<p>I'm making my college decision in the next few days and this is a question that has come up a lot, but there doesn't really seem to be an accepted answer. If you go by certain rankings, which I've heard to be somewhat unreliable, Northwestern is ranked above some of the ivies like Cornell and Brown. At the same time, some people say that the ivies are still on a different level. So how does Northwestern stack up against the ivies in terms of academics, prestige, job placement, etc?</p>
<p>I think your average American has heard of Cornell or Brown more so than Northwestern. Among academics and employers, however, I would say Northwestern is as respected as Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth or Penn.</p>
<p>jeg</p>
<p>There are some who believe that there is an Ivy Cachet, and others who think it’s small if it exists at all (at least with the so-called “lower Ivies”).</p>
<p>Personal experience – two year ago, our daughter was choosing between Cornell and Northwestern and decided to go to NU. It was a pure ‘fit’ decision. As parents, my wife and I both felt that the reputational diffrence between the two schools was small, and that fit was more important.</p>
<p>Two years later, I’m positive Northwestern was the right decision for her for many reasons. For other kids, Cornell would absolutely be the right choice. Also, FWIW – I’m a Cornell Alum, so there was certainly no Northwestern bias in the process.</p>
<p>Send me a note if you have any questions for a parent who’s been there.</p>
<p>Why are people so obsessed with prestige? NU has better sports, in possibly the best city in the US, has a beautiful campus, excels at a wider variety than most Ivies. Ivies are smaller, not as into sports, in towns with completely different vibes, with completely different strengths. Which one fits you socially? Are you doing journalism? Then NU’s obviously the best choice. Are you doing business? Then Wharton would be the best. To me there’s very few college decisions that should be hard to make when money isn’t a factor.</p>
<p>Fit wise, those are three very different schools. If money isn’t an issue, then this is a gut check decision, imho.</p>
<p>I went to graduate school at NU. Loved it. I love Brown, though it wasn’t really a school I considered during undergrad. If I had it to do over, Brown is the one school I would have gone to for undergrad.</p>
<p>That said, Cornell is an amazing school, similar in some respects to NU, and you have to ask yourself, at that point, Ithaca or Evanston?</p>
<p>I like both for different reasons.</p>
<p>Did you visit? How did you feel in each place. In this case you get to ask those kind of #firstworldquestions. Good luck. You can’t make a bad choice here.</p>
<p>As I’ve said many times before, my daughter was admitted to Yale and chose Northwestern. It still upsets my husband and my daughter is a senior. She’s never looked back, she liked both as far as campus, kids, etc. but NU has a better program for her. </p>
<p>Things are so different today than even 10 years ago, most Ivies don’t have the same impact they used to. It’s not the college it’s the student that makes the experience and the final outcome (4 years later) what it is.</p>
<p>Choose the school where you fit best and that has the best program for you, everything else will fall into place successfully. Good luck!</p>
<p>The Ivies’ cachet as Ivies per se is mostly on the East Coast. It seems to be a popular, though misguided, belief on CC that Ivies are the #1 choices everywhere, and then there are runners-up in different parts of the country (Duke in the SE, Northwestern in the midwest, and so forth).</p>
<p>I agree with Pizzagirl and allcappella.
We are from the north east, where there is a lot of Ivy worship. Notwithstanding that, most people who know much about American higher education, especially among business and legal employers in the NY metro area, know that NU is a peer of the non-HYP Ivies, JHU, U of Chicago, Duke, etc.</p>
<p>My sense is that employers club HYPSM in the first category followed by the next ten schools in the second bucket.</p>
<p>SOME employers do. Others don’t! Why aren’t people getting that ultimately, it’s all regional? The preferred set of schools among investment banks on Wall Street is not the preferred set of schools among retail stores headquartered in the midwest or oil companies headquartered in the southwest or creative agencies headquartered in California. It’s nonsensical to take the preferred set of schools for one or a handful of industries in certain parts of the country and extract that to “employers” as a whole.</p>
<p>Yeah, and even in those fields a lot of people don’t “get” that there are plenty of hiring authorities from plenty of places, including top State Flagships, who really don’t prefer Ivy grads at all, unless they played sports.</p>
<p>People ought to look into the correlation between hires in these fields and whether or not those hired played a D1 sport at their school. For Ibanking, they’d be surprised to find out it is frequently greek affiliations and sports that close the deal</p>
<p>Ivies, shmivies. Didn’t y’all see this? (Check out where Princeton and Columbia turn up!)</p>
<p>[The</a> 25 Colleges With The Smartest Students - Forbes](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2013/04/07/the-25-colleges-with-the-smartest-students/]The”>The 25 Colleges With The Smartest Students)</p>
<p>NU compares well; it’s interesting to hear from Morty’s speech that the main schools that NU competes for cross-admits are Penn, Cornell, Duke and Georgetown.</p>
<p>^Makes sense. Private, mid sized schools with big frat cultures/ ra-ra / “old varsity” cultures.</p>
<p>It’s really difficult to generalize. You’d get different answers from different people. </p>
<p>For McKinsey, you can type a school’s name and see how many and what events McKinsey has, if any, for that particular school. That should give you a pretty good idea where the school stands in their eyes.</p>
<p>[Apply</a> to McKinsey | Careers | McKinsey & Company](<a href=“http://www.mckinsey.com/careers/apply]Apply”>http://www.mckinsey.com/careers/apply)</p>
<p>There are very few (about 5 based on my 5-min search) that match NU.</p>
<p>It just matters how you feel about the school frankly. For me, NU was just the perfect school. It has a great balance of everything, from social life (yes that does in fact exist), to sports, to academics, to how I felt about the people at the school. Having now moved onto graduate school in California, I still reflect on my experience back at NU almost everyday. It’s an absolutely fantastic place.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that the top ivies have a better reputation than NU. Of course, Harvard, Yale & Princeton have better reputations than NU. However, after that, you are really splitting hairs. Yes, many students choose NU and other non-ivy institutions over ivies. That is frequently demonstrated on this board. Schools like Williams, Amherst, Wash U, Tufts, Bowdoin, etc. often get overlooked given the small nature of the schools (while Tufts is a university, it really has that liberal arts feeling). These small schools also attract active recruiting in the job field. In the end, go with fit as you are really splitting hairs between these institutions…Make your visits and get your vibe, and match up the school with your career choice…</p>
<p>And just for repetition’s sake, reputation isn’t everything, so saying you are splitting hairs for the lower ivies, NU, etc. someone could also favor NU over top Ivies. Heck, I know people who favored a full-ride at University of Alabama over HYP.</p>
<p>It’s up there like classclown said. I think the only negative is the city it’s in. Chicago is a joke.</p>
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<p>You’re absolutely entitled to your opinion, but there are many very worldly people who completely disagree. ;)</p>