<p>JHS - oh very true, out of the elite schools, Northwestern’s probably tops for star power. None of the ivies or other top schools except maybe for Yale (with its drama school) come close.</p>
<p><a href=“My%20personal%20favorite%20celeb%20grad%20from%20Northwestern%20is%20Kimberley%20Williams,%20who%20I%20thought%20was%20great%20in%20Father%20of%20the%20Bride.”>quote</a>
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<p>A sorority sister of mine, along with Jeri Ryan (then known as Lynn Zimmerman).</p>
<p>And yeah, it’s almost a little game to take a well-known TV show and “spot the NU alum.” From MASH (McLean Stevenson), to Seinfeld (Julia Louis Dreyfus), to Friends (David Schwimmer), to Will & Grace (Megan Mullaly), to Scrubs (Zach Braff), there’s a lot of that six-degrees-of-separation type of thing with our theater major friends. It was always fun in going to student plays to wonder, “Which of these students is going to be the next big breakout star, and we can say we saw them back when?”</p>
<p>Don’t forget about Michael Wilbon on ESPN! (Pardon the Interruption) He mentions Northwestern often.</p>
<p>Ya, NU has a ridiculous number of celebs associated with the school. Wilbon shouts out to Northwestern all the time (and Kornheiser, to a lesser extent, to Penn bc one of his sons played golf at UPenn). </p>
<p>What are the schools with the most celeb power? I’m guessing USC and UCLA on the west coast, NYU (and maybe Harvard, Yale, and Brown) on the east coast, and Northwestern in the midwest?</p>
<p>Btw, Chicago just released its apps numbers for this year:</p>
<p>[U</a>. of C. sees unprecedented jump in applications - Chicago Breaking News](<a href=“BREAKING 100 – Chicago Tribune”>BREAKING 100 – Chicago Tribune)</p>
<p>So, apps are up around 42% and the final overall admit rate should be around 18-19%. </p>
<p>Penn has not yet released their overall app numbers, but I’m assuming the accept rate will be around 16-17% (if growth is consistent).</p>
<p>Thanks! Cue7, a very well description for the two schools. My older daughter went
to Penn and younger one is now at Chicago. For new applicants, it depends on “FIT” as you indicated. BTW, Chicago faculty DO CARE my kid.</p>
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That would essentially be NO growth–which, unfortunately, WOULD be consistent with the last couple of years. :(</p>
<p>College is college. Universidad es universidad. Enjoy life because you’re gonna die and, most likely, you won’t be remembered too long. Just a thought. And Ivies don’t guarantee success, as much as we’d like them to serve as a “golden ticket” to our futures. </p>
<p><3Penn</p>
<p>***I’m only saying this because all this annoying “statistical” and “numerical” information is really devaluing what these great universities have to offer. We, applicants, hate being labelled as numbers… so don’t label colleges as numbers in the same respect!</p>
<p>Carin: unfortunately, these numbers go a long way in terms of signalling effect. For better or worse, status and standing are the coins of the realm in higher ed, and a low accept rate is one of the easiest ways to signal heightened status. This is why schools recruit so hard and look to drum up as many applications as possible. Penn and Chicago could probably cut their recruiting budget in half and still get great students, but this is why the admissions office exists…</p>
<p>I’m not disagreeing that these numbers are influential because they, unfortunately, are; however, I don’t think they should take precedence over more important holistic factors of a university.</p>
<p>I side with Carin’s sentiment. What did you choose, by the way, with regards to applications and ED and such?</p>
<p>Carin - I agree with that sentiment from the applicant’s perspective. When choosing a SCHOOL, the applicant should ALWAYS consider those sorts of holistic factors, and it’s ridiculous to go to one school because it is “more selective” than another.</p>
<p>From an institutional perspective, however, it’s clear that drumming up applications and rejecting swaths of people (as Penn, Chicago, Duke, Brown, etc. all do) all serve the institution well.</p>
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<p>Are you talking to me or Cue?</p>
<p>haha Carin, I think muerte was talking to you. I finished my applications and made my college decision like 15 years ago.</p>
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<p>It’s up this year to somewhere above 25,000.</p>