Just posted this thread in Northeastern forum, but I’m sure I’d get a different perspective here, so posting link here as well.
I looked at your other thread. I can’t offer any info on the Physics dept, my son is doing ME. I posted on another NeU versus UR thread that you have to put the Coop versus Research school high in your decision making. UR is big into research and while they have a decent career services dept they are not going to have the job connections NEU will have.
I have a friend whose daughter goes to Drexel, the Phily version of NEU. They groom the kids to find work with resume classes and selected leads for Coops that put the Drexel kids at the front of the line for employer’s looking for interns. You are paying for that insider privilege and there is nothing wrong with that.
Rochester cannot compete with Boston either in terms of city life. Rochester has some cool coffee shops and Art culture but it is not Boston.
My son also was accepted to RPI. They certainly had the best toys for ME but socially, he was turned off with the boy/girl ratio. It is a geek school while UR is a nerd school. There is a difference 
@lakemom Agree that for son, biggest decision is whether he totally buys into the co-op model; he says he does. And Northeastern actually also has great research opportunities as well. We had a tour of the physics labs and talked to students who were doing undergraduate research in the labs. And like you said, he’d be in Boston. But there were things about Rochester he really liked, too. The campus (tho of course we were there on a beautiful 60-degree day, and not when it was buried in snow with sub-zero wind chills; and opportunity to be on the Varsity track team, as opposed to the club team at Northeastern. Son feels same about RPI - offered an awesome scholarship, but didn’t feel great about social scene.
I think that the Co-op decision is high on the list because that is the culture at NEU, most all the students are doing
Co-op so people are sort of coming and going and that is the norm.
My son applied and was accepted to RIT and UR, a mere 20 min drive from each other. However RIT is a Co-op school and when he met with the director, he felt the focus was too much on getting a job and not just learning what there is to learn.
Now, UR is big on research and he is not into research either, though many of his friends are. He chose UR because he felt he fit better with the students. UR is a science school with a liberal arts addition. Due to the open curriculum, ME students take 3 ME classes and one what ever they want class a semester. They only have to take 3-4 classes in a single focus area called a cluster and because the load was not that heavy, he took extra 2-4 credit classes when he could.
The freedom to explore his other interests was a better fit. No other engineering school that he wanted to apply to had that flexibility of curriculum. So that was the draw. Rochester is a city and has some of the benefits one gets in a city but since it is not a busy hectic city, that was a better fit for him as well.
Good luck to your son, I’m sure he’ll do great where ever he goes.
I disagree with the statement that UR is a science school with a liberal arts addition. It is strong in sciences and in liberal arts. There is more research in science because that’s where the funding is, but there is research in liberal arts and UR liberal arts departments do research too.
I have to say that I used to be able to see the statistics of kids who went to the various schools around Boston, meaning accepted and rejected plus data on who went. Most of this data is from a few large public school systems outside Boston. There was a clear divide in stats, not counting Harvard and MIT, with Tufts followed by BU/BC being very close (especially if adjusting for size) and NEU a fairly large distance behind. That doesn’t necessarily reflect educational quality versus status but it’s data. In terms of curriculum, I know a number of professors at various schools around Boston and in general I think NEU’s curriculum is a bit old-fashioned in the areas I know. That doesn’t mean that’s true across fields. A few other points. I don’t care much where anyone goes: life is yours to live and I have no stake in your life. Second, I applaud NEU for drastically changing itself from a commuter/part-time school which used to run ads about the vast number of people going there into a traditional school with a co-op addition. They’ve built a campus, cut the number of students (focusing on full time) and updated many other aspects of the school. (And btw one reason for co-op is they get more students into the program because you pay for things you use while on co-op, whether that’s classes or housing. I’m surprised more schools haven’t moved into this because it adds students without substantially adding demand for resources.) The only issue I have with NEU is they have a tendency to exaggerate (read: lie) about statistics. For example, they sometimes claim an absurd salary for graduates and when you get into the data you find they have very little and it appears to include people already in the workforce who go to NEU. I wish they wouldn’t do that but I think they still suffer a bit of a complex about their past and they over-compensate. It isn’t needed: NEU is fine as is.
That said, if you want a co-op, then NEU is a terrific choice. It isn’t as trade school oriented as RIT, which still offers programs in things like “lab technician” as it expands its more general offerings. It doesn’t mean you’ll get a job and others won’t because that’s not how the world actually works. It doesn’t mean you’ll make more money because that’s not how the world works. My advice is always: go where you can afford, where they have your program and where you feel comfortable.
*I love to mention this oddity: in the schools data, you see weird stuff and the weirdest is the kids who get into Harvard or MIT, particularly the latter, with absolutely terrible statistics. Bad grades and test scores. Legacy and money! But what I don’t understand and the reason why I mention this is I can’t imagine going to MIT without the ability to do the work. I say that as an Ivy graduate who knows he was not cut out for MIT.
I don’t disagree with you Lergnom. I was coming from the place of a student being a science major who wants to take more than just science. That being said.
The #1 liberal arts college, Williams, has these as their top 5 majors
Five most popular majors for 2013 graduates
English Language and Literature, General 13%
History, General 13%
Mathematics, General 13%
Economics, General 12%
Political Science and Government, General 12%
Rochester has these
Five most popular majors for 2013 graduates
Social Sciences 20%
Biological and Biomedical Sciences 13%
Psychology 13%
Engineering 11%
Health Professions and Related Programs 10%
And I agree about RIT but they have some interesting majors there that you cannot find other places so that may be a good place for those who want a career in an area that others are not flocking to.
@Lergnmom Where did Brandeis’ stats sit in relation to the others? IMHO, that’s the one most similar to Rochester in terms of its student body and overall reputation.
I’d say Brandeis and UR are very similar in the caliber of students and their interest in learning. There is a real difference, however: UR is not political. That’s on purpose. Brandeis is overly political with what I’d call open warfare breaking out between factions. This has included the administration versus the faculty (and art museum), stuff about the Middle East (which has become vitriolic as Brandeis bends over backwards) and a recent mess that involved a conservative student exposing on a conservative website highly inflammatory public tweets made by an African-American student representative and then what I’d call a blunt political assault on the conservative student by the student council.
As for UR, they’ve made a conscious decision to stay out of polarizing matters. They are more and more devoted to green living but even there they avoid arguments about imposing solutions.
In terms of place, Brandeis is near Boston but it’s in Waltham and you really won’t be part of the city. Rochester is not Boston but it’s easier to deal with. Brandeis has a greener, more suburban campus arranged in a big ring. UR is more a traditional New England style campus. Both campuses are, however, relatively self-contained.
Thanks @Lergnom. My kid’s final list was U of R, Case Western, and Brandeis. After visiting all three, Brandeis has been the first casualty although there were certainly many things to like about the campus and the school in general. My sense is that it slots somewhere between Tufts and BU on the Boston-area spectrum of colleges.
All three impressed, but it’s now down to a choice between the urban environment at Case vs. the semi-urban feel of Rochester. There’s no bad option here in my view, but I will still be sad for the missed opportunities offered at Case or U of R whichever way it turns out!
For physics, and potential graduate pIacement, I would choose Stony Brook – it has the best faculty and placement; it probably has better facilities for physics than Rochester, but I have not been in the departments at Rochester, so not able to say conclusively. Rochester would still be a good choice as well, as would Brandeis; neither quite up to the level of SB. For physics, choose wisely: this is a difficult discipline, and the campus life, etc. will not matter as much as the academic path, if one wants to gain traction in the field.
Unless the co-op structure takes precedence, I wouldn’t place Northeastern as highly for physics – and I’m not entirely clear how a co-op structure would benefit natural or theoretical sciences as well as applied sciences or engineering students, to be quite honest.
DS is a senior physics major at UR. He was able to secure REUs for each summer. The REUs are looked upon very highly in job/grad school searches. He has just finished up the grad school admissions process with many acceptances, 5 of which are in the top 20 ranked grad physics programs.
When searching for his undergrad school 4 years ago, UR won out because of the personal attention of the faculty/staff in the physics department, the Rochester Curriculum and the student body.
I can’t comment on co-ops or the other schools, but UR has been wonderful for DS.
@chowdycat Sounds like your son had some great opportunities. Great to hear. thanks
If you’re at all interested in anything related to optics, UR is the only place.
Academic paths are all about the grad school.
I have to agree with Lergnom – Rochester, and its Kodak ties, make it the place to be if optics are a possibility. Stony Brook boasts more strengths in sub-fields of physics overall, though Rochester can provide a very supportive learning environment.
It’s not just Kodak but the entire history of Bausch & Lomb, Xerox and other companies that grew out of this place, along with the simple fact that UR’s optics is world class and receives a huge amount of research money. It isn’t just “optics” - as we think of lenses - but they’re doing top work in quantum computing, which involves optics and quantum entanglement (quantum photonics) plus a bunch of other things. That and a host of other related fields. If I remember correctly, it was UR that recently announced the ability to entangle a much larger number of particles. Look at [this one page](Quantum Optics : Research : The Institute of Optics : University of Rochester) about optics and you see that it isn’t about “imaging” in the traditional sense.
I believe UR owns the most powerful laser in the world.
Heats a cup of noodles really fast
Well played, lergnom!!
cold water to hot tea in nanoseconds!!!
I stole that from The Big Bang Theory when Leonard uses a laser to heat his lunch
U of R does have internship opportunities for engineers. It may not be as full blown as a CoOp but they are a good thing.