HELP! Northwestern MMSS vs. UC Berkeley

icy9ff8
Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:20:26 +0000

To the best of my knowledge, Berkeley would only be more prestigious in the West or for certain engineering or science majors largely due to its stellar grad school reputation. In the South, Berkeley does not enjoy a good reputation. In the Northeast, Midwest, South & Southwest, I think that Northwestern is more prestigious than UCal @ Berkeley. This is, however, just my experienced opinion. Northwestern’s MMSS program is not only designed to prepare students for elite graduate schools, but also to compete for cross applicants accepted to Princeton, Penn, Duke, Cornell & Stanford. As an ultra wealthy private school, Northwestern University is fortunate to be able to offer a student/faculty ratio of 7:1 versus 15:1 for Berkeley, which is a state funded school. Comparing Berkeley undergrad with Northwestern’s MMSS program is a mismatch. Internationally, however, Berkeley should have more prestige due to the breadth & quality of its graduate programs. Nationally, many academics regard Berkeley as prestigious because of its graduate schools which produce a lot of academic folks. In your situation, it would be foolish to pass up Northwestern’s MMSS program at lower cost than Berkeley undergraduate school. I think many would be willing to pay double for NU without the MMSS honor vs. Cal. Sorry, but as an experienced adult I am a bit shocked by your assumptions written in the original post.