a "college town".
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<p>I disagree. You may be slightly misinformed about just how many college students there are in Boston. It's pretty astounding.</p>
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and i find it difficult to dismiss a 16 place difference on usnwr rankings as negligible. by that logic harvard and notre dame are practically the same school.
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<p>agreed...ND > BC. I believe ND is more comparable to schools like Georgetown and Northwestern, and Boston College is slightly beneath them, especially in average student intelligence.</p>
<p>no you misunderstand. i realize that boston probably has the largest concentration of college students in the country; however, a "college town" is typically not a metropolitan city. a college town is some place that is centered around the university. like specifically designed for college students. ie. ann arbor.</p>
<p>I think you might be splitting hairs here between a "college town" and a "college city." both are good. if anything, a college city is better since it has more in it to do. </p>
<p>ND's location is far inferior to BC's.</p>
<p>My, My Dukebluedevils, you seem a tad cranky about this whole ND-BC discussion. To say that Boston is not a "college town" is just stupid. There are so many colleges there that Boston's population swells come September every year. While it is a large city, its variety of neighborhoods give it a small town feel. Have you been there? I have lived as a student in South Bend and my family is from Boston. I love ND but trust me on this, there is no comparison whatsoever when it comes to college locations. I will say that I loved the natives in South Bend and Indiana. Very sweet kind people while Bostonians have a bit of an edge (and proud of it) For some students, location is a factor when deciding to go to school and there is nothing wrong with it. For some, the thought of spending 4 years in the snow belt in Indiana is too much to deal with so they choose other options. They are not idiots for doing so.<br>
As for the two college sports programs, what is the point of saying this one stinks in this or that. Can't we acknowledge that they are two great schools without resorting to namecalling. As for rankings and numbers...Please c'mon. The people who are so obsessed with rankings are the same people that ask on this board if they should take their ACT over because they got a 35. Life is more than numbers. It is about what you do with the opportunities that come your way and what you do with them...in either Boston or South Bend.</p>
<p>@irishmary203
no, i do concede the fact that boston is far superior to south bend...in fact most places are superior to south bend...
who's name calling. it's an undeniable fact that notre dame athletics are superior to boston college so just deal with it.</p>
<p>as for rankings, um yeah who cares whether you go to notre dame or some community college. obvioulsy there's no difference and you'll likely get the same job coming out of each school. the point is, at some point you do have to worry about rankings because they correspond to a measurable difference in not only job recruitment but also salary.</p>
<p>still i recognize that while they are both great schools, ND is still a notch or two above BC.</p>
<p>Also, the city of Boston is completely overrated. Trust me, I lived there for 18 years.</p>
<p>I am going to throw it out there that including BC hockey as a benefit over ND hockey is now null and void. A HOME game on FRIDAY with #2 vs. #11 in a rematch of LAST YEAR'S national championship game and BC's arena is 99.999% empty. Fail.</p>
<p>I can't believe I wasted $200.00 to watch ND get obliterated by a less-than-good BC football team. Since when do we not catch punts, throw 3 interceptions, and fail to get 1st downs. Also, I don't think there was one punt or kick-off return in which we didn't get a holding penalty. That was embarrassing. ND is better than that. They handed BC the game on a silver platter. </p>
<p>At least we destroyed them in hockey. Next year's game at ND BETTER be a different outcome.</p>
<p>I was there too, mooseman. There were actually FOUR interceptions, unless I was hallucinating. What bothered me more than the hapless playing, however, was catching sight of Himself on the sidelines (through my binoculars), looking totally detached from the debacle, and as if he was thinking deeply about breakfast...or perhaps an extremely large midnight snack.</p>
<p>You're probably right about the four interceptions. I left with 10 mins to go in the game, so I might have missed one, but I think I said three being in the state of denial.</p>
<p>I totally agree though, ND was NOT ready nor pumped-up for that game. BC on the other hand, couldn't have had more energy. You would think the rivalry would excite ND, but in retrospect, maybe we just have too many rivalries that some lose importance. Next year we need redemption.</p>
<p>The Irish might as well tattoo "Next year we need redemption" on their arms. The football "rivalry" has become a joke. I was at that first game in 1975, when BC was thrilled just to be on the same field as mighty ND. Now they give BC just about as good a game as the U of Rhode Island. ND does have a pretty campus though.</p>
<p>That last post came off a little harsher than I intended. I am full of respect for ND and all it stands for. But I think BC folks are a little tired of people acting like minor differences in SATs are significant. From what I can tell, ND is ahead of BC in SATs by less than what Harvard is ahead of Stanford and Columbia. If anybody wants to make a mountain out of that molehill, go ahead. </p>
<p>And I can understand that ND folks are a bit edgy about the opposite direction in which the 2 schools' football programs are going. You're right that an ND football weekend is about as big a college deal as one can find, but the aura is slowly fading because the product isn't living up to the hype. Even so, BC football will never ever be able to match the ND program overall, because its stadium is half the size and it will always take a back seat to Boston's pro teams.</p>
<p>The silver lining for ND would seem to be that it is no longer considered a football factory, which has allowed its academics to get the credit they deserve.</p>
<p>Admitted at both, enrolled at neither -- but would have chosen BC over ND. Relatively comparable academics, and Boston > South Bend.</p>
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But I think BC folks are a little tired of people acting like minor differences in SATs are significant. From what I can tell, ND is ahead of BC in SATs by less than what Harvard is ahead of Stanford and Columbia. If anybody wants to make a mountain out of that molehill, go ahead.
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<p>Actually, you are quite misinformed. Here are the 25th and 75th percentile SAT scores for Notre Dame and Boston College, compiled recently based on Class of 2011 data at each school:</p>
<p>Boston College 1240 1430
University of Notre Dame 1300 1510</p>
<p>As you can see, Notre Dame's 25th percentile scores, on average, 60 points higher on the SAT than does Boston College's, and ND's 75th percentile scores a whopping 80 points higher. To give you an idea of the magnitude of this difference, let's take a look at Princeton and Yale's 25th-75th percentile scores:</p>
<p>Yale University 1390 1580
Princeton University 1390 1580</p>
<p>The difference between these schools' and ND's 25th percentile (90 points) is pretty close to the difference between ND's and BC's (60 points), and the 75th percentile difference (70 points) is actually smaller than that between ND and BC. Also, the low 25th percentile scores at ND compared to Yale and Princeton can be attributed to the much stronger athletic programs at ND relative to Y and P that allow lower-scoring students to be admitted to the school due to their athletic prowess. So, sir, saying that ND students are essentially equal in intelligence to BC students suggests that Princeton and Yale students, on average, are about equal in intelligence to ND students, a claim I'm sure you would be quick to disagree with. Maybe you shouldn't say things "as far as you can tell" when you have no factual basis for "tell[ing].</p>
<p>On another note, I thought I'd mention that ND's SAT averages trump Georgetown's (1300 1490), giving it the highest 25th-75th SAT ranges of any Catholic university worldwide. And to claim that Boston College is about equivalent to Notre Dame academically is rubbish, simply due to the higher caliber of ND's student body. If the quality of faculty were also taken into account, I'm sure ND's programs would trump BC's by an even greater margin than had already been established from simply examining the SAT scores of the 25th and 75th percentiles.</p>
<p>Airbag, you ADDED the differences in the 25/75 percentile SATs, rather than AVERAGING them. This gives you deceptively large numbers to throw around as the differences between BC and ND students. According to hktk's stats in post #5 above, the students at the 75th percentile at ND outperform BC students at that same percentile by an average of 30 points per type of SAT (reasoning, quant, writing), and at the 25th percentile by 23 points per type of test. That's hardly a blowout, especially considering BC has about 700 more fulltime undergrad students.</p>
<p>According to the US News 2008 rankings guide, Harvard students outperformed Columbia students an average of 25 points per test at the 75th percentile, and 30 points per test at the 25th percentile. Do people really think this alone makes Harvard significantly better than Columbia?</p>