Should Northeastern be T20? Or even T10?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UCLA, UCSD, UCI and probably even UCSB all get over 100k applications every year, UCLA is barely T50 regardless of public news rankings, the others are around a T100 school which is actually pretty good, think 50 states, T100 is top 2 per state and given states like NY and MA have many elite colleges T100 is actually very good

Northeastern is a solid school but in all seriousness its barely a T100, maybe in a few decades it could be perceived as a T50, but still too early to tell

A telling indicator is endowment, NEU is barely above $1 billion which is not in the T100 in the US

The T10 schools have enormous endowments which provides a real competitive advantage to not only attract students but also their experience + influence among alumni

Harvard has $53 billion, Yale $43 billion, Princeton $38 billion, Penn $38 billion, Columbia $14 billion, Cornell $10 billion, Dartmouth $8 billion, Brown $7 billion - keep in mind to get these endowments alumni + their networks had to donate funds which indicate that the alumni are disproportionately successful + loyal, important factors for consideration among the most talented of college applicants, think top 1% of top 1%, that one kid in a great high school that everybody knows can go anywhere, etc. - these are the kids that largely end up at T10 schools

NEU is around the T125 to T150 at $1 billion, similar to Fordham, Lafayette, or Bucknell

Its a great school but the perception among younger students is that its safety for students that are targeting T30 to T50 schools

You have seriously outdated information. Here's a recent college endowment.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment

Northeastern has $1.45B, and its rank is 58th. This includes all the top LACs.Good management also increases the endowment.
So in fact by your method, it turns out that its endowment rank and USN&WR rank is about the same level at the high 40s. 
You can also start arguing about endowment per student, endowment per undergraduate student, etc.
In fact a big chunk of the endowment is for graduate school or medical school for those large public schools. 

As you said, there's clearly a correlation between endowment ranking and the general college ranking. 
However it's not exact science or math. 
Notre Dame is ranked #7 on endowment but USN&WR rank is #19
Wake Forest's endowment rank is about #47, but it's USN&WR rank is #28.  

Northeastern is overall in a very good cycle of the endowment increase and school prestige rise,
I think it'll soon be T40 in the near future. 

Also no school with an acceptance rate in the teen is a safey for anyone. Furthermore it's not like kids applying to Northeastern are 1300 SAT kids. 
The applicant pool is on par or better than many of the T30-40.   

You have very outdated information and views.The perception among younger students is that it's a good solid school that is hard to get in, and it's one of the next best options if you can't get into a T25ish school.
This is exactly the current status of the school.

Lol the list you posted has Northeastern ~100 in terms of endowment, and this is with a gazillion amount of students compared to some really small colleges that are orders of magnitude larger in endowment

Northeastern is a good school, but the true perception is probably similarly ranked around ~100 which is not a knock as there are thousands of colleges in the US

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP is ridiculous. But I’ll add that we’re in Boston visiting family and visiting colleges. We’re staying in a nice hotel in Back Bay that has leased several floors to Northeastern. For 5 days we’ve seen these kids get off and on the elevator and walking around the hotel and local area. And even our 17 yr old DS noted that we did not see one kid talk, smile, converse, NOTHING. They get on and off the elevator, never acknowledge or greet each other. I literally did not hear one of their voices in a week’s time. And their diet was mostly fast food from Uber eats (from a delivery table in the lobby). DH was angry on their parents’ behalf for spending the money to send these kids to college and they all seem borderline depressed. We started the Northeastern campus tour and DS concluded the kids on campus were about the same we’d seen at the hotel. On the bright side, DS liked BU & BC.

LOL again the data doesn't agree with your imagination.

2016-2019 Freshmen Retention Rate
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/freshmen-least-most-likely-return

Northeastern ranked #7 at 97% (tied wtih a few schools)

It's one of the criteria for how happy the students are, hence they choose to return.
BC: 95% BU: 93%

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
99%
University of Chicago
99%
Columbia University
98%
Johns Hopkins University
98%
Northwestern University
98%
University of Notre Dame
98%
Brown University
97%
California Institute of Technology
97%
Carnegie Mellon University
97%
Cornell University
97%
Dartmouth College
97%
Duke University
97%
Georgia Institute of Technology
97%
Northeastern University
97%
Rice University
97%
University of California--Berkeley
97%
University of California--Los Angeles
97%
University of Florida
97%
University of Michigan--Ann Arbor
97%
University of Pennsylvania
97%
University of Virginia
97%
Vanderbilt University
97%
Georgetown University
96%
Stanford University
96%
University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill
96%
University of Texas at Austin
96%
Villanova University
96%
Washington University in St. Louis
96%
Boston College
95%
Tufts University
95%
University of Georgia
95%
University of Maryland--College Park
95%
University of Rochester
95%
University of Southern California
95%
University of Wisconsin--Madison
95%
William & Mary
95%
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
95%
Emory University
94%
Florida State University
94%
Gonzaga University
94%
Lehigh University
94%
North Carolina State University
94%
Ohio State University--Columbus
94%
Princeton University
94%
Santa Clara University
94%
Stevens Institute of Technology
94%
University of California--Irvine
94%
University of California--San Diego
94%
University of Connecticut
94%
University of Washington
94%
Wake Forest University
94%
Boston University
93%
Case Western Reserve University
93%
Clemson University
93%
New York University
93%
Pennsylvania State University--University Park
93%
Purdue University--West Lafayette
93%
Rutgers University--New Brunswick
93%
Texas A&M University
93%
Tulane University
93%

BU is probably lower because it doesn't even have a campus, just streets and buildings.
BC is basically a larger version of LAC

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UCLA, UCSD, UCI and probably even UCSB all get over 100k applications every year, UCLA is barely T50 regardless of public news rankings, the others are around a T100 school which is actually pretty good, think 50 states, T100 is top 2 per state and given states like NY and MA have many elite colleges T100 is actually very good

Northeastern is a solid school but in all seriousness its barely a T100, maybe in a few decades it could be perceived as a T50, but still too early to tell

A telling indicator is endowment, NEU is barely above $1 billion which is not in the T100 in the US

The T10 schools have enormous endowments which provides a real competitive advantage to not only attract students but also their experience + influence among alumni

Harvard has $53 billion, Yale $43 billion, Princeton $38 billion, Penn $38 billion, Columbia $14 billion, Cornell $10 billion, Dartmouth $8 billion, Brown $7 billion - keep in mind to get these endowments alumni + their networks had to donate funds which indicate that the alumni are disproportionately successful + loyal, important factors for consideration among the most talented of college applicants, think top 1% of top 1%, that one kid in a great high school that everybody knows can go anywhere, etc. - these are the kids that largely end up at T10 schools

NEU is around the T125 to T150 at $1 billion, similar to Fordham, Lafayette, or Bucknell

Its a great school but the perception among younger students is that its safety for students that are targeting T30 to T50 schools

You have seriously outdated information. Here's a recent college endowment.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment

Northeastern has $1.45B, and its rank is 58th. This includes all the top LACs.Good management also increases the endowment.
So in fact by your method, it turns out that its endowment rank and USN&WR rank is about the same level at the high 40s. 
You can also start arguing about endowment per student, endowment per undergraduate student, etc.
In fact a big chunk of the endowment is for graduate school or medical school for those large public schools. 

As you said, there's clearly a correlation between endowment ranking and the general college ranking. 
However it's not exact science or math. 
Notre Dame is ranked #7 on endowment but USN&WR rank is #19
Wake Forest's endowment rank is about #47, but it's USN&WR rank is #28.  

Northeastern is overall in a very good cycle of the endowment increase and school prestige rise,
I think it'll soon be T40 in the near future. 

Also no school with an acceptance rate in the teen is a safey for anyone. Furthermore it's not like kids applying to Northeastern are 1300 SAT kids. 
The applicant pool is on par or better than many of the T30-40.   

You have very outdated information and views.The perception among younger students is that it's a good solid school that is hard to get in, and it's one of the next best options if you can't get into a T25ish school.
This is exactly the current status of the school.

Notre Dame is appropriately ranked around 19, could be higher if it was not in a flyover state, but Wake Forest at 28 is a joke. Its not really known outside of NC and the surrounding states and is realistically not even T50, probably inside T100 but barely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UCLA, UCSD, UCI and probably even UCSB all get over 100k applications every year, UCLA is barely T50 regardless of public news rankings, the others are around a T100 school which is actually pretty good, think 50 states, T100 is top 2 per state and given states like NY and MA have many elite colleges T100 is actually very good

Northeastern is a solid school but in all seriousness its barely a T100, maybe in a few decades it could be perceived as a T50, but still too early to tell

A telling indicator is endowment, NEU is barely above $1 billion which is not in the T100 in the US

The T10 schools have enormous endowments which provides a real competitive advantage to not only attract students but also their experience + influence among alumni

Harvard has $53 billion, Yale $43 billion, Princeton $38 billion, Penn $38 billion, Columbia $14 billion, Cornell $10 billion, Dartmouth $8 billion, Brown $7 billion - keep in mind to get these endowments alumni + their networks had to donate funds which indicate that the alumni are disproportionately successful + loyal, important factors for consideration among the most talented of college applicants, think top 1% of top 1%, that one kid in a great high school that everybody knows can go anywhere, etc. - these are the kids that largely end up at T10 schools

NEU is around the T125 to T150 at $1 billion, similar to Fordham, Lafayette, or Bucknell

Its a great school but the perception among younger students is that its safety for students that are targeting T30 to T50 schools

You have seriously outdated information. Here's a recent college endowment.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment

Northeastern has $1.45B, and its rank is 58th. This includes all the top LACs.Good management also increases the endowment.
So in fact by your method, it turns out that its endowment rank and USN&WR rank is about the same level at the high 40s. 
You can also start arguing about endowment per student, endowment per undergraduate student, etc.
In fact a big chunk of the endowment is for graduate school or medical school for those large public schools. 

As you said, there's clearly a correlation between endowment ranking and the general college ranking. 
However it's not exact science or math. 
Notre Dame is ranked #7 on endowment but USN&WR rank is #19
Wake Forest's endowment rank is about #47, but it's USN&WR rank is #28.  

Northeastern is overall in a very good cycle of the endowment increase and school prestige rise,
I think it'll soon be T40 in the near future. 

Also no school with an acceptance rate in the teen is a safey for anyone. Furthermore it's not like kids applying to Northeastern are 1300 SAT kids. 
The applicant pool is on par or better than many of the T30-40.   

You have very outdated information and views.The perception among younger students is that it's a good solid school that is hard to get in, and it's one of the next best options if you can't get into a T25ish school.
This is exactly the current status of the school.

Lol the list you posted has Northeastern ~100 in terms of endowment, and this is with a gazillion amount of students compared to some really small colleges that are orders of magnitude larger in endowment

Northeastern is a good school, but the true perception is probably similarly ranked around ~100 which is not a knock as there are thousands of colleges in the US

Who would rather go to one of the bunch of those public huge state universiies just because they have little larger university system wide endowments LOL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP is ridiculous. But I’ll add that we’re in Boston visiting family and visiting colleges. We’re staying in a nice hotel in Back Bay that has leased several floors to Northeastern. For 5 days we’ve seen these kids get off and on the elevator and walking around the hotel and local area. And even our 17 yr old DS noted that we did not see one kid talk, smile, converse, NOTHING. They get on and off the elevator, never acknowledge or greet each other. I literally did not hear one of their voices in a week’s time. And their diet was mostly fast food from Uber eats (from a delivery table in the lobby). DH was angry on their parents’ behalf for spending the money to send these kids to college and they all seem borderline depressed. We started the Northeastern campus tour and DS concluded the kids on campus were about the same we’d seen at the hotel. On the bright side, DS liked BU & BC.

We did Boston college tours last week. Surprised how much DS liked BU and crossed off NE. BU more cohesive city campus bound by nice water walks/views & train station. Lots of walkup apartment style housing - sufficient for 90% to stay in campus housing all 4 years. Northeastern could not really answer the housing question. It just seemed NE is not for the kid looking for a college “experience”.

[Anonymous]

Northeastern has no supplemental essay on the common app which is why they get so many applications.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Northeastern has no supplemental essay on the common app which is why they get so many applications.

And to suggest its application numbers should propel its rank is proof that OP is ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Northeastern has no supplemental essay on the common app which is why they get so many applications.

Schools like Case Western also has no supplemental essay, and even higher ranked.
Why it doesn't get as many applications, lower acceptance rate, and higher yeild rate

[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.

Like cell ohones, people spend money for a name even if it is not justified. The price can be unrelated to quality.

Northeasern is only #49, there are bunch of higher ranked schools (better name?) that are easier to get in.
So pelple who choose Northeastern actally choose for value and fit.

Northeastern kids can get into some of the T30 schools like UF, Wake Forest, UNC, UC whatever.
They can go to those 'name', and say I go to a T30 school, but no they choose the #49 school.
So it's exact opposite, they are careless about the name and chose value and fit.

[Anonymous]

There are many schools in the Top 50 that do not get the credit they deserve.

Northeastern is NOT one of them.

[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.

First, NEU has NO supplemental essays. Most Ivy and elite colleges (T30-T40) have several. Many have 4-5 supplemental essays. But with no Sup essays and the common app, it's just $75 (or whatever NEU costs) to submit an application. So comparing number of applications is not really a good indicator.

NEU is a mid-size school and with it comes the issues of that. People on the parent's page constantly get the run around with trying to address simple issues. At a smaller school (like most ivies and many elite are less than 8K undergrads), you get more personalized service.

For example, they are trying to expand the NUBound this year. That's the program where you go "off campus" for the entire first year (not NUIn which is a semester) and then return as a "transfer student" in fall of year 2. It's not April 11, and there are still many issues that have not been addressed or explained that most families would want to know. For example, it was just last Friday NEU put out a list of possible courses for both NUBound locations---good thing they did, as it will let many people know their kid won't have the appropriate courses for freshman year (Ie. an engineer major who has Cal 1 &2 credit from AP/IB/Duel entry will not have a Cal course to take fall semester--No Calculus 3 is even offered).
Neu is a great School and has improved alot in the last 2 decades. But it simply just doesn't compare to most of the Top 40 schools.

I think the attraction is Boston and the coop program. However, they don't have a monopoly on Cooping---at least not if you are in STEM/engineering. Most universities have a program where 30-40% of their students do that as engineers.

[Anonymous]

What are the “bunch of” schools that are higher ranked and admissions than NU?

[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 just that your friend doesn't really know that much about universities. NW has been a top 20 school for over 30 years. But since it's not in the Northeast, some may not have heard about it. But I can assure you anyone that has actually done 15 mins of research on schools knows it's a top school

[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.

I would think it would be that high. Is it top 50? Not sure. But in Boston way lower than Harvard, MIT, Tufts, BC, BU.

[Anonymous]

Northeastern is no ones dream school. Period. It gamed the rankings and isnt a target school for top tier employers. Perhaps the back office, but nothing more. It is a safety school for good students and a layup for great students. Period.

It's not even in the top 5 in Boston. Get real and stop thinking USNWR is the end all be all. They worked the rankings. Great. Doesnt change a pedestrian academic reputation.