Tufts vs Northwestern

Sam_Lee
Mon, 03 Apr 2006 01:09:57 +0000

Just wanna clear some misconception.

Actually Chicago has more jobs than Boston. You can probably do some research online to confirm this. But I can tell you Chicago’s downtown is very close to NYC’s in size (or at least it appears to be) and much bigger than Boston’s.

At Northwestern, you actually take 4 classes most of the time, not three, per quarter. To graduate, the students there need 45 courses to graduate (engineering students need 48). It’s a little more than average. Good number of classes only have one midterm, instead of two, so the saying that you have exams like every two weeks is an exaggeration. But the midterm does come quickly, esp for those classes that have two midterms.

The pros for quarter system is it gives you more flexiblility to work around your schedule if you want to double major or squeeze couple quarters of internships in the middle of academic year but still manage to graduate in four years. Here’s why:


more classes are offered twice a year, instead of just once. So if you can’t take some required course in the fall because of being away or conflicting schedule, you can make it up in the spring.
if you are ambitious, you can take 5 classes per quarter (no extra cost for engineering students but not sure about others) and in one year, you can finish with 15 classes! To do the equivalent in semester school, you would have to take 7 or 8 classes! I’d done 5 before in a quarter but I doubt I can do 7 or 8 in one semester. Conflicting schedule likely happens anyway to stop you from doing that. I know a girl who graduated in 4 years with dual-major in econ and comp engineering and a co-op certificate (6 quarters of co-op) at Northwestern and that’s how she did it. This is probably a rather extreme example of course and I only did one quarter of 5 classes in my life. But the point is it gives you a little more room and flexibility to design more aggressive schedule.