<p>While rankings may not be everything, they do mean something. Rankings allows each university to be measured in quantified terms and I can tell you one thing:</p>
<p>If a friend told me he got accepted into Northeastern University, I would give him a smile and say “Congratulations!”</p>
<p>If a friend told me he got accepted into Northwestern University, my face would lighten up immediately and I would grab his shoulders and say “Holy ****, congrats dude! That’s awesome!”</p>
<p>It’s not only rankings: Admissions to Northwestern are FAR more competitive, the median SAT scores for NU to Northeastern are almost 100 points higher. And doesn’t it tell you something that when a person says NU, they mean Northwestern and not Northeastern?</p>
<p>tomofboston: Yes, it would be full tuition, room, board, etc. </p>
<p>Anyways, I’ll be visiting NU this friday, hopefully it’ll give me a better idea of what to think. Any things I should particularly look for or be aware of?</p>
<p>I mean, there’s no doubt that NU is the more prestigious institution, but that doesn’t mean that it is 1,000billionzillion times better than NEU. I mean, yeah, if your parents can afford the diff in tuition, there is absolutely zero reason to not go to NU. But at the same time, the benefits are much less than many on CC believe/perceive.</p>
<p>@umpc11
I understand where you’re coming from, as in to say one school is unequivocally better than another can be quite pretentious and that it is up to the student’s personal drive to get as much as possible out of higher education (I’m assuming the sweeping generalizations made by some of the above posters doesn’t help change your mind). However, IMO to say that Northeastern is comparable to Northwestern in terms of academics is like saying Marquette University is comparable to Cornell - both are good schools, but the latter is simply in a different academic bracket.</p>