Carnegie Mellon vs. Northwestern Pre-Med, Financial, etc.

<p>I just ate an entire bag of popcorn while reading this. I recommend.</p>

<p>hahahahaha</p>

<p>Harvard521 is working on the movie script right now; this is part of the viral marketing campaign. The script is being sold as a Godfather/NSA/black helicopters saga where Julian Assange uncovers the J. Edger Hoover files and links it to NU’s explosive sex-demo secrets that are about to rock the nation.</p>

<p>I’m starting to wonder if this is how Obama ended up getting as far as he did? He certainly is not impressing me as someone with much intelligence. He lacks ability to problem solve, to collaborate with others, has little regard for the will of the majority, and appears completely inept when it comes to simple financial matters.</p>

<p>Hi everyone. I just submitted my application as a prospective transfer student to the College of Communications at Northwestern. I would be coming in as a junior and applied to the Communication Studies major. Does anyone have any input on how competitive this particular major is?</p>

<p>Sembrian,
I guess ■■■■■■ bring out ■■■■■■. Doesn’t impress you? not much intelligence? Maybe you were just trying to put an end of harvard521’s nonsense by posting something that was equally ridiculous. Please take it over to the Rush Limbaugh show. I won’t get into how ill-informed you appear to be and would just ask you to try to concentrate and post comments that are in some way related to the thread. If your intention is just to incite, this really isn’t the place.</p>

<p>*Have fun at CMU harvard521! Now NU can save that “free-ride” for someone who actually needs the money, not someone whose income bracket is >$120,000. *</p>

<p>Goldtortoise, do you honestly believe that someone who earns over $120K a year can afford NU? I assure you, there will be not a penny of aid from NU, so this supposedly “rich” family better have saved up a quarter million in college savings. </p>

<p>Cost of attendance this year, as quoted by NU to my son, is over $57K. That’s almost half of the stated $120K yearly income. Over four years, well in excess of $250K, with even modest tuition inflation.</p>

<p>Doesn’t greater than mean over 120K? Couldn’t it indicate 500K just as easily? I think it was just a generalization.</p>

<p>Sorry if I jumped. 120K seemed like a pretty specific number. I was merely fighting the generalization that people who earn more than $100K are able to be “full payers,” which is pretty much what NU expects them to be.</p>

<p>@dumbparent</p>

<p>I got the >$120k value from a previous post by harvard521 in an admissions thread and that was his self-reported family income. Sorry if I came off as rude, but it just irked me that (if true, of course) someone with that high of an income would get a full-ride when my I didn’t get a full-ride (or even near full ride) with a family income of $75k.</p>

<p>Also, I’m aware that even a family earning $120k would struggle to pay full tuition at NU–trust me I’m grateful for every cent I’ve received.</p>

<p>goldtortoise,</p>

<p>Thanks. All the exhaustive reading I’ve done on CC seems to point to one thing: There is a bracket of elite schools between the Ivies (with their big endowments who give merit aid across the board) and the “rest of the world” (healthy mix of need and merit aid, and somewhat lower costs to begin with) typified by NU, Boston College, Duke, NYU that are just too darned expensive for almost anyone in the middle class. Stingy on merit aid, they rely on people who don’t have literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on hand to become full payers (or near full-payers) by digging deep into home equity and/or taking out huge, private parent loans. And I suppose it must be working, because at the same time they are raising the COA by 6-8 percent a year or more, and their application rates are still crazy high.</p>

<p>@dumbparent, I’ve never heard of Ives giving merit aids these days. Where did you hear that? Also, FYI, as of 2010, only four Ivies have endowment funds larger than NU according to the table below.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nacubo.org/Documents/research/2010NCSE_Public_Tables_Endowment_Market_Values_Final.pdf[/url]”>Page not Found;

<p>NU gives out few if any merit scholarships (not counting National merit pittances) and has financial aid on par with or superior to many of its peer (Ivy league) institutions. </p>

<p>I’ve also NEVER heard of NU compared to NYU for aid. NYU is notorious for having virtually no aid whatsoever, whereas NU is very generous for those within certain thresholds. The reputation for poor aid is largely earned by whining from people who just miss the cutoff or have a tremendous assets they dont want to spend, or very high income but a mortgage they can’t afford.</p>

<p>wellwellwell, just what I’ve read on CC, which admittedly is not a scientific resource. I don’t know from personal experience. It seems some elite schools, in addition to need-based aid, choose to spend more endowment dollars on merit aid than others. It’s a free market; they’re entitled to spend their endowment dollars as they and their trustees see fit.</p>

<p>Arbiter, I referred only to merit-based aid. I’m glad to hear that NU is doing well by those whom they determine to have need.</p>

<p>@dumbparent</p>

<p>just FYI most elite private schools (ie: Ivies, NU, etc.) only give out need-based aid and offer no merit aid to their students.</p>

<p>The big Ivies (Harvard, Priceton, and Yale) claim to ask for an EFC of 10% of family income. So an income of $120,000 would net an EFC of $12K. This is substantially more affordable than the aid package offered by NU. My son was admitted to Dartmouth and did not nearly receive an aid package in this range but was still $10K better than NU.</p>