<p>You know, as an admitted and mostly attending student of UofC, i’ve noticed that UofC students are way more hostile towards NW students than NW students are towards UofC… I’m continuously embarrassed when this bashing and comparing goes on… I barely even understand how you can compare the two, after visiting I realized that the student bodies are vastly different… seriously, why do we have to get UofC involved in a thread about NW’s admissions stats ??? </p>
<p>Getting back to topic, i’m really happy for NW. I don’t know why people didn’t apply there early from my HS. NW anyway hates our school, once they took 7-8 students in and no one went eventually ( I mean obviously, if they’re going to accept people who got into Harvard etc )… after that they’ve hated our school :P. Its hilarious, the next year, they rejected all applicants. Or maybe its because its becoming so selective.</p>
<p>An interesting thought: On the boards of most universities, everybody is overjoyed at the increase in selectivity. Should be really be happy ?</p>
<p>^^ Your somewhat obsessive classmate with the inferiority complex is not seen, at least by me, as representative of the UChicago student body - which is obviously replete with brilliant minds such as yourself. It is interesting that you have found a pattern of contempt from your fellow classmates towards NU, I can’t really come up with an explaination as to why this might be but hopefully it is a temporary circumstance.</p>
<p>My impression of how well Northwestern is “known globally” would be, at best, on par with Ohio State or something – a slightly smarter big 10 jock school. Perhaps the recognition problem also lies in its name: “Northwestern” usually is accompanied by “Missouri State” or “Oklahoma State” or some such. Thus, I presume people unconsciously link the name to some figment of geography (Northwestern what? where?) and are fairly cluless as to exactly what the school is or represents. Or, may I say plainly, you can go to a small village in China and they are likely to know what “Harvard” is; they will be clueless about Northwestern – so, so much for your “global” name recognition. Outside of a few prep schools and a 50 mile radius of Chicago, no one really knows that school.</p>
<p>@Kellybkk
You do know that the son of the current Chinese premier got his MBA from Northwestern right? Having several relatives in China as bankers and managers in banks like ICBC (biggest bank in the world) and Bank of China, they have all heard of Northwestern (they asked me to bring NU shirts as souvenirs the last time I went). If you go to a small Chinese village (or any small village in the world), the only schools they would probably know are HYPSM. </p>
<p>A lot of people outside Chicago don’t know about Northwestern, that is true but a lot of people INSIDE Chicago don’t know about how good University of Chicago is (UofC and UIC?) so to be fair, does it matter so much if some laymen doesn’t know. Outside HYPSM, the most well-known schools will be public schools with good sports programs.</p>
<p>I don’t remember a discussion of “global” name recognition - global recognition often tends to accentuate large state schools that provide large scale research etc - University of Illinois is probably better known globally than Brown or Swarthmore or Emory or Tufts - but does not mean illinois garners more “prestige” nationally?</p>
<p>While you are entitled to your impression of NU’s name recognition, and this is a clearly subjective measure (at least unless someone knows of marketing or poll research done into college name recognition and impressions) it is a bit presumptuous to assume that your opinion of NU’s name recognition is the end-all-be-all and should be regarded as fact (as you seemed to imply with your statement “so, so much for your global name recognition”).</p>
<p>A counter argument to your assertion that “Outside of a few prep schools and a 50 mile radius of Chicago, no one really knows that school” may be to look at admission statistics reflecting that only approximately 20% of the rather large student body of NU is from Illinois. Northwestern also received 30,600+ applications this year, which in my mind would indicate some knowledge of the school outside of the limited parameters that you suggest. Also considering NU is perennially listed as top 10 or 15 schools in this nation by multiple publications you would have to believe that more than a few have heard of NU. Again, this is of course subjective.</p>
<p>You won’t need to worry about us anonymous Northwestern’ers for long. When Selena Gomez comes to NU as part of the class of 2015 with her new boyfriend Justin Bieber and her best friend Taylor Swift - the residents of your small village in China will not only have heard of Northwestern, they will be humming Go U Northwestern! while waving purple wildcat claws.</p>
<p>Yes, the irony of listing 5 Ivy league schools under the heading of Ivy League rejects did not escape me - the premise was that Ivy league has come to mean HYPSM amongst the masses.</p>
<p>I would hazard to guess if you walked into your average high school and gave a list of colleges that included MIT, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern, Vanderbilt and asked them to pick the Ivy League school(s) - you would be suprised at the results.</p>
<p>Actually, JHU’s yield has been worse than ours despite its great reputation. But regardless, do not equate yield with popularity. A lot of factors go into the decision making. Reputation and academics are only two of the many factors. The weather, financial aid…etc. are all factored into the decision process. NU may be generous compared to many colleges but is relatively stingy when compared to peer schools. It also does not give merit-based scholarships (tried one year but the program was suspended due to the economy).</p>
<p>If you give every admit merit aid, you can boost yield and decrease admit rate considerably. Take a look a Cooper Union, with a sub 10% admit rate and a 78% yield rate that rivals Harvard. Wash U has also relied extremely heavily on merit aid to boost their statistics. Money can strongly influence students choices. The problem is merit aid takes away from the money the university has to help financially needy students. However some schools like Harvard can give more financial aid, even need-based so money is always a draw. Northwestern is doing a good job in trying to boost the amount they give in need-based aid and is expanding the number of special programs:</p>
<p>Federal Pell Grant
Federal SEOG (Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant)
Illinois MAP (Monetary Award Program)
Northwestern University Scholarship
NU Appropriated Scholarship
NU Endowed Scholarship
Good Neighbor,Great University Scholarship
Founders Scholarship
No-Loan Pledge Scholarship
Debt Cap Scholarship
Fermi Scholarship
Argonne Scholarship
QuestBridge National College Match Scholarship</p>
<p>Anyone have figures for total # of applications across all universities and the trend? What’s the year-to-year trend on the number of students in the pool and the average # of apps/student?</p>
<p>You guys can basically put it as 30,604 applications, b/c no way I am getting accepted. It’s a tad of a reach probably. I really lost most of my interest in the school after I got into UIUC engineering back in December so I am pretty sure I did not put my best foot forward on the supplement. Why should I pay $54k/year for a worse engineering education than UIUC where I could pay $40k/year?</p>
<p>^NU is actually ranked higher in biomedical engineering and industrial engineering. They are considered even in material sciences. NU also has the best transportation research center in the nation. So if you are interested in any of those, NU may provide better education. You would have the flexibility to earn a certificate in another field and/or double-major within the engineering school or even across different schools. I don’t think you can easily do any of that at UIUC.</p>
<p>Plus, UIUC still has financial, consulting, and engineering options for careers. Maybe not IBanking like NU, but I don’t want to get into IBanking.</p>