<p>Tufts is Div III in the NESCAC, with 10 other LACs:</p>
<p>Amherst
Williams
Wesleyan
Colby
Bates
Bowdoin
Middlebury
Hamilton
Connecticut
Trinity</p>
<p>The sad part is that even when competing with schools half it's size, Trinity & Amherst (sometimes Williams) are always trampling over the Jumbos.</p>
<p>Northwestern has a WORLD-renowned business school and is one of the top-10 schools producing the most # of fortune 500 CEOs. The economics department is consistently in the top-10. "NU is not very well known in New England"? well, maybe among the people you hang out with? Are they business types or people in the knows or high schoolers/college students? </p>
<p>Northwestern is highly regarded by top consulting firms:
<a href="http://www.vault.com/nr/newsmain.jsp?nr_page=3&ch_id=252&article_id=14364421&cat_id=1223%5B/url%5D">http://www.vault.com/nr/newsmain.jsp?nr_page=3&ch_id=252&article_id=14364421&cat_id=1223</a>
It's listed as a "core school" for 4 out of the 6 firms (same as Dartmouth). Only HYPS are listed more.</p>
<p>Others:
In law: almost all of the current SC Justices went to Stanford/Ivy Law schools but John Stevens is an exception--he got his JD at Northwestern.
In engineering: NU's mat sci was the first materical science academic department in the world. It's still one of the very best today.
In journalism: enough said, lol!</p>
<p>Other than IR, NU is ranked higher than Tufts in everything else (as far as I know). I can go on to list many top-20 programs that NU has but I am not gonna do that here. Even in medicine (med school), the field that Tufts fans regard as their strength, NU is ranked higher. According to US News, peer assessment scores (reputation) for Northwestern and Tufts are:
Northwestern 4.4
Tufts 3.7
Northwestern is ranked right up with Dartmouth and Brown, without even being an Ivy. Tufts got 3.7--0.7 lower than Northwestern. That's bigger than the difference between Northwestern and Harvard (4.4 vs 4.9). Tufts is a solid school but to argue Tufts is just the same as Northwestern in prestige seems far-fetched to me.</p>
<p>I often disagree with Sam and I think he uses grad statistics to justify undergraduate superiority, but he's right when it come to Northwestern and Tufts. NU is much higher regraded in academia and in the real world.</p>
<p>In Seoul, Korea</p>
<p>Harvard
MIT, Yale, Stanford
Princeton, Columbia
Berkeley</p>
<p>Nobody knows these colleges...
Dartmouth
Brown
Duke
Cornell
UPenn
JHU
CalTech
Northwestern
WUSTL</p>
<p>I think some of you are misunderstanding my words. I regard NWU very highly and almost ended up going there. I think it has an excellent reputation, which is definitely deserved. My point was merely that athletics DOES affect the general <em>popularity</em> of a school (maybe not with knowledgeable people on CC, but regular , everyday people). I don't believe that athletics affects the prestige of a school with the general person, just the popularity. (Of course athletics is just one of many factors in popularity of a school for the general public.)</p>
<p>I've lived in Chicago and in Boston (as well as lots of other places). I think Tufts and Northwestern are a lot closer than some of you think they are. It doesn't do much good to compare Northwestern's business school to Tufts' because Tufts doesn't have one. That's like saying Northwestern is better than CalTech because NU's business school is better. If you compare the things they both do, they both do them exceptionally well, and if one is better than the other, it's by a little bit...it's not a blowout. Also, I don't see what's controversial at all about claiming that Northwestern's name recognition and visibility are aided by its membership in the Big 10. It seems obvious that all the free publicity would help NU in attracting students and faculty, and similarly, Tufts' low sports profile gives it little or no aid.</p>
<p>If Northwestern happened to be in suburban Boston, the top colleges in the area would still be Harvard/MIT. Then there would be a significant gap, and they would be followed by Northwestern, Tufts, Brandeis, etc. It WOULDN'T be a case of the top colleges in the area being Harvard/MIT/Northwestern, then a gap, then Tufts, Brandeis, BC, etc.</p>
<p>I've lived in Chicago and even longer in Boston. My experience is that in terms of reputation Northwestern is halfway between Harvard and Tufts.</p>
<p>“I don't see what's controversial at all about claiming that Northwestern's name recognition and visibility are aided by its membership in the Big 10. It seems obvious that all the free publicity would help NU in attracting students and faculty, and similarly, Tufts' low sports profile gives it little or no aid.”</p>
<ul>
<li>I’ll disregard the fact that pretty much every conceivable ranking puts Northwestern ahead of Tufts and say that people put way too much stock in sports conference membership. I’m not claiming that Northwestern does not receive greater popularity because of sports, in fact, Northwestern’s applications spiked in 1997 after it went to the Rose Bowl. However, I also don’t believe any faculty members would choose to work at a school because of how recognized it is due to sports. Competing at sports on the national level, in general, helps any school. Conference membership does not matter, having a sports team that is a contender in any of the money making sports does.</li>
</ul>
<p>I'm not saying faculty (or even a lot of students) would be attracted to NU because of the sports per se, it would seem natural for the widespread fame of NU to be a "plus" when it's compared to much-less-famous schools with roughly comparable academics and prestige. I mean ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL, who would say, "Gee, these two schools have about the same quality...I think I'd prefer less-well-known one...the one that 2% of the population has heard of over the one that 30% of the population has heard of"?</p>
<p>And I think there is no doubt that conference affiliation (Big 10) aids its fame. A place like Virginia Tech was a relative unknown until it got into the Big East confernce, and got some high-profile rivalries and bowl games (same with Boston College and Florida State, both of which stumbled around in relative obscurity as independents). And VaTech is even more prominent now that it's in the ACC. It would be interesting to hear how conference affiliation has affected a school like Texas Christian U, which went from being a doormat in the famous now-defunct Southwest Conference to a winner in whatever junior varsity conference they are in this week.</p>
<p>Slipper, I don't disagree with your post # 87. And if you're right, that puts Tufts pretty close to NU...it's not a landslide by any means.</p>
<p>what is your point, tourguide? yes, Northwestern is well known in part for being part of the Big Ten, does that invalidate the fact that it outranks every Tufts program with the exception of IR?</p>
<p>People have been having a lot of trouble with subtleties of late. Here are my points:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Comparing Tufts to NU is not like comparing Oklahoma State to Harvard. They are much much closer than that. Say you had lunch with two guys with bachelor's degrees in math or whatever--one from Tufts and one from NU. It's not like one would probably be wowing you with insight and the other would be having trouble unfolding his napkin. In fact I'd like to hear what sort of tangible difference there might be between the average grads of each school.</p></li>
<li><p>If indeed NU gets the nod in lots of different rankings, many of which involve stats that can be influenced by "fame," it would seem wacky to me not to admit that in those categories the apples/oranges aspects of the two schools favor NU (it's larger, has Div I sports, is in a major conference, etc.). "Invalidate" is WAY too strong a word, and seems to suggest a black-and-white difference. I'm just saying NU is aided (probably very slightly for faculty, a bit more with students) by the fame that comes from sports, whereas Tufts is not.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>If you take a look at the Collegeboard site, and compare the entering SAT scores of NWU and Tufts, they are virtually identical (w/ I believe Tufts being ever so slightly higher). As well, Tufts is also slightly more selective than NWU. You can't be telling me that 15,500 top students this year applied, with an overall 26% admit rate so that they could go to an inferior school. Magazine rankings aside, Tufts holds its' head well along with other top schools. CC'ers go on about the amount of anti-NWU discussion that goes on on these boards, but you guys should take a look at the amount of anti-Tufts comments, even when the academic evidence (pointless rankings aside) supports Tufts position as an elite university.</p>
<p>NU has about 18,300 applicants this year. The acceptance rate is gonna be around 26-27% also. Note: they didn't even use common application.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tufts.edu/alumni/magazine/winter2006/features/feature3.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.tufts.edu/alumni/magazine/winter2006/features/feature3.html</a> For the class of 2009, Tufts' average was 1399 while Northwestern's average was 1402. Not that I think there's much difference but since you "believed" Tufts was "slightly higher", I would like to provide stats to prove your belief was baseless. </p>
<p>Why can't you just do a 5-min research before you make a claim like that???</p>
<p>Tufts undergrad only has arts and sciences and engineering schools. The difference would be larger if only the stats for the arts and sciences and engineering schools at Northwestern are considered; their music/education/communications (where performance studies/film/drama/communication studies, not journalism, majors are) schools have lower scores as their admission is based heavily on related ECs/talents rather than test scores.</p>
<p>TourGuide446,</p>
<p>Regarding NU athletics aiding NU, have you thought about how the athletes drag down their SAT average? Even NU's athletes have just about the highest SAT among Div-1 teams, their average is still quite a bit lower (200 points or so) than the university average. ;)</p>
<p>Honestly, I never hear people in New England mention Northwestern, and very, very rarely in New York. No, I don't hang out with businesspeople often. I don't know exactly what they think. But in my limited experience the businesspeople in Boston are very provincial and can't even see past BC/Northeastern, whereas in New York there's a scramble/obsession with Ivies and elite business schools like Stern. Neither Tufts nor Northwestern seem to be much of a factor for them. </p>
<p>The one context in which Northwestern comes up in the Northeast is journalism. Since Tufts is big in medicine, a larger field, and has more regional graduates, it's more of a household name. </p>
<p>What's more, I think people in California and the Midwest need to realize that people on the East Coast take schools from other regions much less seriously in general than the people living in those regions. Even highly elite schools like Chicago and Stanford are often passed over in college discussions. I'd never even heard of WUStL until coming to fora like this one. It seems like the focus for most highly qualified students nationwide is on elite eastern schools plus their own regional schools. What this means for the Northeast is a reduced focus on any school outside the region, and articles in NYT and other New York-centric media every few months with taglines like "you don't need Harvard or Swarthmore- kids actually receive quality educations down south/in the midwest/at the Claremont Colleges!" etc. There's a reason Northeasterners constantly need to be reminded of the fact...</p>
<p>
[quote]
I'd never even heard of WUStL until coming to fora like this one.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>looks someone got an A in Latin...</p>
<p>“Honestly, I never hear people in New England mention Northwestern, and very, very rarely in New York.”</p>
<ul>
<li>If the school is not HYPSM, people probably don’t know much about it academically. The further away you get from a region wherein a school lies, and the fame of that school dwindles. This is not something for just Northwestern. It happens to pretty much every school but HYPSM and to a lesser extent Duke.</li>
</ul>
<p>“ No, I don't hang out with businesspeople often. I don't know exactly what they think. But in my limited experience the businesspeople in Boston are very provincial and can't even see past BC/Northeastern, whereas in New York there's a scramble/obsession with Ivies and elite business schools like Stern. Neither Tufts nor Northwestern seem to be much of a factor for them.”</p>
<p>-The same can be said for Northwestern and UChicago in Chicago, for rice in Houstion, Emory in Atlanta, and so on. </p>
<p>”What's more, I think people in California and the Midwest need to realize that people on the East Coast take schools from other regions much less seriously in general than the people living in those regions.”</p>
<p>-Honestly, who cares what people in the Northeast think? :rolleyes:</p>
<p>“I'd never even heard of WUStL until coming to fora like this one.”</p>
<p>-Ok, you were uneducated on a particular school. So what?</p>
<p>“It seems like the focus for most highly qualified students nationwide is on elite eastern schools plus their own regional schools.”</p>
<p>-Elite eastern schools are regional, save HYPM. </p>
<p>“What this means for the Northeast is a reduced focus on any school outside the region”</p>
<p>-Again, this is for most regions, not just the Northeast.</p>
<p>I wouldn't even consider Stanford an unquestionable choice for an easterner. One rarely hears of east coast people journeying in that direction. By contrast, a considerable number of Columbians (maybe like 30-40% of US admits) are from California, and some of its largest and most active alumni clubs are in LA/SF. Of course, I'm not saying this holds true for Tufts. I think both Tufts and NW are highly regional schools. But I think more people in Chcago or California have heard of/highly consider Tufts than people in the Northeast with regards to Northwestern.</p>
<p>You mentioned in NYC, " there's obsession with Ivies and elite business schools like Stern". But Northwestern has a elite business school. Most rankings put Northwestern ahead of Stern. Business Week had put Northwestern as #1 few times! Unless you are saying they don't read published b-school ranking while being obssessed with business schools somehow. </p>
<p>Whether average people know about Northwestern isn't that important. I also don't care how some people have heard of Northwestern simply because they'd watched the Wildcats on ESPN at some point. Most teams shown on ESPN aren't academically elite schools anyway. Heck, probably more people have heard of Oklahoma or Texas than most in the top-25! Like my link shows, NU is a elite school considered by many top consulting firms. That's what matters. When I graduated, 3 people from Hong Kong (where I came from) were getting biz consulting/finance jobs in Boston/NYC when they graduated and held only student visas. Most firms would prefer citizens/PR simply because of the paperwork and cost associated with hiring temporary workers. The guy working with hedge funds didn't even have a econ degree but an industrial engineering degree. Look at that link of recruiting again, only HYPS are listed as core schools more than Northwestern. There aren't really that many schools on that whole list either. That should speak volume.</p>
<p>"By contrast, a considerable number of Columbians (maybe like 30-40% of US admits) are from California, and some of its largest and most active alumni clubs are in LA/SF. Of course, I'm not saying this holds true for Tufts. I think both Tufts and NW are highly regional schools"</p>
<p>-You think Columbia is not a regional school? Do you have any proof? I don't see how Columbia is any less regional than Northwestern.</p>