Northeastern University vs Boston University

NovaMom93
Sat, 25 Apr 2020 11:33:40 +0000

@clubtennisletsgo the campuses are quite different. University Circle is beautiful, but it is more like a suburb rather than an urban campus - people might disagree, but we’ve lived in NYC and DC. Northeastern’s campus is unique in that it’s a dedicated campus right smack in the middle of Boston. The dorms at Case are not the prettiest, they are a flashback from the 70’s, but my D liked the eclectic mix of modern and historic educational buildings - but the dorms were bad.

As for the educational philosophies…Case does have a small co-op office that helps kids secure an optional co-op at some point in their undergraduate experience. But there are really only a small number of kids who do this. Case has strong research activity, and we got a sense that it leans more on theoretical rather than practical applications of engineering. Northeastern’s co-op program is practically baked into their engineering program. (After wrapping up first year, my kid is more excited about engineering than ever before, so I would say that the First-Year Engineering Program was pretty effective). The Biotech scene in Boston (versus Cleveland) is what really sealed the deal for my daughter so the choice was made after visiting both.

My daughter is also keen on both music and engineering/math, so her final 2 choices weren’t a surprise.

One final observation from my kid, she said that Case struck her as a “work hard, work hard” kind of place. Her high school experience was like that, so that was a negative. But the size of the school, location, music offerings, were awesome.

Two great schools!