<p>The Question: Why is Northwestern Underrated?
The Answer: Why? Is Northwestern underrated?</p>
<p>Most likely, NU is not under-rated. If we carve out HYPSM, and look at the next 15 or so Universities, you will find them all to be all excellent. The choice of one school over another largely comes down to factors such as the relative strength of specific departments, geography, feel of campus (including big school vs small school, etc.), and financial packages.</p>
<p>All of these schools provide an excellent education and excellent employment or grad school opportunities. Whether one is number 7, number 12, number 15 or number 18, really has little to do with education or post-graduation opportunities, and to a great extent the debate of the specific ranking is kind of silly. So, it really comes down to what you are looking for in a top-tier school.</p>
<p>NU is clearly in this tier of schools, and I think there is near-universal agreement that this is where it belongs.</p>
<p>The only real exception is what we’ll call the Ivy Factor. There are many who would argue that there is a real advantage to any Ivy League School, regardless of its ranking. In certain fields (east-cost investment banking?), the Ivy Factor may be real – though most likely less so than it was 25 years ago – or maybe in the current world, this is vastly overrated. There’s no real point in discussing it. Either you believe in it or you don’t. But even most Ivy Factor believers will admit that it has little or nothing to do with quality of education.</p>
<p>So, to the extent NU is underrated, it’s because it’s not an Ivy, and there are no foreseeable circumstances in which it will ever become one.</p>
<p>Once one looks beyond this fact it’s recoginized as an excellent top-tier university.</p>