Rank the Big 10 academically

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NU is unique- High powered academics, Big Ten sports, easy access to a major city, Midwestern friendliness. Only a handful of places offer this combination. Go Cats!

High powered?

[Anonymous]

No disrespect to NU, but when people say they want a Big Ten school they don’t mean NU. They mean something bigger, cheaper, and less curated. NU is where you apply if the kid wants a Big Ten school, the college advisor is making you develop an ED strategy, and the parents are in thrall to US News.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NU is unique- High powered academics, Big Ten sports, easy access to a major city, Midwestern friendliness. Only a handful of places offer this combination. Go Cats!

High powered?

The undergraduate-obsessed booster parents here have no limits on the adjectives they will use to describe the undergrad experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NU is unique- High powered academics, Big Ten sports, easy access to a major city, Midwestern friendliness. Only a handful of places offer this combination. Go Cats!

High powered?

The undergraduate-obsessed booster parents here have no limits on the adjectives they will use to describe the undergrad experience.

Actually I’m not a parent booster. I’m an NU Law grad who was impressed with my law school classmates who went to NU undergrad. My kid refused to apply to NU. Don’t assume.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No disrespect to NU, but when people say they want a Big Ten school they don’t mean NU. They mean something bigger, cheaper, and less curated. NU is where you apply if the kid wants a Big Ten school, the college advisor is making you develop an ED strategy, and the parents are in thrall to US News.

I agree with the premise. My son is looking at schools like Michigan, UVA, UNC, Georgia, UF. We visited Northwestern and it wasn’t the vibe he was looking for.

[Anonymous]

Except for the Big Ten sports part, I would place Northwestern in the Emory/Case/Cornell/BU bucket in terms of vibe

[Anonymous]

^^^NU looks and feels more Ivy like than Big 10 rah rah like Michigan, et al. Students give off a more serious and intellectual vibe than party vibe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^^NU looks and feels more Ivy like than Big 10 rah rah like Michigan, et al. Students give off a more serious and intellectual vibe than party vibe.

LOL, the drug and alcohol abuse at NU is off the charts.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:DP, but the average caliber of undergraduates and the job options available to Northwestern grads is greater than those from UCLA or Michigan. If we're talking about the top 10% of undergrad populations from all three schools, however, they'd be quite equally matched.

The difference is that the top 60-75% at NU can compete with the Top 10% at UCLA or Michigan

NP. Out of curiosity just looked up NUs most recent CDS. Out of 2,111 first time freshmen, only 1,008 were deemed eligible for financial. HALF the class can afford $90k per year?! Certified rich kids school. Jeepers.

It's been that way for years. 35+ years ago it was 60%+ that were full pay. Yes a lot of rich kids. And then you had me and a lot of my friends, those of us on work-study, working every break we got, and having to manage expenses/spending money very carefully.

Frankly, it's like that at most of the T50 schools. 50-60%+ are full pay. Why is that shocking? If you make 200K+ (and have for at least 10 years as a family) you should be able to save if you value education. Just saving $1K/month for 18 years would net you $216K without any market returns. That can easily be $300K+ if put in the SP500 index over that time, if not more.

Which would not cover the whole cost of four years, which tells you how ridiculous the cost of school has become.

It's your choice to pay what you can/want for college. But if you have $300K saved, you need another $60K for the final year. If kid wants to attend, they can earn $10-12K/year and you can fund the remaining $20-25K with cash flow (you were saving $12K/year, just use it for college).

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Look at the rabid Northwestern parent trying to hold it together, knowing they are paying 2.5x more than a UCLA parent for an education that is only going to be perceived as “bless their heart, their kid couldn’t even get into an Ivy - not even Cornell!” …

How is the weather in 1982?

NP. Not even 1982... that poster's thinking might have made sense in the 1940s, lol.

Lol at sending your kid to dreary flyover country (b-b-but it’s Evanston, not Chicago!) after they failed to get an Ivy bid or into Duke, still paying almost $400K for the trouble, and then realizing that your consolation prize is “dunking” on the unwashed whose kids are enjoying a quality of life in college that is 10 - 20x that of your kid’s experience.

If it ain’t a marketing MBA at Kellogg, NU can piss off in my book … true 30 years ago, true today.

Cannot help that you are an idiot, now as well as 30 years ago.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Look at the rabid Northwestern parent trying to hold it together, knowing they are paying 2.5x more than a UCLA parent for an education that is only going to be perceived as “bless their heart, their kid couldn’t even get into an Ivy - not even Cornell!” …

How is the weather in 1982?

NP. Not even 1982... that poster's thinking might have made sense in the 1940s, lol.

Lol at sending your kid to dreary flyover country (b-b-but it’s Evanston, not Chicago!) after they failed to get an Ivy bid or into Duke, still paying almost $400K for the trouble, and then realizing that your consolation prize is “dunking” on the unwashed whose kids are enjoying a quality of life in college that is 10 - 20x that of your kid’s experience.

If it ain’t a marketing MBA at Kellogg, NU can piss off in my book … true 30 years ago, true today.

Wow. Sometimes it's genuinely sad to see parents, whose kids were presumably rejected from certain schools, carry that chip on their shoulder so vigorously.

I hope you know that you're not alone. Northwestern rejects most students, and it's not a reflection of your kid or your parenting. But railing against it on online forums like this doesn't do your mental health any good, I promise!

And I promise my kid didn’t even consider applying to Northwestern. For some elite students, quality of life matters - if HYPSM isn’t in the cards, why would any applicant knowingly surrender quality of life for 3-4 years at a Plan B school in a shitty region of the country?

The easy answer for you, then, is just don't apply.

lol plan B. Wtf wants to be in Durham over Evanston.

Evanston is way better than half the ivies, in terms of location. Has the PP even been there? I spent 4 years there---it was a great place and it's 1000X better now. Chicago is a great city and you are only a 20 min L ride away.

[Anonymous]

I'm so confused by the Northwestern hate train on this thread. It's clearly the academic powerhouse in the Big Ten, there's no dispute about that in real life, and that's not a knock on the other really amazing schools that make up the conference. We visited Evanston once a couple years back, and it reminded us of some of the more charming DC neighborhoods/inner suburbs. The campus was excellent, too. Not sure what's fueling the hate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Except for the Big Ten sports part, I would place Northwestern in the Emory/Case/Cornell/BU bucket in terms of vibe

The vibe is probably more of a crossover between Duke, NYU, and UPenn. But the school has its own distinct vibe and atmosphere. The lakefront campus is really gorgeous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm so confused by the Northwestern hate train on this thread. It's clearly the academic powerhouse in the Big Ten, there's no dispute about that in real life, and that's not a knock on the other really amazing schools that make up the conference. We visited Evanston once a couple years back, and it reminded us of some of the more charming DC neighborhoods/inner suburbs. The campus was excellent, too. Not sure what's fueling the hate.

I have zero affiliation with Northwestern and the only thing I can think of is...jealousy.

IMO, it is a perfect location in a great town/neighborhood with easy access to one of the great American cities.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Look at the rabid Northwestern parent trying to hold it together, knowing they are paying 2.5x more than a UCLA parent for an education that is only going to be perceived as “bless their heart, their kid couldn’t even get into an Ivy - not even Cornell!” …

How is the weather in 1982?

NP. Not even 1982... that poster's thinking might have made sense in the 1940s, lol.

Lol at sending your kid to dreary flyover country (b-b-but it’s Evanston, not Chicago!) after they failed to get an Ivy bid or into Duke, still paying almost $400K for the trouble, and then realizing that your consolation prize is “dunking” on the unwashed whose kids are enjoying a quality of life in college that is 10 - 20x that of your kid’s experience.

If it ain’t a marketing MBA at Kellogg, NU can piss off in my book … true 30 years ago, true today.

Wow. Sometimes it's genuinely sad to see parents, whose kids were presumably rejected from certain schools, carry that chip on their shoulder so vigorously.

I hope you know that you're not alone. Northwestern rejects most students, and it's not a reflection of your kid or your parenting. But railing against it on online forums like this doesn't do your mental health any good, I promise!

And I promise my kid didn’t even consider applying to Northwestern. For some elite students, quality of life matters - if HYPSM isn’t in the cards, why would any applicant knowingly surrender quality of life for 3-4 years at a Plan B school in a shitty region of the country?

The easy answer for you, then, is just don't apply.

lol plan B. Wtf wants to be in Durham over Evanston.

Evanston is way better than half the ivies, in terms of location. Has the PP even been there? I spent 4 years there---it was a great place and it's 1000X better now. Chicago is a great city and you are only a 20 min L ride away.

Streams are being crossed here.

NU lacks Ivy prestige, so being “way better” than New Haven or MH/Harlem is irrelevant. Its location is being considered in the context of this: “You’re not going to be getting the prestige of an Ivy education and degree, so now are you also going to endure 3-4 years in Evanston, Illinois or Ann Arbor, Michigan or Los Angeles, California?”

I’ll leave it to you to consult with student ratings (and maybe common sense) regarding the self-evident quality of life differences in those three areas.