I am really confused about UW Madison for some reason, maybe it’s the high acceptance rate. I know by ranking UW Madison is ranked in the top 20 for CS and I was thrilled to get in. Northeastern though is ranked much lower for CS (I think in the top 50). I have gotten into a few colleges and initially, I thought UW Madison would be the sure choice. My school, an international school outside of the US is crazy competitive (As a reference we got more than 20 kids out of 130 into UCLA) considers Northeastern (18.1% acceptance rate) a safety school which I did too. After some research, I found many people picked Northeastern over UW Madison for CS. I understand the location is better but, I was wondering if there is any other reason one would pick Northeastern over UW Madison.
Also, how good is UW madison really for CS. I understand that college admissions are random but I have gotten waitlisted and rejected from universities that are ranked lower than Madison.
I really like Boston, but is it worth it to go to Northeastern for CS over UW Madison?
Northeastern has a co-op focused curriculum. For some students, this will move it to first or last place.
If you are an international student (as opposed to a US citizen currently outside of the US), you may want to find out about whether work visas for the co-op jobs will be an issue.
Northeastern has co-op and 18% international student population which could be why many people from your school chose NU over UW Madison
I would note that those CS rankings you’re referencing are not highly regarded and are 100% based on an opinion survey. These are comparable for CS.
Take a look at research output for example: http://csrankings.org/
Or looking by silicon Valley employment, you can see Northeastern by numbers (does not account for department size, though I don’t think there’s a huge difference between these two) is actually more represented in SV new grads than Wisconsin: HiringSolved Report 2017 (Page 12)
You can read about the teaching approach here: Developing Developers
I would personally would (and did) pick Northeastern over UW-Madison for CS and would again for the CS program specifically. It sounds like you fit better at Northeastern, go for it!