Hi @apccpa. @jfking01’s girlfriend here.
I just wanted to go into a little more detail about the Northeastern side of things if it can help inform your decision at all. Like the boyfriend said, I’m not a computer science major, but I’ve taken the two intro CS classes at Northeastern and have friends in CS at Northeastern.
Rice and Northeastern provide incredibly different college experiences and both have their own perks.
To put it bluntly, the scholars program throws money at its students. The program has been labelled a “top financial priority” for the university. There are ample opportunities to go abroad for free, the program pays for speakers such as Ta’Nehisi Coates and Laverne Cox to come to the school and have dinner with a group of scholars, and I’ve had an opportunity to get free tickets through the program to most major ballet/broadway show/musical events that have come to town through the program. If it weren’t for the scholars program, Rice would be my hands down no brainer suggestion. If your kid is intrigued and interested by all of these opportunities, I think Northeastern could be a better choice.
The biggest distinction I have found between Rice and NEU is the culture. Northeastern is a much larger and less intimate school. The scholars program helps with this some, but doesn’t eliminate the fact. My boyfriend knows far more upperclassmen who are able to give guidance and advice because of the residential college system. He was sitting next to seniors at lunch last year, and I was in a large all freshmen dorm at a school where anyone more than a year older than you is hard to meet because they’re either on co-op or about to be on co-op or studying abroad, etc. I’ve also met a ton of really nice people at Northeastern, but I would definitely say that the folks at Rice are a lot more humble about where they are than many (but not all) of the kids in the scholars program.
This culture definitely seeps into some of the differences your son would notice as a CS major. At Northeastern in intro classes, you’re stuck with a partner for labs and homework assignments who may or may not be a good partner, and who could define your experience in the class. In the first CS class I took, I had a great partner who turned out to be a great friend for the next year, but I was stuck with horrible partners in the second CS class I took and it was a miserable experience. Because of the small residential college system at Rice, my boyfriend knows who the other CS majors are and works on homework assignments with them, and knows upperclassmen who can help him out if he’s up late at night trying to figure something out. There seems to be a much greater sense of natural collaboration.
As far as CS opportunities outside of co-op/internship goes, it seems to me that Rice has a lot more going on as far as projects for CS majors. They have their own Hackathon and RiceApps, which connects students together to work on projects. As a University Scholar at NEU, your son could pretty easily get an Independent Research Fellowship to work on a project of his own the summer after freshman year, but I don’t think the CS culture in terms of opportunities at Northeastern is as strong. Could definitely just be my perspective, though.
I disagree with @jfking01 that Rice wins out in the job placement/internship. The scholars program is still too young to tell where CS grads will be working, but the co-op catalog for CS majors has jobs at many of the major Silicon Valley tech companies my boyfriend and his friends from Rice were applying to internships at. Your first co-op won’t be at Apple (the girl I know who works there now is mechanical engineering anyway), but neither would your first summer internship as a Rice student. CS is the one field where there’s emphasis on getting work experience as an undergrad regardless of whether or not your school has a co-op program, so the co-op program doesn’t have quite the edge that it does for other majors, but I think it puts Northeastern on a much closer to even playing field for CS employment after graduation despite the difference in rank. When it all boils down, I don’t think he would struggle getting a job at a top-notch CS company coming from either school.
When we graduated from high school, @jfking01and I were coming from completely different places. He was fortunate enough to not have money as no object, and I was in the complete opposite situation. My parents weren’t going to give me much, if any, money for school and I had to work within my means. With all that in mind, do I regret my decision to come to Northeastern? Absolutely not. But do I wish I could go to a school with the culture, size, caliber, sense of community, and weather that Rice has? Absolutely.
That being said, I highly doubt your son would regret his decision to go to either school. I hope this was helpful in some way, and I wish you luck in figuring things out. Apologies for the contradictory post. @jfking01 and I have had this conversation too many times to count.
