<p>NU also has few other fairly business-oriented options like management sciences major (in the engineering school) or business institutions minor.</p>
<p>Basically, if you want to study "business" in college, you don't want to go to any of the Ivies except Penn or Cornell, and you really don't want to go to Chicago or Columbia (where, in addition to not letting you study business, they will make you study a whole bunch of stuff that you may not want to). It sounds like Northwestern does have programs to accomodate undergraduates who want some sort of business credential. It may be similar to Cornell in that respect. It's safe to say that it doesn't have an undergraduate business program like the Wharton School.</p>
<p>EDIT: Chicago may be about the same as "HYP" for business, but it's waaay worse than "Penn/HYP" for business, since "Penn" moves the average up considerably. What Chicago and HYP have are incredible economics, math, and social science programs that give students a lot of tools that they can use in the business world or in graduate business study. Plus, class.</p>
<p>Sam Lee,
Are you kidding. Chicago is all about the humanities. Need I remind you about the oriental institute. Also, Chicago is one of the few schools that actually has and egyptology program.</p>
<p>Geesh, we're talking about undergraduate education, and we're talking about folks that, based on experience, are unlikely to graduate in the major they started in. Very unlikely. Except for Penn's business program, all these impressions of who is best are based on grad programs.</p>
<p>Add to that the core at Chicago, designed to expose undergrads to a range of fields, and I think this emphasis on "who's the best" is a complete waste of time. Most schools offer far more depth in any field than undergrads can tap in a normal 4 year career.</p>
<p>Move on to something more relevant, like campus culture and such. It is these other issues that make or break it for undergrads.</p>
<p>I respectfully disagree, newmassdad. Of course, undergraduates often change their directions in college, and of course most schools offer far more depth in many (not all) fields than a student can tap in a normal four-year career. But many students -- maybe most of the ones I care about -- do go pretty deep into one area, and if they don't necessarily exhaust the opportunities there, they certainly take advantage of some of them.</p>
<p>I chose my college primarily based on the reputation of its faculty in my area of interest, and then I changed my area of interest somewhat based on what the best faculty there were teaching. It was a great decision, at least for me. I got amazing classroom sophistication in the areas I cared about most, met leading scholars from all over the world, had great relationships with famous professors and to-be-famous-in-the-future grad students. I didn't exhaust anything except myself, but I got a lot more out of it than I would have gotten at Brand X University. It was completely thrilling.</p>
<p>A girl in my Calc class was - to my surprise - offered admission to University of Chicago. She is a year older than me, but I talked to her a lot, because both of us were incredibly bored during Calculus. Not because either of us was great at it, I just find math both difficult AND boring.</p>
<p>Anyway, she was offered a full scholarship to American University, and was also accepted to UC Berkeley, Boston University, and University of Chicago. Northwestern did not accept her. She decided on Chicago.</p>
<p>Her SAT was a 1950, her GPA around 3.7 unweighted. She maintained a C- in calculus. I wouldn't consider her a "diamond in the rough" because she was already a very intelligent and engaging student during high school. But I was especially proud of her because she was certainly not part of the intellectual "elite" at my school, a group of anti-social, arrogant future attendees of Brown, Harvard, Princeton, Duke, et al.</p>
<p>I find this anecdote pretty telling about admissions at Chicago in general. More than any school I'm aware of, with the possible exception of Reed, Chicago is looks beyond GPA's and test scores to evaluate the student as a whole. Some of my friends from high school were denied admission to Chicago, despite having better grades and scores than me.</p>
<p>The students I know at Chicago who were denied at NU were all sort of wildcards in their way... one was un-hooked and had a 1200 SAT, another had spotty grades in math and science. If I were to generalize based on patterns I've seen, I would say that a student with a strong academic track record would have an easier time gaining admission to NU than to U(C), whereas a student who has charisma and motivation but not the top-flight grades and the scores might have an easier time getting into Chicago.</p>
<p>(I once heard Dean of Admissions Ted O'Neill say something like, "We select our students based on who we think our faculty would like." If that's the case, SAT scores and grades don't reflect as much as personality, academic ambition, eloquence, etc.)</p>
<p>*I had a 33, 3.7 at a very competitive private school, awesome extracurriculars, unique essays, and glowing recs. *</p>
<p>I got into both schools.</p>
<p>*My best friend had a 2050, 3.6 at the same school, awesome extracurriculars, unique essays, and glowing recs. *</p>
<p>She got into neither (which was a surprise - Chicago really would have been <em>perfect</em> for her, and she was told she would get in because she was such an intellectual).</p>
<p>*My other best friend had a 31, 4.1 at the same school, strong EC's, unique essays, and glowing recs. *</p>
<p>She got into Chicago but was waitlisted at NU.</p>
<p>*What does this tell you? * That admissions at NEITHER school are straightforward (because my friend with a substantially higher GPA and only slightly lower ACT was waitlisted at NU, while I got in. And Chicago doesn't always take the pure intellectuals that they're known for admitting.</p>
<p>The only truly different thing in my opinion is that you MUST have a strong essay to get into Chicago, while you can still manage to get into NU without a spectacular essay.</p>