Last night they said March 1st
I also wanted to weigh in on Oakland. The campus is not downtown Oakland but rather near to Chabot Regional park which is gorgeous and has wonderful hiking trails and a lake. There is also a great science museum in the park and as I recall puts on astronomy events in the evening. There are also several nearby golf courses and it is near the Oakland Zoo. Oakland has many very nice areas for shops and restaurants as does Piedmont (a bubble in the middle of Oakland where homes easily go for $2 million+). I donāt have any skin in the game but if you have not visited the campus I would not dismiss it because of some pre-conceived notions of Oakland.
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The main thing for people to know is that Oakland is a city composed of many diverse neighborhoods over a fairly wide geographical area. Oakland has wealthy, peaceful and wooded neighborhoods with a suburban feeling. It also has fashionable and more recently gentrified high-energy urban neighborhoods. It also has poorer urban neighborhoods with all the problems that are often associated with these areas. I do feel that itās important not to gloss over Oaklandās problems just because some neighborhoods are more suburban or have been gentrified. Itās a complex city.
The Mills campus is in an area with a more suburban flavor, which means that students are relatively insulated from urban problems, but it also means that you arenāt smack in the middle of a big city with urban amenities and energy (unlike the Boston campus), which may be a drawback for some students. However, there are lots of opportunities for outdoor activities or urban exploration within a short drive or Uber ride, and here is a Mills guide to bus routes in the area: Mills Easy Pass Destination Guide
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The Northeastern forum here on CC has been very active. The Boston University forum is practically dead this cycle. I donāt know what, if anything, that says about the two schools. Granted BU does not have EA and only one alternative entry route (CGS). But still.
BU just announced that they had a half percentage point drop in number of applications.
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Really interesting context.
As a BU alum, I am kind of chagrined. But I went with my son on tours of both campuses last summer, and he applied to NU but not BU! BU needs to step up its game, starting with better-informed and more energetic tour guides. BU has reached a plateau, it seems to me, while NU is hot, hot, hot.
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My son applied to both because he needs to stay close to home and both schools check his social & academic requirements. The message that we have gotten throughout the application process is that BU is harder to get into (AOs expect more impressive ECs & care more about HS maximum rigor, for instance), and is likely to be much more expensive (similar yearly tuition, but NEU occasionally offers merit and you pay one fewer year of tuition due to co-op).
Those factors plus the attractiveness of the co-op make NEU a draw for wider range of kids, I think. I have most often seen BU as a match/hard safety school on the lists of ātopā kids who (at least think they) have a chance at Ivies etc. Iāve seen NEU on the list of many of those kids, but also on lots of kids applying to tech or business focused big state schools, or āmid-levelā private schools, kids who donāt bother applying to T10/20 schools.
We also went on tours of both campuses last Spring. We really wanted to like BU especially knowing my daughter would likely be a NMSF, but our tour was AWFUL. The tour guide clearly didnāt like the school and was adding negative qualifiers to every statement.
My daughter ended up not applying to BU and NU is one of her top choices.
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Interesting about BUās number of apps
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I wonder if colleges will have to reach a plateau eventually, unless we quickly add more teenagers to the country.
Now that the test-optional boost has run its course, where are all those additional apps supposed to come from?
Could it be that less intāl students applied to BU this cycle?
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More apps per teenager? More app fee waivers, more essay-free apps (like Northeastern)
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It looks like BU received less international applications this cycle. If you look at class of 2026: 24% (19,390 students out of 80,794) admitted were international. For class of 2027, 19% (15,788 students out of 80,485) of received applications were international.
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We had the same experience last year. I am a BU alum and still agreed with her that she should only apply to NU and not BU. Really really flat tour guide an information session.
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I put my deposit for NUIN down last night, excited to be a husky! (eventually lol)
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So interesting (and certainly not a coincidence) that so many of us had bad tour guides at BU.
I personally wanted to strangle our tour guide. We were standing in the middle of campus in front of Marsh Chapel, and he said he wanted to comment on where we were. I thought he was about to talk about the statue of soaring doves dedicated to BU alum Martin Luther King Jr. We were right next to it!
Nope, we talks about the university seal embedded in the pavement and says that āthe traditionā is that you canāt step on the seal or you wonāt graduate on time. I looked over and saw my sonās eyes rolling. We have heard that same cliched anecdote on at least 2 or 3 other college tours.
I gotta say I went to BU for four years and never heard that ātradition.ā But I looked at that statue to MLK a number of times while I was an undergrad and was inspired by it and felt pride to be going to the same university that he attended. I donāt know, but Iām thinking it might be wise to mention that on a tour if you want to differentiate your college and enflame some passion in people coming there for the first time.
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I completely agree with you and had a similar experience in front of Marsh Chapel. I just assumed we had a bad day because a friend of mine and her daughter actually had a great tour a few weeks after my daughter and I toured. It is a great school so hopefully, they will step things up.
Just for another opinion: my son LOVED the BU tour. Not enough to prefer it over Northeastern (which he visited twice).
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I think the talk of BU and Northeastern tour comparisons is interesting.
At BU we found the talk by the admissions officer very informative about the application process & what BU was looking for. Our tour guide was high energy, engaging, funny, and knowledgeable. There were the 
comments about stepping on the seal and cheese club, but we had to come to expect those. But, somehow the tour just wasnāt that great. We did not see a dorm, and things like the exercise facility were too far away from the tour to visit. Mostly my kids felt like they were walking around city streets, which I assume is what going to BU would feel like.
At NEU I found the whole thing (talk by admissions officer and tour) very rushed andā¦precise, I guess. No questions allowed! But the campus showed better, despite the fact NEU was in Jan and BU was in Sept. AND my kids liked NEU much better, they said the people they saw walking around campus āseemed friendlier.ā 
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To the other people who were still waiting on their financial aid package, have you received it yet? I still havenāt and Iām worried I wonāt have it before the enrollment deposit is due on March 1st.
I totally agree with this. When my parent and I were watching videos of the campuses and debating which to visit, I remember the word ādepressingā coming out of my mouth when seeing BU. Iām sure its fine in person, but their marketing is severely lacking, especially competing with NEU.