(ADVICE) Which universities should I apply to?

aquapt
Fri, 13 Nov 2020 00:55:29 +0000

Well, as far as social fit… the schools you list vary quite a bit in terms of “vibe”… but there are introverts who thrive at all of them. It does stand to reason that these schools are on the lists of many students for whom elitism is part of their value system - one can’t really expect to go to Harvard and not find elitism there. But that’s not to say that elitism is universal even at elite schools.

It’s the academic fit that you may want to look at more closely. There are some specific programs at your schools that fit what you say you want (like the Product Design major at Stanford), but then there are others where it may be hard to find as much hands-on business and design oriented coursework as you want, or hard to be as interdisciplinary as you want (for example, CMU has top-notch programs in both business and design, but you can’t really combine them, despite all of the “interdisciplinary major” marketing that they do.) That was why I thought that unique program at Babson sounded like exactly what you were describing, whereas this would be hard to replicate at many other schools.

Here’s another possibility. Northeastern is similar in location/competitiveness/prestige to BU, which you were considering, but it has more established cross-disciplinary paths. http://catalog.northeastern.edu/undergraduate/business/business-administration-combined-majors/design-bs/#planofstudytext Their design stuff leans a bit more toward the digital, and as with BU it’s more urban than you’d prefer, but maybe worth a look.