<p>I posted this on the Northeastern page so I might as well put it here too. </p>
<p>I keep seeing Northeastern’s name come up. I always thought of it as a safety for BU but have been told that is not true. The main difference that I am aware of is that Northeastern is a 5 year co op program. Please compare/contrast these schools so that we may become more aware of the reality of Northeastern.</p>
<p>it depends on what you want to study
also if you got any kind of scholarship or financial aid I would decide based on that</p>
<p>lol, you can’t just compare two schools randomly…</p>
<p>You need to know what you are looking for (Major, activities, programs, etc.) NEU is known for the co-op program but you can find internships at BU/Boston while balancing the workload if you manage your time efficiently.</p>
<p>We can’t really answer your question if there are no specifics. If your deciding between majors, check rankings since they give a general sense of the school’s success in that field</p>
<p>Twenty years ago, Northeastern was a safety school for BU hopefuls. In fact, thirty years ago Boston College was a safety school for BU hopefuls. That is no longer the case for either school. </p>
<p>In the past twenty years, Northeastern has moved from being a mostly commuter school serrving Massachusetts students to being a residential campus seeking a national student body. A prime motivator of this change was the development of UMass-Boston as a full university. Prior to 1990, UMass-Boston was just a liberal arts school. Northeastern dropped its “no frills”, low tuition model and upscaled. It offers mamy opportunities that are not availasble at any of the UMass campuses. Actually, BU and BC made the same transition in the 1970’s and 1980’s. </p>
<p>Part of Northeasterns’s rise is due to actual improvements: the construction of a beautiful, defined urban campus, the emphasis on internationalization of the curriculum, the expansion of cooperative education into the experiential learning model etc. The other part of the rise is due to a greater recognition of what Northeastern has always offered: a solid professional education interspersed with coop work periods. In the 1990’s, Northeastern appointed its first outsider president, Richard Freeland from MIT. After ten years, he moved on and Joseph Aoun from USC was appointed with a mandate that includes the globalization of the school. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.northeastern.edu/admissio...lNowGlobal.pdf[/url]”>http://www.northeastern.edu/admissio...lNowGlobal.pdf</a></p>
<p>About ten years ago, Northeastern started offering a four year coop option in many programs. That option was recently expanded to virtually all programs (pharmacy, BSIB are exceptions). The four year coop option is now actively marketed to prospective students. Most students are still choosing the five year option though.</p>
<p>Boston University, on the other hand, has been stagnant for decades. The controversial 25 year presidency of John Silber (there should really be term limits for university presidents) resulted in few innovations. After Silber’s departure, there was a “puppet president” as he was called since Silber had been appointed Chancellor, a new position. When BU finally sought an outsider as president, the search was botched. A new president was announced with much PR hoopla. A month later it was announced that the incoming president would not be coming to the university and that BU would pay him a $1.8 million termination fee.</p>
<p>Finally, BU selected Robert Brown as president and he has finally started to turn BU around. In 2010 BU started an Honors College, something that Northeastern has had since 1987. The BU College of Engineering started an optional coop program (I wonder where they got that idea!). BU is of course a reseach power house due largely to it medical school, which Northeastern and BC both lack.</p>
<p>Presently, the freshman profiles of Northeastern and BU are simlar with Northeastern being a bit higher in test scores. According to the Common Data Sets for 2010: Northeastern’s mid 50% SAT is 1820-2070, for BU it is 1770-2050 for SAT’s; 28-31 for Northeastern and 26-30 for BU in the ACT. Those are the figures for students actually enrolled. </p>
<p>Northeastern will never offer the “traditional college experience” that BU offers. The comings and goings of students due to coop will always make Northeastern unique. Also, the purely academic orientation of a humanities student may be better served at BU, although the options offered through experiential learning (besides coop) attempt to address the needs of this type of student.</p>