NU has the attraction of proximity to a large city with all of the cultural amenities that I enjoyed during my 4 years. When I return for visits to campus I still make it a point to check out exhibitions at the Art Institute for example and participate in architecture tours. That being said I’m a big fan of the UC system and the quality of education and research conducted there. One concern recently though is the rapid growth of the undergraduate population- at UCSD we have surpassed 44,000 undergrads and we are running out of space on the La Jolla campus. I think the sheer numbers has to impact the quality of education, so I think the limited size of NU’s student population is an advantage.
OT? Why college is so expensive in America. (Bonus: Duke vs NU prestige ranking poll)
- Thread starter CatManTrue
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As I recall, NU had one heck of a chemistry department back then.
I guess the transformative school for me was my taking a tech job at U North Dakota, where I discovered my love for aquatic taxonomy and indicator species while eventually studying under an old cooter from Kentucky who knew how to identify everything in freshwater. I wanted to be "Mr. Know-it-all" like he was.
NU got me started. I made friends with a few premeds and their urgency for doing well in school rubbed off. The irony in that video is that NU, situated by a Great Lake that they love to show off, offered nothing significant at the time in limnology or similar fields above the organismal level. I got that North Dakota. Every other B1G school was more suitable for my eventual career path.
Yes, the Chemistry department was highly rated when i attended. To be honest, the ChemE department was not exceptional when I went, the material science department was far better with Dr. Julia Weertman and others (except Carr). My best ChemE prof was Torkelson who was newly-hired at the time, but there were a bunch of old codgers like Boomer Brown that weren't very good. @Fitzphile who was probably a grad student when I attended would know them well.
Edit: ChemE had some famous names like Bankoff, Slattery, Kung, etc. but I didn't think the courses were exceptionally taught or anything. Torkelson was very good though, a young star at the time.
I agree with you, ChE was pretty average. My advisor was Graessley and he was top of his field. Butt was also top notch. Mah and Kung were good. Bankoff was past his prime, as was Thodos. Boomer should have been fired, he was a complete waste. Dranoff was a nice guy but zero desire to do research. Buck Crist was a jerk but not a bad scientist. Agree with you about Carr, just a politician not a scientist. Torkelson was top notch.
I had Boomer for one class and he was brutal. He didn't teach well, didn't hold office hours, and his tests were hard as hell - the median grade was usually under 50. I think I pulled a B in his class but don't think I learned much. Waste of tuition money there.
These days, NU and Dook are about the same, tho one may be slightly ahead of the other depending on region/geography.
Tho 20-25 yrs ago, Dook was ahead due to geography (being an East Coast school) and due to the research $ generated by its med school.
NU's med school wasn't so research $ focused back then, but over the past 2 decades or so, has made tremendous leaps in funding.
The vast majority of professors aren't making that much more than their previous counterparts were making (taking into account inflation), w/ many classes (esp at public universities) being led by poorly paid adjuncts.
Otoh, the pay of university presidents and chancellors, as well as certain other employees like athletic directors and fund managers have gone way up.
The higher ed loan industry certainly have helped escalate tuition costs (where higher tuition was considered to reflect on the quality of education), as well as state legislatures cutting back drastically on funding for universities within the state system (hence, the drive to accept more students from out of state or international students who would be paying full fare), plus, as already mentioned, the arms race when it comes to dorms, dining halls and other facilities.
As an aside, the head of Sallie Mae, after it had been turned into a private, for profit corporation, made so much $ that he was able to build his own private golf course in suburban Maryland.
Tho 20-25 yrs ago, Dook was ahead due to geography (being an East Coast school) and due to the research $ generated by its med school.
NU's med school wasn't so research $ focused back then, but over the past 2 decades or so, has made tremendous leaps in funding.
The vast majority of professors aren't making that much more than their previous counterparts were making (taking into account inflation), w/ many classes (esp at public universities) being led by poorly paid adjuncts.
Otoh, the pay of university presidents and chancellors, as well as certain other employees like athletic directors and fund managers have gone way up.
The higher ed loan industry certainly have helped escalate tuition costs (where higher tuition was considered to reflect on the quality of education), as well as state legislatures cutting back drastically on funding for universities within the state system (hence, the drive to accept more students from out of state or international students who would be paying full fare), plus, as already mentioned, the arms race when it comes to dorms, dining halls and other facilities.
As an aside, the head of Sallie Mae, after it had been turned into a private, for profit corporation, made so much $ that he was able to build his own private golf course in suburban Maryland.
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Crazy. NU was 39% acceptance rate when I got in and that was considered very selective.
Honest question pertaining to the thread title, how many of you would send your kid to NU if you had to pay full cost of attendance?
Out of curiosity I looked at admission date 2000 - 2021. Over the past 10 years, what's been driving the fall in admission rate:
- In 2012: 31,000 applied, 5,600 admitted, 2,100 enrolled.
- In 2021: 48,000 applied, 3,330 admitted, 2,100 enrolled.
Re: paying full price, man that's tough. We live in Austin, and even though UT isn't at NU's level, our cost as residents is under $12k / year. But at the end of the day, my guess is we'll pay what it takes for our girls to go to the best school they can get into....
Not me. Not for my interests. I learned a long time ago that flagship state schools are the way to go. Most offer honors programs with excellent accelerated coursework as well.
Here in the Bay Area, a lot of hiring managers use Ivy or top 15-20 schools as an instant filter on applicants.
Glades is a purist. Respects the material and the grind. Certainly agree that you can get that anywhere and/or it's not necessarily correlated with the "rank" of a school.
College admissions and higher education is basically a glorified "can I get in so I can list it on my resume" deal these days. I'd bet 50% or more of students, if given the choice, would just take a high paying job out of high school rather than go to school to actually learn.
It's not about purism. It's about quality of education for the buck. NU didn't teach genetics or cell biology any more rigorously than at UNDak, Pitt, or Wheaton 40 years ago.
If you want a top job in, say banking, go to top 20 school. If you want a good education in ecology, zoology and related fields, schools like UFlorida and FIU are very good schools while NU offers little, and it's often in conjunction with the Field Museum.
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Yup, as a hiring manager I ask our recruiters to use that as a filter as well. My sister let her 3 kids go to Northern Arizona, because it was cheap. None of them were able to land good jobs.
Is the Austin job market still hot? It seems we hear a lot about layoffs nationwide these days.
My daughter graduates in June (she'll actually be staying for a 5th year for masters in education). TBH aid package has been generous (almost embarrassingly so). I've spent at least 45 seconds over the last 4 years feeling guilty about it lol.
In fairness it will all be paid back with donations in the future.
Still solid but maybe starting to soften a bit. Lots of tech firms have over-hired the past couple of years, not sure how generalizable their layoffs will be to non-tech companies.
That's awesome!
NU paid all but $5k for me, to your point, as soon as I was able I donated (and still do).
That 7% compared to 6% for Dook is even more amazing considering that NU is a considerably larger school w/ 1,600 more undergrads.
In USNWR global rankings (which is more research oriented), NU is ranked 24th, one spot ahead of Dook.
Took longer for NU's admission rate to fall relative to its peers as it was latecomer in adopting the common application.
We have two kids there. Pay full freight. We can afford to do that but I do feel that it’s a good value based on the comments above but also the power of the alum network
Re prior comments in prestige. Duke has a noticeably higher yield than NU. To me, in the eyes of its main consumers Duke is more prestigious. Or you could argue that it’s just more popular. Truth is probably somewhere between.
Re prior comments in prestige. Duke has a noticeably higher yield than NU. To me, in the eyes of its main consumers Duke is more prestigious. Or you could argue that it’s just more popular. Truth is probably somewhere between.
^ If NU cuts its class size down to that of Dook, the yield would likely be similar.
NU is also a more well-rounded school w/ renowned music, theater, journalism and education depts.
NU is also a more well-rounded school w/ renowned music, theater, journalism and education depts.
I'd guess they're probably the same. NU has some large gaps of its own in core sciences that Duke fills quite well.
Small schools can't have everything for everyone.
What industry is this? I work with plenty of engineers from state schools who didn't have a problem landing a job.
Each school has its strength and weaknesses when it comes to the STEM fields and core liberal arts subjects, but music, theater and even journalism students tend to be a little different from the cookie cutter who end up working for a corporation or go on to med/law/biz school.
It's like the difference btwn Harvard and Yale; Yale has a noticeably larger "artsy" student body, or Carnegie Mellon which is an interesting meld of the tech/engineering nerds with the arts geeks.
Boy, you are old. No, university administrators realized they had a good thing going. US higher education is the best in the world, generally, as opposed to primary and secondary education, in which we are failing for much of our population. This is the reason we are attracting so many students, world wide, for University and graduate program. NU, walking the campus, appears to be like 50% Asian now. It is apparently worth the price.
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It appears to be 50% walking the campus. Much different than the quota NU had on Jews in the 1960's. There was one black person in my class, and he was a football player.
I know we’re a nation that hates facts but 18.3% of Northwestern undergrads are Asian. So unless you walked by a Chinese New Year celebration or walked into the library than in fact 50% of students you saw were not Asian.
I don't know about you guys, but whenever I visit campus I still see a majority of European Americans, followed by some Asian Americans and a less number of African Americans. Of course a number of students are international students - they usually pay full tuition so schools love them - but NU is pretty representative of what you see on most top private research universities in the US.
