Hi everyone, I’m currently trying to decide on which university to go to next year. The main choices I’m looking at now are Northeastern University in Boston, Washington University St. Louis, University of Rochester, and Case Western Reserve University. While I got no aid of any sort from WUSTL, I got 20k merit at UR, 32k merit at CWRU, and full tuition at NEU. I also got into the GEAR program at UR (an automatic entrance to grad school with some other networking perks) and the University Scholars Program at Northeastern which provided the full tuition scholarship a well as would give me a huge amount of benefits, such as specialized advising and better shots at internships and co-ops. So I’m not sure what exactly I’ll end up doing, but most likely it’ll be engineering and business. During the application process I sort of expected to get into more high end schools (perfect ACT, 12 AP tests with all 5s, 4.7 GPA, National Merit Finalist, etc.), so I haven’t really given these universities much thought until now. I did visit NEU at a scholars weekend, and really liked the feel of it, and I’ll be visiting WUSTL next week. For the moment, I’m curious what all your opinions are on this.
It depends upon how much the $$ matter. If they matter quite a bit, go with your least expensive option and enjoy it. (Most students end up enjoying where they go.)
If finances don’t matter, then visit them all and pick the one you like the best.
If finances matter a little bit, then look at more specifics about the schools. With regards to UR, it’s a research U and most students coming here participate in undergrad research. Is there research being done that appeals to you in your fields of interest? Once you’ve considered things like that about each school, is your favorite worth more than your least expensive choice?
I’d at least visit them all as they all have different settings and feels to them. It was an overnight visit that sealed UR as my son’s pick of his choices.
Did UR seem a bit isolated for your son? I visited it a few months ago, and apart from the bitter cold, I did feel quite isolated from a lot of the world. TBH, I also felt that it wasn’t as easy to connect with outside research institutes and industries due to the fact that Rochester is kind of in the middle of nowhere.
Isolated? Not at all. I can’t fathom that word entering his vocab in the same sentence as UR. Quite a bit of the research he’s been involved in has been in conjunction with other worldwide universities. It’s part of how he got his (paid) summer research fellowship at Stanford last year. According to his acceptance letter, approx 240 applied and 13 were accepted. I think one of those others was from WUSTL. None were from NEU or CW. No clue if any applied from those two though. He’s in Brain & Cognitive science/research, so not your fields.
Any of the schools are decent IMO. You just need to decide which one is right for you. None of us can really do that for you. How you do in each school will make the difference in grad school acceptances or jobs thereafter, not the school names or locations.