Anonymous
12/06/2025 21:20
Subject: Northwestern less popular in DC area?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Among T10, JHU and Northwestern attact the largest number of applicants in DMV. No one talks about them.
not true for NU. Penn gets more
JHU, Penn, Duke, then Northwestern, in descending order in terms of number of DMV applicants.
How do determine that?
Anonymous
12/06/2025 16:18
Subject: Re:Northwestern less popular in DC area?
Anonymous wrote:I'm just curious how UChicago and NW see each other, anyone have any ideas? I am sure both are looked on very favorably by Chicagoans, but, similar to the Boston schools, I wonder how they mesh...
Well for one, NU is where you would go for engineering. They have a great program that is ABET certified. U Chicago doesn’t have this
Anonymous
12/06/2025 16:13
Subject: Re:Northwestern less popular in DC area?
Anonymous wrote:I'm just curious how UChicago and NW see each other, anyone have any ideas? I am sure both are looked on very favorably by Chicagoans, but, similar to the Boston schools, I wonder how they mesh...
The Greek students hang out together quite a bit (NU sororities have event with UChicaho frats). Nice commingling.
Anonymous
12/06/2025 15:37
Subject: Re:Northwestern less popular in DC area?
I'm just curious how UChicago and NW see each other, anyone have any ideas? I am sure both are looked on very favorably by Chicagoans, but, similar to the Boston schools, I wonder how they mesh...
Anonymous
12/06/2025 15:16
Subject: Northwestern less popular in DC area?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:It’s very disappointing that they just gave into Trump’s mafia techniques and will pay the federal government $75M to get its federal funding back.
- NU Alum
Yes I don’t get this. I’m not the right kind of lawyer for this problem, but I was under the impression that any university who fought the Trumpers on this would eventually win unless they intentionally decided to give in like UVA.
I’m sort of “the right kind of lawyer” for this and the answer is who the f— knows. The federal courts are peppered with crazy incompetent Trump appointees now so if you can a bad judge or a bad panel draw, you could end up with a terrible decision. And who knows what the Supreme Court will do with this sort of thing. There seems to be very few things they actually care about. But I think the bigger problem is that the big research schools don’t have the money to really carry all their labs while they fight in court — they did it for months so labs wouldn’t have to close but they can’t do that for years. On the upside, the Trump lawyers are all terrible, so I think the university lawyers are all running circles around them with the agreements and not really agreeing to much at all.
Anonymous
12/06/2025 15:11
Subject: Northwestern less popular in DC area?
Anonymous wrote:It’s very disappointing that they just gave into Trump’s mafia techniques and will pay the federal government $75M to get its federal funding back.
- NU Alum
Yeah but it’s just an accounting trick. They get close to a billion a year in fed money and are giving the admin something like 25M a year over 3 years. I don’t think they committed to anything really enforceable and they’ve stressed that they maintain control over academics, faculty, etc. it’s all a stupid game. Unfortunately, Trump is like the mafia and the idea of stopping all federally funded research at the school just wasn’t tenable. I’m the first person to want to stick it to Trump….but it’s really bad for America if we let him freeze research funding to our country’s best researchers and students.
Anonymous
12/06/2025 15:06
Subject: Northwestern less popular in DC area?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:My McPS kid is a sophomore there in Stem and loves it. She got a great funded position in a research lab, loves the access to Chicago and the Evanston vibe, has found a nice cohort of students who are academic without being cutthroat, is very involved in extracurriculars. The weather can be jntense but that’s true of lots of schools (Dartmouth, Cornell, Wisconsin, Michigan etc). The classes are really hard — she has checked online exams for some of her classes from other top schools and thinks NU is harder, but I’ve heard the grad schools are aware and adjust grade expectations. The only real downside is that they run late into June so can impact summer vacations and internships. That’s also true of some other schools on quarter system.
I think it’s as talked about as schools like Dartmouth. Duke gets more play around here I think but I think that’s in part because basketball is now so popular and a lot of mid atlattic kids want warm weather.
I heard the quarter system can be intense. How many courses do students take on average per quarter?
It is intense. Mine has been taking 4 I think, but one is usually a lab. I’m not sure if that’s normal or not. The semester she doubled up on classes with labs was the worst because the labs have tons of hours so she just had so many hours in class. I think it’s best for kids who like a fast pace and are pretty organized.
Anonymous
12/06/2025 14:50
Subject: Northwestern less popular in DC area?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Demonstrated interest matters at Northwestern.
If your kid hasn't already shown any, don't bother with an RD application. Similar to Dartmouth (and Rice, WashU and Duke (lesser extent)).
Dumb question: how do I demonstrate interest in a university that’s half a country away when everyone knows I’m applying to ten different top universities?
Go to their admissions page and see all the ways to "connect" - and then do them all.
Anonymous
12/06/2025 14:32
Subject: Re:Northwestern less popular in DC area?
NW is recognized as a great school at our NE private, but tends to lose out because of location. Most kids try to ED somewhere similar on the east coast. The kids who get into NW RD often also get into a T15 nearer to home and often prefer that. Kids who are excited about Chicago area tend to think U of Chicago is a more likely ED admit and will often try that instead. But the kids who wind up at NW seem to like it.