<p>oxycodone's criteria was Ivy league status, not differences between the schools.</p>
<p>Fail</p>
<p>Oxycodone, I have been on Northwestern's campus a lot of times and I never go the "Ivy League" wannabe vibe. The vibe I got from Northwestern is that it is happy to be just as it is.</p>
<p>oxycodone, how many HOURS did your visit last in total? You can tell it is "wannabe Ivy with not much community or social scene outside of frats" in such short amount of time? Washington urgently needs someone with such power now!</p>
<p>you can study abroad more than once at NU (if you plan things out REALLY well), though it would probably take the form of one quarter/semester or academic year, and one summer (in other words, not two full years).</p>
<p>financial aid carries over to study abroad at NU, and in some cases you will get financial aid for study abroad when you don't normally receive it, if the program is more expensive than NU tuition (obviously this is very rare).</p>
<p>i liked dartmouth's natural setting and the winter-wonderland feel i got when i was there. it felt really quaint, intellectual, and cozy. it's also fairly close to boston, and there is convenient snowboarding nearby.</p>
<p>regarding the "wannabe ivy" criterion, i have no factual evidence to back that up about northwestern, so it's fair to disagree with me there.</p>
<p>and sam lee, you're totally right. i have no right to rip on a school which i essentially know nothing about beyond the short campus visit i took that convinced me i liked the school but not quite enough to go there. northwestern was a close 2nd place for me, so i definitely respect the school a lot.</p>
<p>Northwestern and Dartmouth? People actually grapple with making a choice between these two?</p>
<p>One is 20 minutes from a city classified as an alpha world city with a good 8,000 undergrads, and the other is in, what I hear is, a beautiful forest haven sort of environment with half the amount of undergrads.</p>
<p>Back in my day, we liked to pick schools that fit our bill for the college life we dreamt of. I guess kids these days really just pick out a bunch from the top 20 and apply to see where they'll get in.</p>
<p>Two things, most students, and I mean a good amount, like myself and my friends, have probably not been to a Northwestern football game after their New Student Welcome Week, in which the game is actually an event part of a program. But, honestly, we've been too bad in the past for the majority of us to care, but hey I've actually heard we're on a roll this year. Again, this came up for like two minutes at a conversation I was having with my group of friends at an Evanston bistro; with all of those kids who live in the library with me six days a week, I don't know where people get the idea that Northwestern feels too much like an atheletic, Big 10 school.
Second, nobody seems to have mentioned this. I'm not sure what the OP was going to study, but if you are wanting to be an engineer or science major of any sort, Northwestern could be good for you in the sense that its extensive graduate programs in the sciences creates a huge research scene on campus in which most undergrads can easily and will usually participate in, my friends and I do, at one point of their four to five years here. I'm fairly sure Dartmouth will "teach" you the sciences just as well as most Northwestern classes, but research opportunity really has to do with the presence of graduate programs which will determine the amount of projects and quality of lab facilities and that short of thing, so I think that would be one of the major perks of a research university vs. an undergrad-focused LAC kind of environment, at the very least for us techies.</p>
<p>But really, how does one end up having to choose between these two. My friends at Dartmouth are happy, I'm happy, but the only thing our college experiences share in common so far is the terrible weather.</p>
<p>And one more thing, the word "intellectual" is not exclusive for people who like to think philosophy and argue politics.
Intellect is what makes the world of engineering and the development of science continue to benefit society, and that kind of intellect is what you'll find more predominant among the students and faculty at Northwestern.</p>
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i liked dartmouth's natural setting and the winter-wonderland feel i got when i was there. it felt really quaint, intellectual, and cozy. it's also fairly close to boston, and there is convenient snowboarding nearby.
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<p>As I stated prior, there is no right/wrong school w/ regard to "environment" as people have different preferences for what they want.</p>
<p>Having said that, there aren't too many schools in/adjacent to world class cities, much less on a waterfront (w/ its own private beach).</p>
<p>Otoh, schools like Cornell and the top LACs have the same type of setting as Dartmouth.</p>