Another reason is that Northeastern offers excellent merit aid and now offers good financial aid, whereas Boston U doesn’t (either merit nor financial aid). It means there are fewer incentives for students with high stats to enroll or possibilities for lower income students.
@justpassingthru I grew up in the Boston area too. I am floored by how selective Northeastern has become. My sister went there. She had a high GPA and SATs and got practically a full ride to Northeastern. They were very eager for her to attend the school. She was a great student and graduated college with a 3.9. I doubt she would have received the same admission/scholarship offer today. I was admitted too, but went to UMass Amherst because I received a better financial packet there. But, Northeastern was primarily a safety school when I was growing up. Our family had very little money growing up so my sister and I looked for schools that gave generous financial and merit aid.
What londondad says makes sense and I am aware of how much students value location in an attractive city these days, which, in my opinion, has elevated schools like NYU, GW, and USC to a much higher selectivity tier (some would say a much higher selectivity tier than they deserve.)
I know a recently retired Northeastern faculty member who argued that, based on the way it treats its faculty and its use of adjuncts, Northeastern does not deserve to be so highly ranked. I also know that it accepts students and then sends them abroad to places like Berlin their first semester in college–which is ridiculous and did not work very well for the first-year student I know who just returned from Berlin and will soon start at NU for real. They could tell such students to just wait to start college until January but then they might lose them to a school that actually has room for them and have a few empty beds (and a few fewer dollars) second semester.
My understanding is that despite the excellent aid that jmom16 reports, Northeastern students tend to graduate with high debt but my info could be old.
Also, I work in the higher ed research community and there are simply very few programs at Northeastern (criminal justice and regional economic development being exceptions) that can compare to BU, Tufts, Brandeis, etc.–in either the humanities, social sciences, or natural sciences. It is just not a research powerhouse–not yet anyway, but is approaching or exceeding those schools in admissions selectivity.
OTOH, the coop program is indeed attractive and Northeastern has several programs that few other schools have. For example, if you want to do an undergraduate degree in physical therapy, Northeastern, I understand, is the place.
@justpassingthru We did take a long hard look at Northeastern for my son given its convenient Boston location and generous merit aid. However, we found it to be the least academic and intellectual when we compared it to a number of similarly rated schools.