Hi everyone,
I was recently accepted. to NEU with a 14k merit scholarship. Granted, NEU was not originally my first choice institution but seeing as I have been receiving a number of rejections, four this week alone, it seems more attractive. I was wondering if anyone could tell me what made you want to go to NEU? Both my parents only look at the rankings and I already tried explaining to them about the co-ops. Is there anything else that I could add that would help me explain to my parents why NEU should not be written off? Thank you very much.
Hey! Very happy current NEU sophomore here -
First, I would highly recommend posting this on the Northeastern forum to get more posts - it’s pretty active and there’s a good group of current students on here: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/northeastern-university/
For me, it came down to a few big points, but honestly, I could list dozens.
- Co-op, but more than that, the academic philosophy of how to approach college - it's about really getting the best of both academics and professional development. The program is as amazing as it seems, if that's what you're looking for. It sounds like you've already tried to explain this to them, though.
- Boston is an amazing city to go to school in - it's one of the biggest academic hubs in the world, and it's a great place to have as your backyard. I can't imagine going to college and not going out into a city after classes and on the weekends - it just didn't make sense to me.
- Specifically, my department is amazing - many are here. I'm CS, and the program was specifically developed here at NEU and does an amazing job in ways I'll spare details on.
I saw that you were looking to major in international affairs - one thing you could try selling them on is the value of being able to go abroad for your co-ops - that is a great part of the program here and you would be hard pressed to find better resources at most schools.
In terms of rankings, NEU has been rising quickly up US News’s rankings and others - looking at your list, it’s still slightly below your reaches, but not by much. If they only look at rankings, trying to explain ranks as tiers and arguing that many of your other schools are in the same tier could work. It won’t be true of all of your schools, but based on your list posted late last year, all of your match schools (Emory, NYU, UC Davis, UC San Diego) would be in the same tier - if they like any of those, then you should be able to convince them in terms of ranks.
Hope that helps! If you have any questions about NEU, ask away as well 
@PengsPhils Thank you so much! I will take all those points into consideration.
Where have you been accepted? I worked in admissions at NEU 10 years ago and 15 or so years ago the Dean of Engineering said he was at a conference and the Dean of Engineering at MIT said 27% of their faculty had one of their degrees from Northeastern but if you tell anyone, I’ll deny it. That’s the way it was until finally that wall came down 10-12 years ago and folks realized how successful so many alums were and credited Northeastern. Then they started moving rapidly up the rankings - yes played the game with accept rates, etc but it has ALWAYS been a university where professors have open doors, want their students to succeed and have the proven track record of success among their alums.
@rkelly5182 I have been accepted to the Health Science major in the Bouvé College of Health sciences.
Is that really true? Wow! I did some research myself earlier today and noted that large jump in rankings that you pointed out.