<p>How come nobody ever talks about how northwestern is a good school?</p>
<p>Its ranked higher than some ivy league but people still compare it to schools like berkeley, rice, and gtown...</p>
<p>What???</p>
<p>There are people all over CC talking about NU, wanting to be chanced, planning to apply ED . . .</p>
<p>NU is one of the finest universities in America, just like the Ivies . . . and UC-B . . . and Rice . . . and Georgetown . . .</p>
<p>uh, they do…</p>
<p>My opinion of NU undergrad has always been that it’s a mediocre overpriced school.
NU’s grad programs are slightly better.</p>
<p>lol NU is good… and people talk about it a lot… read some other posts and youll see…</p>
<p>liu02bhs,</p>
<p>Northwestern offers several top-rated undergraduate schools (e.g., Communications, Journalism) that many peer institutions do not offer or lack in quality. It was NU’s interdisciplinary undergraduate programs that attracted me at the time.</p>
<p>Northwestern is often compared to Cornell, Rice, Michigan (probably because of location), etc. It is not mentioned with the likes of the top Ivies like HYP but it is still a very good school. If you find that attention in the main forum is lacking, go to NU’s school specific forum and you will find it is very active.</p>
<p>If anything NU might be a little underapprciated. It might lack the social prestige of places like Gtown but it’s a much better school.</p>
<p>^haha i agree, people on this forum tend to be east-coast centric…or west-coast centric.</p>
<p>Northwestern is a rather regional school. 40% of its students come from the Midwest. In that respect, it’s kind of like WUSTL. It’s a good school, but it draws students from the Midwest and when they’re done they stay in the Midwest. It doesn’t have (except in a few fields like journalism) the national and international reach of the coastal schools or its far superior neighbor (UChicago).</p>
<p>“Northwestern is a rather regional school. 40% of its students come from the Midwest. In that respect, it’s kind of like WUSTL.”</p>
<p>Most people have never heard of WUSTL. Northwestern has better name reputation nationally.</p>
<p>“It’s a good school, but it draws students from the Midwest and when they’re done they stay in the Midwest.”</p>
<p>Are you implying this is a bad thing? What about students who attend schools on either coast and never leave? Is that a good thing? I’m sensing coast-bias here.</p>
<p>The fact that NU can draw many students outside Illinois (more than 75%) to attend its campus makes it a national university. The Midwest is a huge region that spans hundreds of miles from Pittsburgh to Lincoln (Nebraska), Minneapolis to St. Louis.</p>
<p>potatoes345,</p>
<p>Besides journalism, Northwestern has top-10 programs in chemistry, economics, sociology, film, material sciences, and industrial engineering. Many others are in the top-20. It’s business and law schools are in the top-10 and it’s medicine school is in the top-20. Within this past week, two professors were named Sloan Fellows and one professor became a member of National Academy of Engineering.</p>
<p>Your school, Georgetown, only has law (not irrelevant for undergrads) and international relation in the top-10. I don’t think any of its other departments are in the top-20, let alone top-10. Many of them are not even in the top-50. Do you think your school has national/international reach based on your standard?</p>
<p>40% for Northwestern vs 35% for Chicago isn’t really that much different. Also, Brown has 47% from New England/Mid Atlantic; Stanford has ~40% from California; I wouldn’t call them regional because of those numbers.</p>
<p>Sam Lee,
There’s already a Georgetown vs. Northwestern thread, so shall we try to centralize comparisons of those two specifically over there?</p>
<p>Yes, Northwestern has several good programs, I did not mean to imply it had only journalism. Also, I’m not sure where you’re getting 35% for Chicago. According to (<a href=“https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/admissions/classprofile.shtml[/url]”>https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/admissions/classprofile.shtml</a>), Chicago gets 31% of its students from the Midwest vs. 40% at Northwestern. That’s a significant difference.</p>
<p>Brown is, I would say, a regional school. It’s an excellent, Ivy-League regional school, but it is drawing most of its students form nearby. I’m not suggesting that being a national/international school is the same as being a ** good ** school. Few people would deny that Berkeley or Michigan are among the world’s finest institutions of higher learning, but they are 88% and 70% in-state students respectively. In terms of achieving national prominence, however, it helps to have a national student body.</p>
<p>“Are you implying this is a bad thing? What about students who attend schools on either coast and never leave? Is that a good thing? I’m sensing coast-bias here.”</p>
<p>I’m not actually from the coast. No, I’m not implying this is a bad thing. The question asked was “How come nobody ever talks about how northwestern is a good school?” and my answer is that Northwestern is primarily a Midwestern school, so people from other regions of the country don’t talk about it as much. If someone asked, why don’t people talk about Emory more, I’d say because it’s primarily a Southern school and people from other regions don’t talk about it as much.</p>
<p>In the Midwest and West, fewer top-25 schools are competing within large geographic spaces, compared to the NE. This may explain why some top Midwestern and Western schools seem more “regional” based only on student origin numbers. Historical patterns (sending kids “back East” to school) and the “flyover land” stereotype must play a role, too. It seems they have to try harder for each regional immigrant, and less hard for each local. In other words the distribution figures may reflect geographical factors more than the drawing power (or lack thereof) of academic programs and facilities.</p>
<p>“Few people would deny that Berkeley or Michigan are among the world’s finest institutions of higher learning, but they are 88% and 70% in-state students respectively. In terms of achieving national prominence, however, it helps to have a national student body.”</p>
<p>potatoes345, Berkeley and Michigan have national AND international reputations. They also have a mission to serve the students living within their state. Students from all the country (and the world) would love to attend either school.</p>
<p>"How come nobody ever talks about how northwestern is a good school?</p>
<p>Its ranked higher than some ivy league but people still compare it to schools like berkeley, rice, and gtown… "</p>
<p>You condescending to Berkeley, Rice, and Georgetown doesn’t help.</p>
<p>lmao, ^agreed.</p>
<p>Potatoes, 65% (not 70%) of undergraduate students at Michigan are residents of the state of Michigan. However, one must keep in mind the size of the remaining 35% that aren’t residents of the state. 35% of 26,000 undergraduate students represents a whopping 9,100 undergraduate students who come from OOS. That is HUGE. How many universities do you know of that can boast of having over 9,000 undergrads come from OOS? I cannot think of a single one. Not one whatsoever. Even the larger Ivies (Penn and Cornell) have fewer than 9,000 undergraduate students from OOS. </p>
<p>Also, 5% of Michigan’s undergraduate student body is international. That’s 1,300 international undergraduate students. Again, that is very significant. </p>
<p>As a percentage of the overall undergraduate student body, Michigan must obviously give preference to in-state students. However, the makeup of its undergraduate student body clearly show that Michigan is a very “national” and “international” university.</p>
<p>At any rate, back to the OP’s question. I think NU is one of the less-respected elite universities on CC. I don’t know why that is. In most educated circles, be it in academe or indistry, NU is very highly regarded and certainly among the top 15 or so universities in the nation. Academically, it is on par with the likes of Cornell and Penn. But for some reason, among high school students, NU does not shine as bright as it should.</p>
<p>
oh, wow…</p>
<p>^^^I know UCB. Cal, along with it’s defacto med school, blows away NU. :-)</p>