Should Northeastern be T20? Or even T10?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My cousin went there in the late 1990s and he's half retarded. I'm pretty sure the essay question on the application back then was, "Can you fog a mirror?" I find it hard to believe that the academic quality has changed THAT much in a couple of decades.

People are saying there's no essay question for Northeastern, must be a different school.

By the way welcome to the 21st century.

The essay comment was a joke. Basically my way of saying they took anyone back then, even my blockhead cousin, a Boston whose only other option I'm pretty sure was UMass-Dartmouth. He couldn't even get into UMass-Amherst (ZooMass), which wasn't exactly a bastion of selectivity back then. But he now wields a degree from "top 20" Northeastern!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My cousin went there in the late 1990s and he's half retarded. I'm pretty sure the essay question on the application back then was, "Can you fog a mirror?" I find it hard to believe that the academic quality has changed THAT much in a couple of decades.

People are saying there's no essay question for Northeastern, must be a different school.

By the way welcome to the 21st century.

The essay comment was a joke. Basically my way of saying they took anyone back then, even my blockhead cousin, a Boston whose only other option I'm pretty sure was UMass-Dartmouth. He couldn't even get into UMass-Amherst (ZooMass), which wasn't exactly a bastion of selectivity back then. But he now wields a degree from "top 20" Northeastern!

Well, back then most of now the most elite schools T10 T20 schools had acceptance rate over 30% 40% 50%
So again welcome to the 21st century.

[Anonymous]

While Schools like UCB, Emory, Columbia cheated the numbers for ranking, Northeastern gamed it really well yet didn't get caught.
(UBC, Emory actually officially got caught cheating, Colmbia under controversy)

They ways it gamed the ranking

1. Oh Class size is important, let's make the class sizes small like 16 19 instead of 30 40 50
2. Oh Retention rate is important, let's make our students happy so they come back. Now the retention rate is 97% (top 7th among National Universities)
3. Oh career outcome is important, let's make our students very marketbk and get them started careers after graduation.
3. Oh endowment is important, let's manage it well. Now ranked #58 among all the private colleges and universities.
etc.

Wait... every school should game the system like Northeastern instead of cheating like UCB Emory Columbia etc. 

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Northeastern carefully studied what it needed to do to rise in the USN rankings and did those things. Shrank just enough class sizes to score points, bought higher stats kids with copious merit aid, started denying the local kids who had always filled their classrooms in favor of applicants from around the country in order to build national name recognition.

They rebranded and people fell for it.

+1. This. Chicago is a doing the same. They hire people who do nothing but figure out how to move up ranks on USNWR

Vanderbilt, Tulane. . .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:While Schools like UCB, Emory, Columbia cheated the numbers for ranking, Northeastern gamed it really well yet didn't get caught.
(UBC, Emory actually officially got caught cheating, Colmbia under controversy)

They ways it gamed the ranking

1. Oh Class size is important, let's make the class sizes small like 16 19 instead of 30 40 50
2. Oh Retention rate is important, let's make our students happy so they come back. Now the retention rate is 97% (top 7th among National Universities)
3. Oh career outcome is important, let's make our students very marketbk and get them started careers after graduation.
3. Oh endowment is important, let's manage it well. Now ranked #58 among all the private colleges and universities.
etc.

Wait... every school should game the system like Northeastern instead of cheating like UCB Emory Columbia etc. 

They all game the system. They just do it to differing degrees. Some have more avenues to game the system available to them. Others, as pointed out, "cheat".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:While Schools like UCB, Emory, Columbia cheated the numbers for ranking, Northeastern gamed it really well yet didn't get caught.
(UBC, Emory actually officially got caught cheating, Colmbia under controversy)

They ways it gamed the ranking

1. Oh Class size is important, let's make the class sizes small like 16 19 instead of 30 40 50
2. Oh Retention rate is important, let's make our students happy so they come back. Now the retention rate is 97% (top 7th among National Universities)
3. Oh career outcome is important, let's make our students very marketbk and get them started careers after graduation.
3. Oh endowment is important, let's manage it well. Now ranked #58 among all the private colleges and universities.
etc.

Wait... every school should game the system like Northeastern instead of cheating like UCB Emory Columbia etc. 

They all game the system. They just do it to differing degrees. Some have more avenues to game the system available to them. Others, as pointed out, "cheat".

What they did was eliminate any classes that enrolled 22 or so (no professor overrides). They had to stop at 19 even though it made no difference in the quality of the class. Retention gets taken care of by easy grading, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Northeastern carefully studied what it needed to do to rise in the USN rankings and did those things. Shrank just enough class sizes to score points, bought higher stats kids with copious merit aid, started denying the local kids who had always filled their classrooms in favor of applicants from around the country in order to build national name recognition.

They rebranded and people fell for it.

+1. This. Chicago is a doing the same. They hire people who do nothing but figure out how to move up ranks on USNWR

If they improve themselves in the process, is that really so bad? Everyone focuses on acceptance rate, and that was a game for awhile, but it’s not even in the formula anymore. Other things NE and others have done have attracted stronger students and better faculty, decreased class size, raised the retention and graduation rates. I’m not saying there’s no manipulation—every college has “enrollment managers”—but colleges that have sought to rise in the rankings have also made real changes. I don’t get why there is so much resentment around it.

+1

Same posters, ad nauseam. They really should have their own subsection, so they can jerk each other off.

That subsection can/must include has much UVA, NEU and (insert any other random college/university here) sucks, and how "perfect" ND, Emory and (insert any other random college/university here).

We get it, OP, you went to a sh*tty school - stop telling the whole world, with your transparent posts.

SSDD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Growing up in the Boston area some three decades ago, I confess that I didn't know of Northeastern. It was largely a commuter school back then. But, now, I have moved back to my hometown, and, WOW, what a difference a few decades make.It seems that Northeastern has all of a sudden become such a high-class school. It is now even displacing the other directional university, Northwestern.

I feel that universities should be ranked largely on how desirable they are to students. After all, that metric cannot be faked (looking at you Columbia). And students are actually voting with their feet which should count for the rankings more than anything else. I mean, if a university gets 90,000 applicants like NEU does, surely that should put it in the T20. Or even T10, I think. I see the Ivies boasting about crossing 50,000 applications and I am thinking: wait till Northeastern crosses 100,000 at twice that amount (!!!).

So, why isn't Northeastern getting the respect it should on this blog and it is IVY-IVY-IVY all the time? Is it just older folks sticking to their old views, not wanting to change? Thoughts welcome.

How do you draw the conclusion about Northwestern? NU is a top 10 school. NEU isn't even close. I also had never heard of NEU growing up. It's seems like a fine school. I like the coop aspect, and that the are good for adhd kids. But, there is no comparison to NU, just the fact that they both have "North" in the name! Drawing comparisons on that is just weird. Maybe, by that token, you should through in Southeastern (a small Christian college).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why would you ever “rank” a college based on how many applications it receives? That makes zero sense. What is the quality of the faculty?

OP is basically right. How do you rank cellphones? iPhone out-ranks every other phone. Because more people are willing to spend money to buy an iPhone than any other phone. That is basically it. Everything else that you think should matter, say, call quality, battery life etc, is already factored into this single attribute.

Same way for colleges. Everything you can think about (faculty quality, teaching effectiveness etc) are factored into the single attribute: how many are willing to apply to your college to spend the $$.

Good thinking, OP. I know it puts USNews out of business. But you hit the nail on the head. NEU is more successful than the so-called elite schools.

OP is basically you.

Yes! I thought the same! About this and the other agreeing post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some truth to what OP is saying. Happened to me this weekend.

Me: My kid goes to Northwestern
Friend: You mean the one down in Boston. Heard they got co-ops.
Me: No, the one near Chicago
Friend: Oh...Haven't heard of that

Granted my friend is confused. But I am wondering if it is Northwestern going down or Northeastern going up.

It's OP again!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Growing up in the Boston area some three decades ago, I confess that I didn't know of Northeastern. It was largely a commuter school back then. But, now, I have moved back to my hometown, and, WOW, what a difference a few decades make.It seems that Northeastern has all of a sudden become such a high-class school. It is now even displacing the other directional university, Northwestern.

I feel that universities should be ranked largely on how desirable they are to students. After all, that metric cannot be faked (looking at you Columbia). And students are actually voting with their feet which should count for the rankings more than anything else. I mean, if a university gets 90,000 applicants like NEU does, surely that should put it in the T20. Or even T10, I think. I see the Ivies boasting about crossing 50,000 applications and I am thinking: wait till Northeastern crosses 100,000 at twice that amount (!!!).

So, why isn't Northeastern getting the respect it should on this blog and it is IVY-IVY-IVY all the time? Is it just older folks sticking to their old views, not wanting to change? Thoughts welcome.

How do you draw the conclusion about Northwestern? NU is a top 10 school. NEU isn't even close. I also had never heard of NEU growing up. It's seems like a fine school. I like the coop aspect, and that the are good for adhd kids. But, there is no comparison to NU, just the fact that they both have "North" in the name! Drawing comparisons on that is just weird. Maybe, by that token, you should through in Southeastern (a small Christian college).

You're right. Don't listen to the unhinged NEU boosters. It must kill them inside that Northwestern simply exists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My cousin went there in the late 1990s and he's half retarded. I'm pretty sure the essay question on the application back then was, "Can you fog a mirror?" I find it hard to believe that the academic quality has changed THAT much in a couple of decades.

People are saying there's no essay question for Northeastern, must be a different school.

By the way welcome to the 21st century.

The essay comment was a joke. Basically my way of saying they took anyone back then, even my blockhead cousin, a Boston whose only other option I'm pretty sure was UMass-Dartmouth. He couldn't even get into UMass-Amherst (ZooMass), which wasn't exactly a bastion of selectivity back then. But he now wields a degree from "top 20" Northeastern!

Well, back then most of now the most elite schools T10 T20 schools had acceptance rate over 30% 40% 50%
So again welcome to the 21st century.

+1

[Anonymous]

NEU's main innovation is running the university like a for-profit. Very clever.

-If dorms cost a lot of money and the Westin Inn is cheap because there is not much travel demand and rooms are vacant, NEU will just house students in the hotel.

-When many university went online in 2020 due to COVID and NEU did not, they wrote to every applicant who had turned them down to go to another school if they want to reconsider their earlier decision and come to NEU in person instead. That is a very gutsy move that stodgy old Ivy leaguers or state flagships wouldn't/can't do.

And they don't spend on academics as much - who is going to leave NEU because of that, once they are in?

[Anonymous]

I'm a bit older in my 30s but isn't NEU a 4 year community college? My cousin transferred from NEU to UMass after getting grades up to upgrade but that was several years ago.

[Anonymous]

This is a very good ranking from two years ago that got consensus support.

Undergraduate Tiers
1A) Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Yale, Princeton
1B) Columbia, Penn, Duke, Chicago, Caltech

2A) Northwestern, Brown, Dartmouth, Williams, Amherst
2B) Rice, Cornell, Pomona, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Cal, Notre Dame, Emory, Swarthmore, UCLA, Wellesley

3A) Michigan, NYU, USC, UVA, Tufts, Middlebury, Barnard
3B)UNC, Boston College, W&M, Wake, W&L, Davidson

Tier 2A is very debatable is there are a lot of great schools that could go there.