<p>Hi everyone</p>
<p>I was accepted ED to NU recently and found it odd that very few people know of the high academic standards that the school has. Being from Wisconsin, I assumed that more people in the area would regard the Northwestern name more highly but unfortunately they don't!</p>
<p>Is Northwestern not as prestigious as I may personally be biased to believe or is the school overshadowed by universities that are statistically better (the Ivies, University of Chicago, etc)?</p>
<p>It's prestigious, but not often given the same status as Ivies. <em>shrug</em> Just a fact of life.</p>
<p>I think more people know Northwestern more than those who recognize u of Chicago</p>
<p>Same holds true in NJ. People who know colleges and universities know that it is a top notch school. There's a guy in my neighborhood who is a professional advisor and he flipped when I told him my daughter was accepted. Most people, however, get it mixed up with Northeastern or have heard of it but don't know where it is.</p>
<p>NU is like WashU. Another great school, but not up there on the name recognition ladder. Maybe it's because it's the smallest of the Big Ten schools so athletics aren't as noteworthy? I don't know. No matter as long as it's the place you want to be.</p>
<p>Is it?</p>
<p>You could say the same for Ivies such as Penn, Dartmouth, Brown or other schools like UChicago, JHU, Rice, Vandy.</p>
<p>People, in general, are pretty ignorant - but the important thing is that people who matter - grad school admissions officers, recruiters, etc. know about NU.</p>
<p>I spend most of my time on the east and west coasts and I have found that Northwestern's reputation is solid. The enormous p.r. success of the Business School hasn't hurt a bit, of course.</p>
<p><a href="https://web-08.vault.com/nr/newsmain.jsp?nr_page=3&ch_id=252&article_id=14364421&cat_id=1223%5B/url%5D">https://web-08.vault.com/nr/newsmain.jsp?nr_page=3&ch_id=252&article_id=14364421&cat_id=1223</a> lists core schools for top consulting firms (McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Mercer, Monitor)</p>
<p>You can see 4 of them consider NU as one of their "core" schools. Only HYS/Penn do better (5 out of 5). That should reassure you that NU is highly regraded among elite firms.</p>
<p>"You could say the same for Ivies such as Penn, Dartmouth, Brown or other schools like UChicago, JHU, Rice, Vandy."</p>
<p>There are multiple schools of much lesser academic quality than NU, but they have better name recognition because of sports. Winning football and basketball teams contribute to reputation of non-Ivy League schools. Ivies are instantly recognized because they are in the Ivy League.</p>
<p>I agree with you that the people who matter do know about NU.</p>
<p>"There are multiple schools of much lesser academic quality than NU, but they have better name recognition because of sports. Winning football and basketball teams contribute to reputation of non-Ivy League schools. Ivies are instantly recognized because they are in the Ivy League."</p>
<p>A lot of people don't even know that Penn, Brown, etc. are Ivy League schools (but when you tell them - they go "oh, it must be a good school") - that's the power of marketing.</p>
<p>Stanford and Duke have the name recognition b/c of the success of their BB programs.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, NU is still a couple of recruits from making it to the tourney, but the FB program is in a position to make it to bowl games on a consistent basis (btw, there are a good no. of NU alums playing in the NFL post-season games).</p>
<p>To be fair, I wouldn't say Stanford got its name recognition mainly because of BB. Stanford has more top-ranked graduate programs than Harvard. :)</p>
<p>But it did help (along with Stanford's success in other sports - with the exception of FB) - look at name-recognition that UoChicago has despite all of its top graduate programs and nobel prize winning faculty.</p>
<p>Well, UC doesn't really have <em>that</em> many top graduate programs. If you look at sciences alone, UChicago's bio and chem aren't really that "top". In fact, NU has better chem program these days. Stanford is like in the top-5 in just about everything ridiculously. As for nobel prize winning faculty, UChicago counts large number of people with very loose connection. Most of their winners got their awards quite a while back and these days, they aren't one of the top producers whereas Stanford had two this past year. But I agree sports do help its name reach people who don't know much about colleges. :)</p>
<p>UoChicago isn't particularly strong in the sciences, but it is strong in areas such as econ, sociology, public policy, etc. - not to mention having a top 5-6 law school and b-school (and a pretty good med school as well).</p>
<p>Arguably, not as many people know about the rankings of graduate programs as much as they do professional schools - and despite UoChicago's top rankings in these areas - it doesn't get the same media attention as it would if it had remained an active member of the B10 conference.</p>
<p>I'm from Hawaii and I've been quite impressed by how many people there know of the school (academics, not just the football team!)</p>
<p>
[quote]
not to mention having a top 5-6 law school and b-school (and a pretty good med school as well
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Hey, so does ours! ;)</p>
<p>NU's reputation is very well known to the people who matter. Hence the term 'NU Mafia'</p>
<p>Here in Jersey, when I tell my teachers I got into NU early, most of them are pretty impressed (and at the same time wondering how the hell I got in haha), but alot of kids don't really know much about Northwestern. I get a lot of "They're D-1?"..."They're in the Big Ten?" kind of questions. </p>
<p>Whatever its all good- NU is a great school and could care less if other people haven't heard of it.</p>
<p>I'm from Chicago so Northwestern is really well known and respected, but not as much as the Ivies. The smart kids in our school apply to MIT, Stanford, Harvard, etc. If someone were to get into one of those people would be like WOW you got into MIT or such. For Northwestern, people are like thats cool thats a good school. </p>
<p>And for name recognition sake around here, U of C gets mixed up with UIC (University of Illinois-Chicago), so people aren't really impressed with U of C.</p>
<p>Another weird thing too is that people in Chicago LOVE Notre Dame and think it's the greatest college in the world. People are more impressed with Notre Dame. It's like, "He's going to Northwestern, but HES GOING TO NOTRE DAME." Even though NU is ranked higher than ND. Overall though, Northwestern is respected enough, but definitely doesnt get all the bs attention that ivies and such get.</p>
<p>Really depends on who you talk to - the less sophisticated or knowledgeable would be prone to mix up UoC with UIC, otoh, people from the Northshore (who have attended New Trier, etc.) know the difference.</p>
<p>As for ND - Chicago has a big Catholic (and Irish-Catholic) pop. which tends to go nuts over all things ND (including consistently overrating its FB team).</p>
<p>It gets overshadowed in the midwest because midwesterners want to think that closer schools are better...for instance, NU has a really good engineering school, however, most people in the area believe that Purdue is much better which is not true at all</p>