SO I am extremely interested applying to northwestern as one of my top choices next year however when ever I bring this up with others, it always seems that they think it is just an average school. Am I mistaken?
It is exceptional in every way. Your friends don’t know what they are talking about, which is true of many high school students.
Maybe they are mixing it up with Northwestern State University. Northwestern University is one of the best universities in the world.
It’s a top tier school. There are only a handful of schools in the world that are harder to get into.
Talk with your Guidance counselor about school choices. He or she will certainly confirm this.
I think folks calling Northwestern an average school are the ones that distinguish between upper and lower ivies or put down Cornell as the `lowest-ranked ivy’.
Northwestern is either tied or ranked higher than 3 of the ivy schools: Dartmouth, Brown, and Cornell. It is comparable school in many ways to UPenn and Duke.
For those obsessed with rankings and prestige, NU is clearly lower than Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT (and possibly Columbia) also. It is a different type of school than U Chicago or Johns Hopkins, because of its social and pre-professional focus (and doesn’t send as many to PhD programs, probably).
“t is exceptional in every way. Your friends don’t know what they are talking about, which is true of many high school students.”
Yeah it is, but holds no where NEAR the prestige of its South Side counterpart UChicago
Very helpful comment from a UChicago internet troll lol
Trol*
OP, this is the type of value add Chicago folks pride themselves of
According to this survey, business leaders rank Northwestern 6th globally. Would this help alleviate your concern?
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/10/20/education/20iht-SReducEmploy20-graphic.html
Thanks everyone, this helped a lot
@osuprof, folks who think NU is an a average school may also be from outside the US and thus pretty ignorant of American higher education (putting the schools of a certain sports league on a pedestal while being ignorant of the rest).
In any case, forget about rankings. If you go by alumni achievements, NU is equal to the Ivies:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1682986-ivy-equivalents-p3.html
Northwestern is ranked very highly in a great many degree programs and overall. Academically, Northwestern holds its own with anyone.
I think that Northwestern is part of this elite private university peer group, in terms of overall undergraduate quality:
Columbia
UChicago
UPenn
Duke
Brown
Dartmouth
Northwestern
Cornell
Johns Hopkins
That is impressive company.
^ Yes, I’d agree. Definitely a top 15 private university.
Chicago, Duke, Hopkins and NU match up well against Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Penn.
^ in alphabetical order so as not to cause offense or stir up controversy
If your goal is to host a late-nite TV show - NU is the best choice 
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Is Goergetown in that category?
^ Personally, I think Georgetown is very strong in some areas (IR, finance) but not across the board. NU is more consistent.
University reputations are very sticky. Northwestern is in a select group of twenty or so schools that were considered Tier 1 private schools more than a century ago. That list has changed very little in a hundred years. If you apply yourself, you will do just fine. Among these universities, you are just splitting hairs on prestige. It’s more about fit, geography, COA etc.