<p>visited both, loved both.
tufts seemed much more relaxed, nu seemed much more intense...
is the tufts theater dept. any good? that may make or break my decision..</p>
<p>If you’d like, I can put you in touch with a couple students who are heavily involved in the Drama program. One is a drama major, the other is likely to be an IR major who nevertheless participated in 5 shows this year. It’s a pretty awesome program, in my heavily biased opinion, most distinguished by its inclusiveness towards other majors. </p>
<p>My e-mail can be found on the contact section of the Tufts admissions page.</p>
<p>My son is trying also decide between Tufts and NW. We are headed to visit Tufts on April 22-25. He is going to stay overnight. He is really interested in stem cell research/applied biochemistry. Both schools are great choices. I think it comes down to where you want to be for the next four years…Boston or Chicago.</p>
<p>I asked the theatre question a while back. Here’s the thread; I got some really great replies.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tufts-university/682593-theatre-tufts.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tufts-university/682593-theatre-tufts.html</a></p>
<p>Two of my favorite schools in the world! I know both well. You cannot go wrong.
But they are very different places. Tufts feels more like a liberal arts college; NU is a mid-sized university with a larger campus (5000 undergrads at Tufts, 8000 at NU). Greek life is not important at Tufts, while it’s a pretty big part of life at NU (even though you are fine if you have no interest, because less than 50% of NU students go Greek, while it’s less than 10% at Tufts). Sports are much more important at NU, which is a Big 10 school with the marching band at football games, the FOur Time champs in women’s LAX, etc.
Tufts has a really nice theatre department, with a pretty new facility that I think is great. I believe that NU’s reputation for theatre is even better.
NU is quarter system; Tufts the traditional semester. That means that you can take more courses in four years at NU than you can at Tufts. It also means that if you don’t like a course, the suffering ends sooner (although I haven’t seen too much suffering at NU).
As a general rule, the students at each school seem to love them. Is NU more “intense”? I wouldn’t describe it that way, but the quarter system certainly means that you must be the type of student who gets off to a quick start. Also, many quarter system schools require 3 courses a term, while at NU 4 is the standard.
And the cities? Wow - that’s win/win: Chicago or Boston.
Good luck!
Let us know what you decide.</p>
<p>WOW - I just came on CC to make a thread asking the same thing!!!</p>
<p>I just returned from Northwestern’s program for prospective students, and I informally visited Tufts earlier this month (I’m doing the real Open House in a few days). I thought that after checking out both schools, my answer would become clear…but now I’m MORE confused than ever!!!</p>
<p>On paper, the schools are similar in sooo many ways. Rank isn’t one of them - NU is #12, while Tufts is #28, quite a big difference. But both schools are great academically, and both are known as prestigious universities. Still, I personally think that NU has more of a name than Tufts all around the country (Tufts is known mostly in the Northeast), and I’ve heard people refer to Tufts as the backup school for Ivy rejects from the northeast- some people even think that some of the students seem bitter and unhappy, only having chosen Tufts because of this “backup non-Ivy Ivy” thing. Do you guys find this to be true?</p>
<p>City-wise, both schools are near great cities - Tufts has Boston, and NU has Chicago. These cities gave off very different vibes to me, though. Chicago reminds me a ton of a much cleaner NYC, while Boston seems less of a city and more designed for college kids. I personally think I might prefer Boston over Chicago, but that might just be because of the proximity to my hometown.</p>
<p>Town-wise, I got a better vibe from Evanston than from Medford/Somerville. Evanston was much more city-like than I expected. It actually kind of reminded me of Boston, and I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of mainstream stores & restaurants in the town - on one block, I found a great bagel place, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Taco Bell, CVS, Cosi, and Gap, with a huge Barnes & Nobles and a ton of other places on the next block over. Now, I haven’t seen Davis square yet, but I’ll be checking that out later this week- how is it?</p>
<p>Size-wise (size of population, not of school itself), the schools are actually quite different. When I was considering where to go to school, I narrowed down my list to schools with 5,000-10,000 undergrads. Tufts and NU both fall into this category — BUT 5,000 is a LOT less than 8,000. Especially when you think about the colleges within the schools - Tufts only has two undergrad colleges (Liberal Arts & Engineering), while NU has 6 undergrad schools (Arts/Sciences, Communications, Education, Engineering, Journalism, & Music). Having only two undergrad colleges is good when you want your peers on campus to be taking classes in the same college as you, but having 6 colleges is good if you start liberal arts and later realize that communications or journalism is your thing - transferring at NU is pretty simple.</p>
<p>This difference in number of students can also be seen in the size of the campus itself - I don’t know the actual figures about the size of both schools, but Northwestern seemed to me to be a LOTTT bigger than Tufts. Also, Tufts came off to me as being a very enclosed campus, while Northwestern’s campus was kind of spread everywhere - the university is known for having two very distinct regions, North and South, and getting from one to the other takes a pretty long time. I’m not much of a walker (actually, I’m very out of shape!), and the traveling required at NU is kind of intimidating…
*I just looked it up - Tufts is 150 acres, as opposed to NU’s 250 acres. So Tufts is 3/5 the size of NU.</p>
<p>The weather - now this is one thing that definitely lowers Northwestern in my mind. Yes, Boston is cold, but Chicago’s the “Windy City” (and yes, I know it got that name originally from politics, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s incredibly windy). It’s already spring, yet the weather when I visited was cold, rainy, and windy - so windy that my relatively large umbrella turned inside-out a good 10 times. I wouldn’t mind that so much if it weren’t for the windchill - when the weather’s freezing in winter, the windchill makes it feel MUCH colder. This is especially a problem at Northwestern with the large campus - walking between North and South in the -40 windchill would make me just want to stay in my warm bed and miss class all quarter.</p>
<p>Speaking of quarters, that’s another difference between Tufts & NU - the semester system vs the quarter system. The semester system seems nice since it’s a less rushed workload. However, the quarter system does allow someone unsure about their major (coughmecough) to try out a bunch of different things, and does make a boring class go by quicker. I’m really torn about which system I’d prefer - what are you guys’ thoughts?</p>
<p>And finally, as far as extracurriculars go, both schools seem to have a lot going on a lot of the time. The Tufts activities website, tuftsflife, makes it look like something fun is always going on on campus (although most of those events are either Jewish or Asian-sponsored - do these events dominate, or do the people tied to Jewish/Asian organizations just tend to post their clubs’ events on the site more often?). Northwestern also seems to have a lot going on on campus - I couldn’t find any site for events, but I know that sports games, Greek life, and residential college activities are big on campus. I’m the farthest thing from an athlete, but going to games with friends seems like it could be fun; and I would never picture myself to be in a sorority, but I’ve heard about NU’s Greek life being very open (and even if you don’t rush, the frat parties are open to everyone). And the residential colleges at Tufts seem like they really help to unite the students.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, that’s one more thing - I’m not very sure about the on-campus housing at Tufts and Northwestern. NU seems to offer a variety of housing with the residential halls, residential colleges, & frats/sororities, with each rescollege having a theme to connect its residents. But we couldn’t see any of the rooms at NU, and I’m pretty much clueless about housing at Tufts. Could anyone offer any advice about this?</p>
<p>Wowwwww…I was completely not intending to write out anything more than a paragraph just now, let alone this…I guess this is kind of my pros-cons thinking process in written form? Haha, maybe this will be helpful to someone - but in the mean time, I NEED HELP!!! 
Some things I’d really like to know more about:
- Tufts vs NU as far as reputation goes (and the ‘backup Ivy’ thing?)
- Is the Tufts town environment good?
- Is Chicago REALLY that cold?? Does the wind & weather have a strong effect on happiness?
- Thoughts on the quarter system?
- Any input on campus life at either institution?
- Tufts vs NU housing?</p>
<p>Seriously, people, PLEASE write stuff - anything!!</p>
<p>All your questions are good ones. To a point. For the ones I feel I have answers for, my answers are mostly, “Nah…not really an issue.”</p>
<p>The “back-up Ivy thing”: I went to Tufts 30-some years ago. I found that having Harvard and MIT down the street was sometimes an advantage. And even then, a lot of us had applied to Tufts ED. Not such a big deal.</p>
<p>The Tufts town environment–thankfully great! I interview students from a vibrant city and am happy to report that there are lots of restaurants and lots to do right in the neighborhood. Harvard Square and downtown Boston are easy to get to.</p>
<p>Chicago’s cold–yes, but Boston is also cold. You’ll deal with it.</p>
<p>Quarters–they are more intense, but you have less of a time to remember for your exams. I kind of like that you take more classes if you have quarters. But colleges with quarters do get out later. It’s a personal preference, and most people could adapt to either program. </p>
<p>Campus life is excellent at both schools, and housing has its pluses and minuses.</p>
<p>The best thing you could do would be to visit, then go with your gut. Gut reactions have their places. If you can’t visit, you can still go with your gut, and it can work out fine. I never saw Tufts before I showed up on campus, and it worked out. NU probably would have been fine too.</p>
<p>
You’re about to visit campus for the 2nd time. You tell me, do you find this to be the case? Dial the calendar back ten or fifteen years, and I believe you’d see the remnants of that attitude on campus, but I don’t believe it has any bearing on current campus culture or pride. However, frankly, as an outsider who will be visiting campus again soon, you’ll probably be a better gauge of it than I. </p>
<p>
Neither, it’s mostly just the time of the year. The bracket of time immediately around passover tends to saturate will Hillel events (I was just on Tuftslife this morning and remarked on the same thing). And this month is when all the culture organizations that include performance groups have their shows. Most of the dancing culture groups are linked to the Asian continent (Bhangra, CSA, KSA, FCS). I will take this moment to say that Bhangra is, easily, my favorite dance group at Tufts. Go back to the week of April 1st</p>
<p>Housing is something you’ll get to see at the Open House, so I won’t spoil the fun except to say that the dorm you’ll be seeing is where I lived in my freshman year, and it’s pretty reflective of the Freshman accommodations.</p>
<p>Come find me when you visit campus and we’ll chat about what you’re drawn to, what you hope to do, and who you want to spend time with. I promise (100%) not to give you a “hard sell” and to be honest so you can make the right decision, wherever that takes you.</p>
<p>Boston is actually <em>more</em> windy than Chicago:
[Wind-</a> Average Wind Speed- (MPH)](<a href=“http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/online/ccd/avgwind.html]Wind-”>http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/online/ccd/avgwind.html)</p>
<p>JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC ANN
Chi 11.6 11.4 11.8 11.9 10.5 9.3 8.4 8.2 8.9 10.1 11.1 11.0 10.3
Bos 13.7 13.7 13.6 13.1 12.0 11.4 11.0 10.8 11.3 11.9 12.7 13.4 12.4</p>
<p>vivaciousviolets-
The USNWR rankings can sometimes be extremely misleading, so take them with a grain of salt. Some of the factors used are either misleading or just not very important.
Yes, NU is ranked ahead of Tufts by USNWR (and probably in most other rankings), and it probably deserves to be, but not by much. Penn is also ranked well ahead of Georgetown (something like 6 vs 23), but I have my doubts that it is any better, and certainly not significantly better, than Georgetown. And Georgetown is ranked behind Emory and Vandy, but many people (myself included) think it deserves to be rated higher than those two.
We are talking about a level of schools here that are all simply terrific.
In terms of difficulty of admission and cachet on the resume, HYP and Stanford stand alone, but after that there is a very large group of schools that all offer comparable, and excellent, educations. It really should come down to the subjective factors - where does the individual student feel s/he would do (and like) the best for the four years of college?</p>
<p>We visited these 2 schools at Accepted Applicant days last year and my daughter liked both. I think factors that steered her towards Tufts were the large Greek life and quarter system at NU. She is very social but wanted a lower key frat/sorority atmosphere. I also think the NU campus was a little more sprawling than she wanted. It basically just came down to the best fit although I’m sure she would have been happy at NU. My daughter didn’t really care about the magazine rankings and is a very happy freshman at Tufts.</p>
<p>I think that people should lose the Tufts “Ivy-reject” rhetoric about Tufts, already. My kid elected to go to Tufts, ED, after having been courted (yeah, I know that they’re not supposed to do that, but they do) by a few ivy league schools and a well-known school in Palo Alto. She had a stellar application and could have gone, anywhere, barring the idiosyncracies of the admissions process. She not only had the “data” but a “hook” that I know that no school had ever seen before. And she is a singularly nice kid with unrivaled integrity.</p>
<p>She chose Tufts and Tufts, alone; in fact, we were worried about her passion for Tufts because it made her eliminate everything else, even telling us that she would apply to Tufts, the following year, were she not to get in the first time 'round. She felt that strongly, why?</p>
<p>The level of warmth, ingenuousness on the part of both the admissions officers and the student body. She said that there was so much heart when people talked about their (Tufts) school, and none of the pretentiousness and the redundant rhetoric that students and administration shoveled, literally, in her direction at other “elite” (I don’t even know what that means, anymore, frankly) schools. She said that if she heard, one more time, how Brown had an “Open curriculum,” for example, when she knew that one could design his/her own major at pretty much every university and college in the country, save for the evangelical ones, she was going to hurl (her words, not mine).</p>
<p>Rankings mean zilch, if a school isn’t your place, if its students are not “your people,” if the administration is unsupportive and the faculty is inaccessible, and know that the USNWR rankings are informed by alumni giving, as well. It’s no wonder that some of the upper-most tiered schools are also the ones with the biggest endowment.</p>
<p>Figure out who you are–big city, urban setting, liberal, Conservative, musical, tone-deaf, small/mid-size/large school, coastal, mountain, etc. kind of kid. For heaven’s sake, look at the posters on campus and figure out if there is a niche for you.</p>
<p>But this thing with the Ivy reject complex–enough, already. My kid met three enrolled students at a coveted Ivy league school, while doing a prospective applicant overnight, there, who did not get into Tufts.</p>
<p>And, it’s not true, for those of who are not provincial, that Tufts is known, exclusively, regionally. We are Californians, and everyone knows Tufts, and friends and cohorts in Europe, Israel, and Asia know full-well about Tufts. Tufts’ having the #1 grad. school of Int’l Relations has likely aided and abetted Tufts’ global reputation.</p>
<p>Choose with your heart after taking inventory with your head! Both NU and Tufts have excellent academics, but that is not even a part of why a school is a fit as far as I am concerned.</p>
<p>My son goes to Northwestern and his best friend goes to Tufts. They both love their experiences. Both are excellent schools and both have access to major cities. Your major may swich you to one over another, but either choice is excellent.</p>