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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As an insider, I find these NEU threads interesting. I have worked in the NEU administration for 25+ years. Back when I stated my job at NEU, the university was nearly broke and it was generally ranked as a commuter school that resides just above the community colleges. In fact, we often lost students to Middlesex Community College and such.

The quick turnaround from commuter school to an elite which according some on this forum is a Harvard rival is amazing.(I was surprised to learn that last bit.) But I believe that NEU has marketed itself well, given the number of applicants this past season.

Interesting, the university is fundamentally not that different from the inside since its earlier commuter days. I don't mean buildings and such. But the faculty and teaching quality are about the same. NEU doesn't try to hire "stellar" faculty, just some folks who can get in front of a class. That means they don't mind hiring lots of "temporary" teachers or hiring faculty who can be hired cheaply.

Importantly, the administration also realizes the need for warm bodies and is aggressive in filling in the classroom and the dorms with people. Sometimes they do this too aggressively and they have pack in lots of kids into small places. But, they know it does not matter as those students are already a captive tution-paying audience who won't leave.

They know jobs are important and co-op programs have grown.They know people want CS, so they offer a zillion flavors of it (many won't make sense from a purely science point of view and will never be offered at Harvard or some other more education-oriented place).

In other words, NEU is a common sense driven business. They know how to market themselves. But they also know how to give their customers what they want, which is good thing.[/quote]

Interesting perspective.  NEU seems like a decent school with a unique slant with the applied focus. But, I think it's just 1 rabid booster that keeps saying it rivals Ivies because they just wish it to be so. No one really thinks NEU rivals a T20 school. But, it's nice to have a variety of decent schools out there. Not sure why a set of people want either tear this one down or promote it beyond its means. I find the obsession on both sides a little bizarre. [/quote]

No one thinks it rivals Ivies.  
It's position is a level below T25ish.
It's a great option after T25ish schools.

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Northeastern was one of 6 universities tied for #49 in the US News rankings this year. That puts them in the top 54ish. So, nowhere near the top 25ish. It’s a great option after the top 40ish.[/quote]

Not according to the actual sutdent selectivity - acceptance rate, yield, and student stats.
Don't get confused with rankings and student selectivity/popularity. 
Ranking is one of the many factors for choosing a school, so just because it ranked 54th, doesn't mean students selectivity/popularity is 54th.

Northeatern's acceptance rate and student stats are on par or even better than some of the T30.
So according to the actual student selectivity, it's one of the most popular options after T25ish by students.
Schools like BC, BU, Tufts, NYU, Georgia Tech, and Tulane would be the examples regardless of t rankings by USN&WR.

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Don’t let one good year go to your head.[/quote]
[b]
For this one good year's standard, it's T10[/b].
However, again as I said above, it's an exception, so we don't want to draw conclusions with the skewed data.
We want to look at the last several years of data.
 
Compare it to other schools in between T25ish - T50, for example T30 schools like UF, UNC, Wake Forest, UCSB
or many of the higher ranked other T50 schools.

[/quote]'But it's not because T-anything is not admissions rate alone.[/quote]

+1000

Northeastern has a really low admissions rate for a few reasons:

1) They miscalculated yield for fall 2021 and had an extra 1000+ students on campus (that was for fall, rumor is they were also very overloaded with NUIn/NUbound, so they are likely 1500+ students over).

2) NEU is a marketing machine.  They have successfully marketed their school extremely well in the past decade and do not require any supplemental essays, so all it takes is application fee and being on the common app.  Hence, thousands of kids apply "just because its a good school and easy to apply to".  Whereas the Ivies, Stanford, Northwestern, Vandy, Tufts, and most of the T50 schools have 1-4 supplemental essays.  So it takes thought and a concerted effort to apply to them, not $75 and hitting submit in the common app.

I wouldn't consider admissions rate to be a reliable indicator of how good a school is personally.  My kid wants engineering, and I'm 100% certain that there are 20+ schools that are a better choice for that than Harvard or Yale.

[/quote]

Right, it's not just the admission rate.
If you want to look at the better picture for 'student selectivity', as I mentioned earlier, look at admission rate + student stats + yield.

Going back to my earlier point.
Nobody thinks Northeastern is at T20(or Ivy) level. We all agree it's nonsense.
The next point was then Northeastern's actual position in reality.
Ranking/prestige is one of the many factors students consider for choosing schools.
Obviously students don't pick a school just because it's higher ranked on USN&WR

From the data(admission rate + student stats + yield), it appears that students consider Northeastern(as well as schools like BU BC NYU Tufts Tulane Georgia Tech) next best options if they didn't make T25ish schools.  
It just appears to be the case, and no argument needed for what's actually happening.

Ironically the miscalculation came from the soaring rise of the yield rate (33% last year).  
Higher yield is a great thing for colleges. It just had a side effect for this particular year for Northeastern.
It's actually an indication that students don't just apply because it's easy to apply or as a safety.
A good well respected higher ranked school like Case Western(#42 USN&WR) also doesn't require supplemental essay, but its admission rate has been over 30% while 18-20%(again forget this year) for Northeastern for the past few years.   Case Western's yield was only 16% for class of 2025.  
So the high stat students apply to Northeastern not just because it's easy to apply, they apply thinking it's one of the the next best options to the T25ish schools.

So you are somewhat contradicting yourself, and wrong on some of the points, but you are right that ranking and selectivity are parts of many factors, and a good school for your kid is a personal and subjective matter.  My kid chose #49 school, rejecting a T30 and a mid 30s school like you said.

[/quote]

Case Western's yield is low because it's in Cleveland.  Put Case in Boston and it would have a much much higher yield (IMO).  It's an amazing School, but the location really hurts it.  It's a campus filled with IVY/T30 wannabes. My own DC almost attended, but instead turned down over $140K in merit awards as it was not the best fit for them.

And I'd argue with you that many, many students do pick a school based on prestige/rankings.  Just look at DCUM.  So many parents are obsessed with rankings, rather than looking at fit or specifics related to a major.

NEU is a good school.  But they really need to grow the infrastructure quickly, based on the student growth in just the last decade.  Right now they have grown too fast and it means resources are behind.  Had they given my kid direct entry instead of NUBound, my DC might have considered it and the Boston location might have helped, but ultimately I think it's too big of a school for my kid.  They will be at a school with ~5.5K undergrads and that's a better environment overall for my DC.  My DC will get engaged with research freshman year and do internships and perhaps coop if desired (as an engineer the difference between coop and internships while researching during the year is a toss up).  But my DC was not willing to be overseas for freshman year and not really have enough meaningful courses to take. With 8AP credits, the necessary advanced STEM courses simply were not available freshman year and my DC was not willing to take bogus courses (courses that do not check a box for graduation) for a semester at a cost of $75K+ for the year, as it would mean a 9th semester of classes to get the double major they desire, simply due to the lack of classes during freshman year.  So not worth it to our family.

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