I’ve narrowed down which college I will go to this fall to Temple and NEU. Both are decent schools and offered me a considerable amount of money; the difference being $5000 more for NEU each year (based on calculations including tuition, housing, and fees). I am planning on majoring in English but I can’t determine which has a better program. I am visiting both schools this month before I decide. Any suggestions or knowledge about the English programs for both schools?
I’d pick Temple.
Have you visited? Would the co-op program at NEU be able to accommodate an English major?
Before you decide look at the internals of both schools like retention rates, graduation rates, test scores of attending students and get a good feel for the location.
NEU isn’t a good pick for an English major. It’s mostly a preprofessional school and unless you want to study English for a specific, applied purpose (such as communication, advertising, publishing…) it wouldn’t be a good fit. There’s a parent whose child was in the Humanities at NEU on this forum, perhaps she’ll chime in, but apparently her daughter had a bit of trouble with the co-ops, since they were not that plentiful, interesting, or paid.
Where else have you been admitted?
Temple & NEU are better than “decent”! 
Out of these two, I’d choose Temple. Do you have other options?
I was also admitted to University of Maryland, George Washington U, Penn State, and Case Western, but none of these offered much financial aid.
I am going to have to disagree that Northeastern is not good for an English major. The humanities is a great example of where co-op can be really beneficial in terms of getting real world experience to see what type of jobs are available to English majors. I know people who have worked as press writers for US Sen. Elizabeth Warren, publishing companies, and PR firms. They also have extensive resources in terms of faculty and student research within the English department linked below. In addition to all of that Northeastern is a significantly more selective school than Temple, and whether you want to get into a top-ranked graduate program or go right into the job market Northeastern is probably a better choice.
http://www.northeastern.edu/cssh/english/experiential-learning/student-research/
^as I said, it depensds if you see English as an applied field or not and what you want in your college experience. If you contrast, say, Kenyon with NEU, perhaps you’ll get why I say NEU is primarily preprofessional and it’s harder to be a Humanities major at NEU.
However, for a top graduate program (PHD), Temple is likely to work better than NEU and for the Boston job market NEU will work better.
But would you look at 5 years at NEU because of the co-ops? I don’t know if the $5k at NEU includes student loans, but 5 years @ $5k would result in $25k extra debt. Is that a good idea for an English major?
I would contact the English department at each school and look at course offerings and ask what internships the English students have been placed in.
From what I understand, financial aid and scholarships do not apply to coop semesters. There’s no tuition due at those times.
@DarwinKnew is correct - all costs work out to be pretty much exactly the same as any 4 year college - you take the exact same amount of classes no matter if you do a 4 year, a 4.5 year, or a 5 year plan. While on co-op, housing/food usually are covered by co-op pay - for some majors, they even make money on co-op which can lower the cost, though I wouldn’t expect that with English.
I can’t speak to the English department / co-ops, but that’s certainly a great place to start researching as others have said.
@MYOS1634 Temple is definitely not the same as a liberal arts college. You seem to be making the argument that if you are interested in studying English in undergrad because you are interested in becoming an academic than you should go to a liberal arts college. I think that is an argument that lots of people make, and there can be merit based on the programs. However, I don’t think most students know that they want to go to grad school as a high school senior and co-ops, internships, and research help a student figure that out (the OP never stated this was the case). On the link that I included above Northeastern talks about their track record of sending their graduates in English to programs at Columbia and Harvard among others. Temple is a very large (37K) state school ranked #115 in USNW, with significantly more commuters and older students in their undergraduate day program than both Kenyon and Northeastern. There is about a 500 point SAT difference between the two schools.
I agree on the whole, IE., Temple is not a lac, general stats aren’t as good as neu’s general stats - but for an English major neu vs. Temple honors isn’t as easy as neu CS vs. Temple (no contest) . Finding Co-ops isn’t as easy as for other majors and neu 's vibe isn’t the same as what you find in a strong honors program (whose average gpa/sat iq higher than neu 's) and many humanities based honors classes. Neu is excellent for some students and Temple honors for others.
I agree mostly here, but it should be noted that NEU’s average SAT is still higher than Temple Honors.
@MYOS1634 Where are you seeing that the OP said they got into Temple honors program, I must have missed that above? As a humanities alum from Northeastern, finding a co-op that was relevant to my major was extraordinarily easy. There are more jobs offered than students applying every year. Co-op also doesnt have to be a job, I know people who just wrote a novel or did research that they hoped they could carry on to graduate school. I think that is the distinction that I am trying to draw. Co-op doesn’t have to be about pre-professional training. For a lot of students it is about a built in flexibility to explore what you want. In a lot of ways that is not dissimilar from the goals of a liberal arts education.
The average SAT score is 35 points higher (out of 1600) at Northeastern than Temple’s Honors average SAT.
@swimchris Since it seems to be a question if I go to Temple it will be for the Honors program
I’d say Northeastern, but either are good