“3.) He has 4 younger siblings. I believe his concern over our family’s financial well being might have played a role. Choosing NU is more or less making a bet on us continuing to be poor.”
Then that’s an awesome reason to select it. If finances are a consideration — well, then that’s what it is - you can’t spend what you don’t have.
Didn’t we explicitly say upfront that we were talking in the absence of financial considerations and/or special MSU-only programs?
Congratulations to you and your son. He shows a maturity and regard for his siblings that goes a long way. My older son showed that same concern for his younger brother in making decisions about college. MSU is very well regarded and higher ranked than flagships in other states. Virginia has similar issues- William and Mary and VT are well regarded but not considered the flagship.
There is an incredibly obnoxious poster on the U of M board that calls it Moo U. I’ve heard it many times IRL. I’ve never understood the need to put other schools down. IMO, it’s more of a reflection of one’s own insecurities than the school 
You want insecurity about a school, look at this thread. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1772478-inferiority-complex-p1.html It’s insane.
@Much2learn, if you’re willing to fund an expansion of Kellogg in to the undergrad space, feel free to donate some money, since this seems to be a big issue for you.
Again, NU undergrads place well in to all the traditional industries that b-school students go in to already (besides accounting), so where’s the pressing rationale?
It certainly doesn’t seem like current NU stakeholders feel like there’s a pressing reason to restart a full undergraduate business school.
Speaking of which, can you even name the last school to start or re-start an undergraduate business school? I can’t. Which indicates that doing so may be a tad more difficult (or not as worth it) as you assume. If starting an undergraduate business school is such a great thing, why haven’t the rest of the M7 without undergraduate business (Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, and Chicago) started or restarted a full-fledged undergraduate business school? (Columbia does have an undergraduate business major now.) After all, all of those schools have great MBA programs that they can leverage as well.
BTW, NU also has the Kellogg MSMS program (only open to NU undergrads) which is another avenue for NU undergrads to gain a business education.
"Rejecting two of the finest schools in the country for a state school that isn’t even a flagship is a decision that defies comprehension. "
I want to go back to this, because no one has said that the kids at MSU are all idiots or the classes are all simplistic or that it isn’t a nice looking campus with lots of great kids or, or, or. USNWR rankings aren’t everything, of course, but they do give indications of “bands” of quality. And in this case, you’re comparing #85 with two that are solidly in the top #20. And I do feel that that’s enough of a band of quality difference to be concerned with. AGAIN, absent financial considerations, or absent a specific program only at that school.
However, it is certainly possible that larger schools, particularly state flagships or lieutenant-flagships (like MSU), have wider bands than smaller schools.
Different states’ public university structure can also cause the bands to vary. For example, California has 32 public universities for bachelor’s degree seeking students, and there is generally a perceived hierarchy of desirability and selectivity, resulting in relatively narrow bands at each one. In contrast, Arizona has only 3 public universities, with the two larger ones being seen as roughly equal in desirability and selectivity, so they have much wider bands.
Sure, I’d be disappointed, at least in the shortrun. None of us likes to think that our child is passing up a tremendous opportunity.
But time will tell. And MSU is a fine institution with a vast number of opportunities for your son. If he is half as well-rounded as he seems, he will excel there and stand out, perhaps even in ways that might have not been as possible at NU or the other schools he declined. By the time parents weekend rolls around, I predict your disappointment will be long gone!
I went there and I call it “Moo U”. Affectionately. And as a kid from the big city, I actually learned to milk a cow there! (I was a biochem/physiology major and I took Mammary Physiology, where I also learned to diagnose and treat mastitis and milk a rat, to name just a couple of interesting skills. Because I was NOT going to have spent 4 years at Moo U and NOT have learned to milk a cow, darn it!)
It really is okay to be disappointed even at the same time as you are happy for someone. One of the wisest people I’ve ever known would often say that emotions are not logical. Nor are emotions morally right or wrong in and of themselves–the morals are related to how you act upon your emotions.
When I saw your cost of attendance was $5,000 a year at Northwestern, this was the missing puzzle piece. With four kids, you are making some tougher budget choices than many families on this forum. As parents, we’d always like to give our kids the moon and ignore the cost. You were going to try to make Northwestern work, but your son made it easy on you. You and your wife should be proud of the son you’ve raised.
A few stats:
SAT Range:
Northwestern: 2080 - 2320
MSU: 1430 - 1850
Graduation Rate 6 Years:
Northwestern: 94%
MSU: 77%
Student-to-Faculty Ratio:
Northwestern: 7:1
MSU: 17:1
Endowment per Full-Time Student:
Northwestern: $99,457 per Student
MSU: $40,706 per Student
This isn’t intended as a snub to MSU, but neither the students nor the educational resources are in the same league as Northwestern. Excepting financial analysis (by the parent, not the child), I agree with @Pizzagirl, @Consolation, and others that this decision defies comprehension.
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It defies comprehension only if going to the “best” college that admits you (best as defined by the stats you give) is the goal. The DC must be using other criteria to decide.
Children make all kinds of decisions, and parents usually do well respecting them, but when I look at the research success of the faculty in my field at NW and MSU, there is no comparison. NW is highly ranked for many reasons. I would be disappointed, too.
I get whiplash from CC. On one hand, HYPSM are the bomb and Cornell is a “lower Ivy” (sniff sniff) but on the other hand -NU/Amherst/similar schools and MSU are now six of one, half a dozen of the other?
Well, it is May 4, nothing more to say or to be done at this point, except to wish the OP’s kid the best four years.
While this discussion has devolved into a typical CC “school X is better”/“school Y is just as good” pissing match, the original post did bring another issue to mind for me that I’d be interested in hearing some other opinions on—the little fish/big pond vs. big fish/little pond dilemma.
Say your child is the proverbial bright, hard-working “high stats kid” (say 3.9UWGPA/34ACT) but is neither a genius nor a laser-focused, super competitive type. Are you disappointed when he passes up a “great” school (say top 30) where he will be in the middle for a “very good” school (say top 60) where he is in the top 25% or even top 10%?
At what point and for what kind of kid is the “lesser” school a better choice? And are you disappointed in a kid who doesn’t want to “swim with the sharks” (to extend the analogy just a little too far 
)?
This gets down to cost then. If my kid didn’t want to swim with the sharks, then she could go to our cheaper option state school. I wouldn’t pay 60K for her to go to a mediocre private or OOS school if she had an option to go to a more rigorous school.
I can sympathize with OP. For quite awhile it looked like there was a good chance that DS was going to choose the non-flagship state university over one of the 2 private colleges we thought were a much better fit for him. (The state U is extremely good, but not for his interests. I think he was tempted by the full ride even though we’d told him he didn’t need to concern himself with that.) My husband and I spent a lot of time behind the scenes practicing how to be supportive if he chose the state university. In the end, he chose the school we thought was the best fit, so we didn’t have to put our acting skills into practice, but we would have.
Would/should parents be disappointed when a high-stats kid chooses a less rigorous or less competitive school? And not necessarily “mediocre” just “less rigorous.” (I like that descriptor better than “less prestigious” because it speaks to the student experience rather than the branding.)
I think when one is fortunate enough to have parents who can give the gift of education, one should take advantage of that opportunity.