I have to disagree with you about Georgia Tech"s prestige. In the engineering world, it is in the same class as MIT and Caltech.
That being said, it is a stem school with very few majors. There are not a lot of options if you go there and decide you don’t want to be an engineer. Northeastern has a great reputation as well and is in Boston which is a plus.
Both schools will produce highly qualified and sought after engineers. For me, the question would be down to fit and finances.
Both are outstanding options.
My first instinct is to say hands-down GaTech, but . . . it really depends on the student! If you visited Northeastern here during the covid era, you probably didn’t get the full experience. The campus is a busy high-energy place when at full capacity, and it’s baked right in to Boston.
But here with limited people on campus and limited outdoor activity, the campus has a ghost-town feel to it that makes it much less appealing.
For prestige, it’s easy to pick GaTech. But I can easily imagine students preferring NE in this situation. Either will prepare a student well for work or for graduate study.
EE is such a broad field that there can be considerable variation in required and optional course work across students even in the same school; different schools can have variations in what is available. So checking what upper level course work and subareas are available can matter.
One of the biggest considerations when Northeastern is one of the options (and the other colleges are not Drexel or Cincinnati) should be whether Northeastern’s co-op-centered curriculum is a plus or minus. GT does have optional co-ops, so it may be better on that front for a student undecided now about doing co-op(s).
My GT student has two internships under their belt, with numerous others pending. They seem to be interviewing all the time. Each internship is/was with a major, nationally known entity, and they are paid, with additional perks thrown in (travel, gifts, Mac laptop, etc). My student has never been interested in co-ops and does not plan to do one, as it appears unnecessary. They don’t want to commit early on to one employer when it is likely that an even better one will come along down the road. They also enjoy the variety of working with different employers in different places. That said, numerous friends are engaged in co-ops (also with major companies/agencies) and loving it. It’s a personal preference.
They have had the experience of doing early round interviews en masse, with kids from other schools, and the interviewer focused almost exclusively on the GT kids and basically ignored the others. This was troubling for my kid, as it seemed unfair to the others. It was a life lesson even though they benefitted from it. We feel lucky every day to be a part of GT.
Obviously, you can’t go wrong with GT. But NEU has it’s own flavor to offer. My son graduated with a EE/CE degree. Having 3 co-ops with different companies allowed him to learn about the kind of work and kind of company he was interested in working for. Also, there is something almost magical about going to college in Boston. I think your son needs to be clear if he can handle the intensity of GT. Son graduated in 2018 and at the time only 10% of the EE graduates were female so that was a definite negative. A lot of woman in the Engineering School, just not EE, hopefully that has changed.
Glad to know your kid is so happy 
@scritch Has there been a decision. Curious to hear .
I’m pretty sure I remember seeing in another thread that his son chose GT.
We decided on GT over Northeastern, moving it into the final set for consideration. Then on Ivy Day he got into Cornell. We visited Rowan(again), Cornell, and Georgia Tech all within a week, he decided on GT. He is so excited!
Thanks for your help, everyone!
Congrats to you and your son! You will love GT! Don’t forget to go to Family Day in October. It’s great fun. They are hoping to resume in-person festivities.
I LOVE that your student chose his college based on FIT and not on name brand or perceived prestige. I’m sure you already have had people ask “He got into an Ivy and isn’t going, what?”. I have identical twins - the one with higher grades had absolutely no interest in an Ivy at all. I think some of it is she would view herself as not good enough or low self esteem, or whatever but both are false but it’s how she perceives herself so it is what it is. She chose instead to go to a public university but one like GaTech that rivals the Ivies for her program. It is the perfect fit for her and she has blossomed beautifully. Her twin on the other hand had to get out of this one’s shadow. Always feeling second fiddle to her and is in COE at Cornell incidentally. It is not for everyone. My other daughter definitely wouldn’t like it or that environment, but the one there thrives on it. Likes being pushed, etc. For her, it is the perfect for her. Did I care that the other didn’t go to an Ivy? No way! Do I care that this one is? No way! Is one better than the other - absolutely not.
Your son will shine and clearly his visits paid off and he found his place. I wish everyone took their decisions to heart as your family did and really looked at everything because as a parent looking at the two programs, there are some things that I see are a lot more impressive at the public my daughter is at than the Ivy the other daughter is at. While the name will always help her, there are still a lot of things they can work on. They have however, done a phenomenal job with Covid that can’t be beat, whereas the public has not. To some degree that balanced the scales a lot! I know have my last child going off to college to Michigan Engineering and will see yet a whole other perspective. It can all drive one right to the loony bin as I’m learning.
Congrats to your son!!
Congrats! I will also be attending GT next year for CompE! I also gave up Northeastern, some Ivys and CMU! so excited for you!