Why do people on CC hate BU so much?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Boston University
1

I’m from South Korea and I’m an undergraduate student at BU. BU was my top three choices when I applied for college.

As I was looking around on CC and found two posts that compared BU to USC/NU, and SIT/Syracuse, I saw totally divergent opinions and attitudes on BU.

In the post of BU vs USC/NU, the OP got Trusty Scholarship from BU that covers all tuition and student fees, but nothing from USC/NU. Based on rankings BU#40, USC#22, NU#9, so I totally agree that it’s reasonable to say USC/NU worth a premium over BU.

However, in another post of BU vs RIT/Syracuse, the OP got a full ride from RIT and 80% off from Syracuse. Given that BU ranks higher than RIT #104 and Syracuse #54, I was expecting to see people say something like BU might worth a premium over RIT or Syracuse. But in fact a lot of people basically just said take the money and run away from BU.

Personally, I feel when people compare BU and other schools, they always favor other schools. People are not using the same standard to make the judgement.

I really want to know the reason why people are doing this. Is there anything about BU’s history or some dark sides of BU that I don’t know??

I know ranking is not everything, but what I’m talking about is that in one post people reference rankings (indirectly) to say BU is not good enough, while in another post people totally ignore the rankings and just talk about money.

People say BU games rankings, I would say BU has tried to improve its rankings. Seven or eight years ago BU was ranked around 50th and now BU is ranked around 40th. So BU spent almost a decade to gain 10 spots higher in the ranking, I wouldn’t say that’s gaming the rankings consider that USC was ranked 40th when it first ranked by US News and now it’s 22nd.

I don’t mean to start a fight on CC. If this post is not appropriate I’ll post this thread somewhere else.

2

Take ranking entirely out of consideration. Instead, think about comparative value (cost/benefit) for varying family financial contexts. If you have taken a microeconomics course, think about individual indifference curves.

3

I feel like BU and schools like it - GWU and NYU for example - urban, expensive, attracting a large number of starry eyed applicants based on their location, generally don’t get a lot of love here.

But the overwhelming thing is that senior cc members are cheap. No school is worth a premium in many of their eyes. That explains the RIT example.

4

I have tried to avoid bad mouthing universities that do not impress me, and tried to stick to facts. None of us are perfect. I can see two reasons why I have generally not been impressed by BU.

One is that I remember it from way back in the 1970’s when I was a student at a nearby school straight across the river. Of course that was a long time ago and BU has changed over the years.

The bigger issue is what @evergreen5 pointed out: It is a cost / benefit ratio thing. I think that BU is a very good university. I think that U.Mass Amherst is a very good university. One would have cost us three times as much as the other. I think that McGill is also a very good university. Four years at McGill would have cost us less than one year at BU. $300,000 is a lot of money.

Perhaps I am frugal. If I am going to pay $75,000 per year I would prefer that it be for medical school, for veterinary school, or for Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, or Caltech.

If one of my daughters had gotten a full tuition scholarship from BU then I would have been very impressed, and happy to have her attend BU. I do believe that you can get a very good education there.

5

Cheap??? I’d prefer “frugal” or perhaps even “thrifty”…

And since so many CCers indicate a desire to attend grad school, it pays to be…Ok, cheap…

Worth noting, though, I’m still a “junior” member…

6

@RelicAndType

Senior cc members are not cheap. They know that taking out $100,000 in student loans can cripple a student for decades after graduation. Same if their parents drain their retirement account to pay for it.

7

Most of the senior posters on cc are parents. The vast majority of the time, the advice is to avoid debt and go with the cheaper option. It has nothing to do with BU. It’s economics. An undergraduate degree isn’t just worth it if there are less expensive options on the table.

8

In addition to being “cheap,” several senior cc posters are also loveable curmudgeons.

9

BU has a hard time of it for a few reasons. First, it’s location puts it amongst some of the best schools there are both generally and across a range of specialties. Being compared against those schools locally is tough. Second, it is in the city with no real campus. That makes it a hard draw for those looking for any kind of aesthetic value.
Third it is expensive with not a tremendous overall ranking. It is a good school but does not have a top tier rating.

Additionally it is a big city school that doesn’t have a great sports draw, outside of hockey and that is a drag for D1. Losing their football team didn’t help either, especially competing against BC locally.

On the plus side, BU does have some excellent programs. I would recommend it for some specific programs but not overall if not sure of major or just looking for a general education.

10

This is the first time I’m hearing that “people on CC hate BU,” let alone “so much.”

Back in the '70’s, BU was known as the “Sidewalk University” because the university campus stretched along the Commonwealth Ave and it was a distant educational institution to those neighboring universities across the Charles River.

Then, it all changed when John Silber came to BU as the new president in 1970. It’s rumored that he was offered the same job position from a prestigious university in the West Coast at that time but decided to take the BU position because he wanted to turn the sidewalk university into a very respectable university that it is today. The kind of things he did as the new president became so unpopular that the entire undergrad, grad, faculty, and even his own vice presidents revolted and demanded to the Board that he be fired. In the history of higher education, he was the only one who survived such collective demand for his dismissal. Someone even tried to assassinate him with a bullet that went through his office window. He wasn’t sitting at his desk at that particular time, so he survived.

Over the years hence, he did turn things around. He knew that the very first thing he needed to do was to wine and dine those people in political power, then he went about recruiting superstar faculty in every department, his theory being the trickle down effect it’d have on the rest, i.e., quality grad students would follow and then the undergrads. Needing lots of cash flow in order to sustain all the initiatives, BU went about recruiting international students with offices set up around the globe. At one time, BU had the most number of international student body in the nation. Silber even ran for MA governor and he’d have won it if it hadn’t been for his verbal attack and hostility he displayed toward a very popular media darling for all to see on TV just before the election day. During the gubernatorial debates, he so dominated the opponent, Bill Weld, that he made the Republican and Harvard grad look like a high school kid.

Thanks to John Silber, love him or hate him, today BU is no longer known as the Sidewalk University. Even back in the early 90’s, two decades after Silber took over the stewardship of the university, there was no sense of inferiority among its student body vis-a-vis those two “other” universities across the river. BU came a long way, and I’d take a full ride from BU over USC any day. While BU was once known as the Sidewalk University, USC was known as the University of Second Choice back then. No one knows about that nowadays, as USC has also come a long way, prestigious enough for the biggest college scandal in the history of higher education.

11

When I toured BU with my daughter we were both very impressed by it. She ultimately chose to apply ED to Emory and got in, but if she had not she might have done ED2 to BU. Obviously if you are looking for a big sports scene or green campus then it’s not the place for you. It is what it is. Of course it’s expensive but most schools are. It has many great programs and lots of great faculty.

12

The conventional wisdom is that it’s very hard for most families to justify paying 80K a year to a college like BU which is ranked #79 by Forbes. Other expensive Boston area colleges that get very little love by CC is Northeastern #182 by Forbes and Brandeis at #96.

13

I haven’t seen any BU hate in my experience. In your specific example, you left out considerations of major strength, which very well may put RIT in line with BU academically for some majors. Syracuse is also generally the same tier as BU - rankings are not a bible and the difference between #9 and #40 can be significant. You also have to keep in mind that quality distributions can often be like a bell curve, so you’re not looking at schools that are significantly different even if the rankings may say 30 places if you’re looking at say 60 vs 90 instead of 9 vs 40.

Basically, the two examples seem philosophically consistent to me.

14

Thank you for your comment.

Major wise, for communication major, NU is #1, USC #2 and BU #12 (Niche rankings, US News doesn’t have rankings for COM), for the other post, the OP wants to do Pre Med, and OP didn’t mention which major he/she is going for. I don’t know too much about RIT, but I assume it has a strong ENG school, and when I looked at the US News rankings for ENG school, RIT #72 and BU #36.

I agree the Syracuse is same tier as BU, but the if the difference between #9 and #40 is significant, then I would say the difference between BU #40 and RIT #104 is much more significant. However, in the post of BU vs RIT/Syracuse, a lot of people said RIT is as good as BU. The difference between BU #40 and Syracuse #54 is pretty similar to the difference between BU #40 and USC #22, but why wouldn’t people consider BU and USC are in the same tier?

For the “bell curve” theory, I understand that the bell curve describe the frequency or probability of the occurrence of a random number or random events. I don’t see its connection with the difference between 60th vs 90th and 9th vs 40th.

15

Thank you for your comment.

Rankings can be very difference. Forbes is a good rankings and so does WSJ/Times Higher Ed ranking. By WSJ standard, BU is #44, BC #59, Rochester #58, Wake Forest #68, Virginia #50. A lot of T30 schools are ranked below BU. But I wouldn’t it’s hard to justify the huge spending for going to Wake Forest or Rochester.

In general, rankings are quite different from each other.

16

Don’t listen to anyone telling you BU isn’t elite. That’s nonsense. Any private school in the top 50 research universities in the USA is elite by any global or national standard.

I hate the relative eliteness conversations, especially among adults with experience in the real world.

Harvard and MIT maybe the two best universities in the world. So yeah it’s not quite that hard to be admitted. But so many bu grads have become world renowned. Don’t sweat it.

BU for the right student is fantastic. If it were anywhere but Boston it would be even more difficult to gain admission. As it is, 8 out of 10 high achieving students are denied each year. Tell those 8 star students it’s not tough to get into.

It’s expensive. It’s an urban college experience.

Don’t judge by CC. The standards and comparisons here are sometimes driven by personal experiences and choices their children make- confirmation bias is alive and well here.

The average person in the world doesn’t even know about NU and USC is a football school. BU maybe because of hockey or Alexandria Occassio Cortez, a popular young politician.

17

Thank you for your reply :slight_smile:

I totally understand the economical factor of college selection. But in the BU vs USC/NU post, BU offers Trusty Scholarship which covers all tuition, on the other hand, USC/NU offer nothing. But most replies seem to ignore the economics but go with the quality / prestige / rankings.

18

@koreaproud

Ah, what’s left off here is pre-med then.

Generally for premed, the undergrad school you go to matters very little compared to GPA and MCAT. Also, cost matters then a lot because medical school is a large cost after undergrad.

Secondly, BU is (arguably) known for grade deflation which again hurts medical school chances if they aren’t specifically aware of BU’s grade deflation.

19

Thank you for your comment.

And thank you for bringing up the cost/benefits aspect. For the comparison between BU and RIT/Syracuse, BU would cost huge amount while RIT cost nothing and Syracuse cost 80% less. I would agree that BU is not in the good shape in terms of cost/benefit ratio. So when people say go with RIT or Syracuse, I kind of agree.

But when I looked at the comparison between BU and USC/NU, this time, BU offers Trusty Scholarships and leaves $20k per year for the student to pay by himself/herself. And USC/NU are sticker price. I would say the cost/benefit ratio comparison of full ride BU and 80% less Syracuse is very similar/comparable to full ride at USC and $20k at BU. But this time, most people seem to chose the less economical one.

20

Not everyone recommended against BU in that USC/Northwestern thread. I sure didn’t. CC (even senior posters!) isn’t univocal.