<p>looking for advice…daughter interested in an English/Poli Sci history study. She got a 20k scholarship offer from BU (among others, Tulane, GWU,etc., but no interest in those schools ultimately) but BC is the dream school. Dosen’t it work out that way? Money is a consideration, of course, but when the day is done we could make it work without a scholarship, hopefully. </p>
<p>So question, is BC really that much better of a school than BU?? For $30,000?? She loves Boston, obviously there are differences in the campuses. she has visited once and is going back this weekend with her dad. </p>
<p>Berkeley and Michigan are also in the running. Will be visiting them in the next week or so. I know both are susposed to have amazing English programs. I know that BC’s English program is susposed to be good, I don’t know that it is a strength of BU’s. </p>
<p>BC isn’t a better school than BU period. It’s about the same in quality. Not long ago, BC was considered somewhat worse than BU but Catholic schools generally have risen in public perception and BC has benefitted from the halo effect of doing well in Division I sports. BU is larger but they’re essentially of the same quality. While one may prefer BC - or have some belief that it is “better” - there is certainly not a big dollar difference. Not at all.</p>
<p>BU’s English department is of good quality and is very popular. PoliSci is a normal department but the entire idea of PoliSci has been over-turned by the rise of International Relations as a separate major. IR is one of the most popular majors at BU and thus the entire area gets a lot of resources. As does English, which is also one of the largest majors. (As a note, I highly recommend James Winn as a teacher.)</p>
<p>I’m from Michigan, went there for law school and most of my family went there. Used to live in Ann Arbor. Love it. Would not pay OOS tuition for Michigan - and my daughter has decided not to go there - if there’s a big dollar difference with another good school and if money matters to a family. I would pay for graduate school at Michigan because their grad schools are very highly ranked and grad school rankings actually matter (while undergrad rankings are mostly garbage and don’t have any real meaning except for a handful of schools that everyone already knows). </p>
<p>Berkeley is also great for grad school. I don’t know much about its undergrad programs. I wouldn’t pay OOS for it if there’s a big dollar difference and if money matters to a family.</p>
<p>If your kid got in OOS to Michigan and Berkeley, I’m sure she’ll do very well in college, that she’ll also test well and thus will do well getting into grad school, if that is what she wants.</p>
<p>so helpful, thanks. I had been feeling not as sure about BU as compared to these other schools, but that helped. Maybe she’ll fall in love with it again this weekend. (after deciding she wanted a city school, and getting into NYU, GW, BU, etc., she thinks she may prefer the traditional campus school, which is understandable) Of course she’ll be going to grad school with an English major!!</p>
<p>dkloos, when I first heard of BU’s lack of campus, I was completely turned off. I thought that I wanted a traditional campus, ie. BC, although they are generally in secluded or rural areas. Unlike NYU, which basically has a different building on every block, BU actually has a really nice open campus setting. All of its buildings are bundled together on Comm Ave, which makes it convenient since it has a ton of resources, including the Boston area. After visiting BU, I loved its urban campus feel, since it combined the best of living in a college town (more closely than BC) and had a really nice community of students in an actual campus setting, just without closed borders. </p>
<p>The 20k BU scholarship is definitely a great incentive, possibly saving $80k over a span of four years. Couple that with grad school and it’ll be really expensive for you or her, if you decide to pay full freight. BU and BC have comparable academics, generally.</p>
<p>If it helps, I know many people here who originally had their heart set on BC, but for whatever reasons (money, rejection, etc.) didn’t end up there. I haven’t heard one of them say that they regret the decision. They love BU!</p>
<p>I completely agree with Versii too. The campus vibe is much more palpable here than you would guess. By clustering everything together, BU forms a campus. It’s an untraditional campus, but still a community. We get both a ridiculously great location in Boston and our school. I like that BU has it’s hidden gems too where people lay out or you can easily end up at the Esplanade right next to the Charles. I think a visit will definitely give her the best idea about whether she can envision herself here or not.</p>