<p>Northeastern rises to 69!</p>
<p>Boston University remains at 56 but is in a 7 way tie. </p>
<p>National</a> Universities Rankings - Best College - Education - US News</p>
<p>Victory!!! 69 is good!!</p>
<p>This is awesome!</p>
<p>verrrrry happy about this. and let it keep rising!</p>
<p>What was the NEU rank for this past year?</p>
<p>Last year, Northeastern was ranked 80. The year before it was ranked 96. Northeastern is one of the most rapidly rising schools in the USNews survey.</p>
<p>And we are (again) tied for second in “Up-and-coming universities”.</p>
<p>“In spring 2010, for the third year in a row, U.S. News asked the experts who respond to our annual peer assessment survey to identify institutions in their U.S. News ranking category that are making the most promising and innovative changes in the areas of academics, faculty, and student life. The 68 that received the most nominations in their ranking peer group for being up-and-coming are listed here.”</p>
<p>It’s kind of cool that other schools think we’re getting better. People might stop thinking Northeastern is ‘that school near Chicago’ by the time I graduate…</p>
<p>“school near chicago” hehe ^^</p>
<p>I can’t stand the people who mistake Northeastern for Northwestern… especially since I visited Northwestern and didn’t even like it.</p>
<p>agreed however, i still don’t think neu is being accurately represented by it’s ranking. by no means are penn state nor university of miami better schools than neu, just to name a few!</p>
<p>I agree Bella, especially regarding U of Miami. In two or three years Northeastern will be at about 50 at least. These things take time. Too rapid a rise would be suspect and lead to accusations that the school is fudging its figures. Then again, a 27 place rise in 2 years is pretty rapid. Now if President Aoun can rustle up some more big donors to boost the endowment, the rise will be even faster… </p>
<p>A student on the Boston University thread was lamenting that their ranking hasn’t changed in three years, they are stuck at 56. In my opinion, it’s because nothing has changed at BU in the past three years, nor in the past 20 years for that matter. BU is still fundamentally the same school it was 20 years ago while Northeastern has transformed itself.</p>
<p>Yeah, but hey, its a great leap nevertheless. I believe some point during orientation, they said the entering class of 2010 had the highest stats in NU’s history so I can only imagine the 2012 rankings. And so far the people i’ve met had anywhere from 2000s to 2300s on the SATs. However, it seems like a good amount of people are planning on doing the 4-yr program so it should definitely improve NUs 1% 4-yr graduation, but hopefully its a few. Not sure why, but I like the idea of being in college for 5 years. lol.</p>
<p>And yeah, we definitely need alums to donate. Once a school’s endowment grows, everything else falls into place. I also commented on the BU thread. Like you said, BU really hasn’t change. It’s the same old BU. Is that a bad thing? Not really. But schools like Fordham have constructed new dorms for the fall. Its probably trying to change the fact that 25% of its freshman still commute. However, I believe Northeastern will be in 50s next year. With the new colleges, more faculty and better students academically, all we need is a bigger endowment to become an even better school. I wonder if Northeastern is going to change the methodology it uses to see how many freshman will be join the next entering class? A higher ranking probably will make people think more about Northeastern and imagine a freshman class of 4000 rather than 2800. That would definitely be an issue when it comes to space.</p>
<p>"Not sure why, but I like the idea of being in college for 5 years. lol. " - I think it’s a great idea. The 5 year co-op program lets you try 3 different assignments and stretch your time to refine your interests. Without any extra tuition $.</p>
<p>No offense, but you guys are a little too “all we need is a bigger endowment”… Northeastern is a tuition-run school, and the administration isn’t hiding that. One of the reasons why we’ve been able to grow and improve in the past few years while other schools have taken such a huge hit is BECAUSE we don’t have a great endowment. Harvard for example had to cut a bunch of their stuff because when the economy shot down, so did their endowment. So even though it’s still insanely higher than ours, we didn’t get as much of a hit from less donations. Yeah a better endowment would be great, but don’t expect some alumni to just go and donate a bunch and have our ranking shoot up. We don’t really have the luxury of relying on the money, so the administration has been focusing on improving other things with the money that we’ve got.</p>
<p>Aoun though got a massive pay raise for the amount of donations he’s been getting out of people though, so we are doing better than normal. :)</p>
<p>Northeastern can’t handle an incoming class of 4000. We don’t have the classrooms or the residence halls for 1200 extra freshmen. I doubt they’ll go over 3000 anytime soon. And while 80 to 69 is great and is really important to us, it’s not like the average applicant is going to say “hmm, I don’t want to apply to this school because it’s only 80, but I’ll apply to this one because it’s 11 ranks higher”. We’ve had increases in the number of applicants every year, and obviously this can only help that, but it’s not like this is going to make the number of applicants double or anything.</p>
<p>Also, USNews doesn’t use 4 year rate anymore, I don’t think. I think they changed it to 5 years instead…</p>
<p>neuchimie, you are right. Harvard has a big hole in the ground in Allston where their science center was to rise. I was referring to a larger endowment allowing Northeastern to offer more grants/scholarships to students. That would improve retention as students would not have to worry as much about rising loan balances etc.</p>
<p>As for the freshman class size, it has been frozen at 2800 since 1990. This has been a godsend for Northeastern. As the applicant pool has grown, acceptance criteria have risen. This class size freeze is partly due to an non-binding agreement with the City of Boston that FT undergraduate enrolment will not exceed 15,000. I have even heard that the freshman class size may be reduced to 2700 in 2012 as Northeastern is over the 15,000 limit due to increased retention. BU on the other hand has increased its freshman class size. When S2 entered BU in 1997, it was 3200, now it is 4100. More students, more tuition but no rise in their admission stats. </p>
<p>OK, son S2 went to BU. He has other redeeming qualities! LOL</p>
<p>Oh yeah, I remember hearing about that. There were a bunch of articles fall last year about how Boston got really angry at BU and Northeastern (and a few other schools) because they have so many students. More college students means less resources for families in the city.</p>
<p>^ I never heard about this, but its nice to know. Maybe thats the reason why Northeastern’s pushes its urban engagement mission so much.</p>
<p>One more thing about the endowment, NEUchimie you are right that the endowment is not most important, but saying that Northeastern is a tuition run school is not really true. The school does need donations to fund lots of programs, and if there were significantly less donations, I’m sure the school wouldn’t be the same as it is today.</p>
<p>But what really affects this USNWR ranking is the alumni participation rate. When alumni donate, it shows confidence in the school, and the ranking people will see that. Right now, Northeastern does not have a very high percentage of alumni who give back. I forget the exact number, but Northeastern does not have as high of a percentage of alumni giving back than BU or BC, which is one reason why we are not as high in the rankings.</p>
<p>[How</a> U.S. News Calculates the College Rankings - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2010/08/17/how-us-news-calculates-the-college-rankings.html?PageNr=3]How”>http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-colleges/2010/08/17/how-us-news-calculates-the-college-rankings.html?PageNr=3)</p>
<p>Actually the alumni giving rate is only 5 percent. Much more important are how other schools view us, student retention and graduation (6 year) rate, and faculty resources (like student to faculty ratio). That’s why it’s near impossible to get into a class topped at 19 or 49 students- because ranking systems use “number of classes with less than 20/50 students”.</p>
<p>Not saying donations aren’t important because clearly they are, but they aren’t that significant in rankings. And “tuition run” means that the school would be hurt a lot more if tuitions disappeared than donations. Almost every micro class covers the boston colleges at least once, mainly to point out that BU’s president is paid less than ours.</p>