<p>Which university has a better national reputation and which is better at economics.</p>
<p>Wustl is better ranked as a whole but as far as econ, northwestern wins by a longshot. It's perhaps one of the best in the nation in econ. Other top econ depts. would be MIT, Penn, and U.Chicago</p>
<p>Actually they both tie at the 11th this year in the US News ranking but Northwestern has a better national reputation. Northwestern's econ is in the top 10 while its crosstown rival U of Chicago probably has the best one. FYI: Business Week ranks Northwestern b-school #1 this year and it's reputation in the business/finance circle is great even in the east coast.</p>
<p>Lets make one thing clear: these ranking on business, economics etc are for GRADUATE SCHOOL! There are no rankings for individual majors that I am aware of for undergraduate schools!</p>
<p>I would strongly suggest that you check out each school. Moreover, go to <a href="http://www.campusdirt.com%5B/url%5D">www.campusdirt.com</a> to check out each school. You might also want to get the books on each school by College Prowler, who has actual student comments on each school posed from a variety of points of view.. The web site for the prowler is <a href="http://www.collegeprowler.com%5B/url%5D">www.collegeprowler.com</a>. I should note that both Campus Dirt and College Prowler comments are not necessarily statisticly valid. However, they may give you a trend.</p>
<p>One more thing, if you check out Campus Dirt, surveys of students don't give Northwestern as high a rating of professors as they do for Wash U St Louis. Northwestern has three stars and Wash U has four stars. The criticism seems to be that although NW professors are brilliant (for the most part), "there are many that are more interested in research than in teaching. " I don't see the same number of these types of comments at Wash U.</p>
<p>In fact, Wash U beats out Northwestern (as far as student ratings) in professors and in amount of computers on campus or computer accessibilty. Check out the rating and visit the colleges. </p>
<p>Just for the record, I did visit both schools. They have a very different atmosphere. Wash U seemed like a friendlier, more open place. Northwestern kids seemed a bit colder and more distant. I also liked Wash U campus more,but Northwestern campus wasn't bad at all-- very ivy like. Both campuses seemed to have kids that were very enthusiastic about their schools,but Northwestern did have some great sports and athletics that Wash U doesn't seem to have.</p>
<p>Also, they have some different majors that they each emphasize. For example ( and these are just some of many examples), Northwestern seems to have more majors, even polish, slavic languages and Hindi, and a strong drama program ( although Wash U drama is quite good too). Wash U is the only top 30 university that has a very strong art and visual communications program. Wash U also offers a strong undergraduate program in business where you can major in accounting, finance etc. I think that Northwestern only offers business as a graduate school option.</p>
<p>Again, you need to check them out, and check out the offerings of any potential majors.</p>
<p>campusdirt.com ratings should be treated as opinions rather than facts. Regarding professor rating, well, according to them, the most knowledgable professors are not from any of the top colleges but from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Does that mean the supposedly top people in their fields in schools like HYPSMC are less knowledgeable than those in RIT?? I don't think so; it could be that Harvard students rate their professors more harshly because their expectation is a lot higher. </p>
<p>In fact, the original poster, goyankee, said in the NU board that he and his parents were "very impressed" by NU students. Apparently, they had better experience than you did there; to me, how one feels about a place and its people during a one day visit can be very far off from the reality. The rudest person I'd met on any campus was actually at Wash U (I probably ran into some other j*eks but that incident was the only one still in my memory); I was playing ping pong against him and out of the blue, he started talking about Agassi vs Michael Chang and basically tried to say whites were superior (I am Chinese). That's my experience but that doesn't represent WashU at all.</p>