Hey guys! I know Northeastern’s ranking has recently risen an insane amount in the past ten years, but 2015 was the first year it dropped. Do you think its rank and prestige will continue to rise in the future, or will it stay around here?
Ranking by no means will impact my decision - I’m just curious as to what you guys think.
From a position of data analysis, Northeastern, with an overall score of 60 in its USNWR category, is in a flattening part of the distribution curve. Schools in this vicinity can rise and fall in rank with little underlying statistical change.
Northeastern’s selectivity, however, is notable, and exceeds that of most of its similarly ranked peers.
I think it will probably stay where it is at this point - it could theoretically get into the 30’s, but that will be much more incremental. Expect it to be in the 40’s for a while IMO. There’s no reason for it to go down and there are few more gains to make - NEU’s test scores can’t rise, its admit rate will only decrease slowly, and research data and other factors take more time to be reflected, even if NEU up’s the quality.
From U.S. news
“In the case of National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges, the academic peer assessment accounts for 15 percentage points of the weighting in the ranking methodology, and 7.5 percentage points go to the high school counselors’ ratings”
So almost a quarter of the ranking is based on perceived quality and popularity by other college academics and counselors. With the deeply engrained sense of prestige and the historical high opinions of colleges that have been prestigious for years, it will be tough to change these numbers. Georgetown, Tufts, BC would have to come down a bit in order for others to move up. That said, they will likely be/stay in the 30s. When you look at the numbers, there are very few schools in the 30s because of ties (goes from 30 to 32/ 33 etc. There are alot of skipped numbers.) so the numerical ranking is a bit misleading.
"they will likely be/stay in the 30s’
NEU is currently 47th. Perhaps this means “rise to, then stay in, the 30s.”
“there are very few schools in the 30s”
There are 11.
You may find this article interesting. Not endorsing, just putting it out there.
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/
That article had been around for a long time. NEU has made improvements with a focus on improving rankings, since improving rankings draws students and therefore fuels improvement. If USN has set criteria that says X school is bettet than X school, and people value those rankings(wish they undoubtedly do) then it makes perfect sense to improve in areas that the rankings measure.
Same idea as prepping for SAT. Schools value it, so kids take it many times and try and improve.
Northeastern did manage to the USNews rankings: They built housing for 9000 students to become a residential campus, raised admission standards to only admit students who will eventually graduate, reduced class size, hired faculty to reduce the faculty to student ratio. All of which helped the rankings and students.
There are so many ties in the 30’s and 40’s that that it is hard to predict> My guess is Nu will be I the low 40’s.
Like I said, I wasn’t endorsing NEU or the Boston Globe or US News’s actions - just thought that if the OP hadn’t read it, it might be interesting for them and that they could draw their own conclusions.
Agreed that NEU had made many, many improvements that greatly improve quality of education and student life.
I love NU to death but would never include “prestige” as a selling point or reason to attend. Imo, it has risen about as much as it ever will- I can’t imagine ever rising past high 30’s. I am thrilled to go to a top 50 university for near free, and I think my quality of education is outstanding, but it is hard to overcome the reputation of being primarily a commuter, engineering-based school that was not at all competitive before the last 10 years. I do kind of like the model though, because students driven by prestige will usually funnel that into their co-op search anyways (i.e, Morgan Stanley, BCG, Big 4, Apple…) It kind of lights a fire under your butt to make a name for yourself, not to rely on your school’s prestige.
I feel NEU will settle somewhere around #60 which is a great accomplishment from where they started…
They are the #10 school in the Boston metro (National Universities and Liberal Arts Colleges)
We will see in September.
@novafan1225 20-25 years ago NYU was a commuter school in NY, and not regarded very highly. Now it has a lot of new founded prestige.