Umich Honors vs. Northwestern

LJGoBlue
Sun, 15 Apr 2012 17:21:31 +0000

I just made this same decision between Michigan and Northwestern, and I chose Northwestern. I’m also really big into sports and I don’t consider myself that nerdy, and I’m a huge Michigan fan. I visited both places this past week to aid me in my decision and, I’ll offer the reasons I chose NU over UM.

1) The biggest difference I noticed between the two schools was the quality of the student body. At NU every current student that I spoke to, even the students that weren’t part of the Wildcat Days program, was very excited to share their experiences at Northwestern with me. I was even approached by students while walking around on campus, asking me if I had any question about the school and student life. One student even offered to show me their dorm room! All of the students at NU were extremely involved on campus and they were all very passionate about their school. While at Michigan, I did not get a similar vibe. There was definitely a lot of school pride, but people just didn’t seem as motivated and involved as they were at NU. I have no doubt that someone that was very motivated could do some amazing things at Michigan, but the general vibe that I got was that most kids weren’t really as involved as the kids at NU. I know they brag about the 1300 or so student organizations that they have, but I wasn’t as impressed with the influence that these groups have compared to organizations like Dance Marathon at NU.

2) This is more of a personal preference, but I’m an engineering student and I absolutely hated the division of North Campus from Central Campus. Just because I’m an engineer doesn’t mean I want to be with engineers all the time, but the seclusion of North Campus kind of turned me off from the school. I was also kind of overwhelmed with how large and spread out the campus is compared to NU’s campus. Again, this is just a personal preference, but I figured I’d share it anyways.

3) Finally, I wasn’t a fan of the arrogant attitude that was pitched at Michigan. In all of the information sessions that I attended, they always made it a point to try to point out how smart they were and how that you should go to Michigan because it’s Michigan blah, blah, blah. It was a very in your face kind of approach, and it really wasn’t appealing to me. NU focused much more on the actual experience, and they were much less preoccupied with bragging up how great of a school Northwestern is, which appealed to me much more.

So, those are the main reasons I picked NU over Michigan. I honestly wanted Michigan to really wow me and convince me to attend because I’m such a huge Michigan sports fan, but unfortunately they just kind of turned me off from the school. These are just my personal experiences and interpretations, but I figured I would share them to try to give you some insight into this decision.