Just got the Northeastern Magazine
Back the the 1970s, Northeastern was a nice local school but nothing like a BU, Tufts or MIT. Since then, test cores and competition have increased a lot, and it seems to be an alternative to places like BU.
SAT scores went up by 200 points since then, so ACT 25-75 percentile is now 28-32 and admission rate is only 35% which makes it as hard to get into and test scores at places like Colgate, Carleton,Macalester and George Washington university. That means you have a good chance to get in if your test scores are above average the 75 percentile. You don't have to win lottery odds even with perfect test scores like Stanford or Brown, and you get to go to school in Fenway in Boston across the river from MIT and Harvard and BU's backyard.
It says that the computer science department places 100% of people into jobs at places like Microsoft and Google.
One article is about engineering students who built a .... hi fi record player??? Like the old AR turntables that were $150 way back when, but talks to USB now. Another is a student who won the contest to be Taylor Swift's photographer using a Sony NEX camera.
Here's the wikipedia on how it's gone from commuter college to safe MIT Harvard backup:
Similar to a number of urban universities, Northeastern began as a commuter school with many part-time and evening students, and by the early 1980s had grown to 60,000 enrollees.[citation needed] In the 1990s, the university reduced the number of enrolled students in order to become a "smaller, better" university and began building more residence halls on campus. It cut its freshman class size from around 4500 students to 2800 students.[citation needed]
From 1996 to 2006, President Richard Freeland led an institutional change; average SAT scores increased more than 200 points, retention rates rose dramatically, and applications doubled.[citation needed] President Freeland oversaw Northeastern's largest expansion ever, opening $485 million in new facilities, including residence halls, academic and research facilities, and athletic centers. The institution also became substantially more selective, leading to a more academically talented student body.[citation needed]
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Throughout the transformation, President Freeland's oft-repeated goal was to crack the Top 100 of the U.S. News rankings,[citation needed] which was accomplished in 2005. With this goal accomplished and the transformation from commuting school to national research university complete, he stepped down from the presidency on August 15, 2006. His successor is Dr. Joseph Aoun, formerly a dean at University of Southern California.[14] Since coming into office in the fall of 2006, President Aoun has implemented a decentralized management model, giving the academic deans of the university more control over their own budgets, faculty hiring decisions, and fundraising.
As part of Northeastern's five-year, $75 million Academic Investment Plan,[15] the University is concentrating on three areas: undergraduate education, core graduate professional programs, and centers of research excellence. The Plan centers around the addition of 100 tenured and tenure-track professors between 2004 and 2009. This plan was recently expanded to provide for the hiring of an additional 300 tenure and tenure-track faculty in interdisciplinary fields. Aoun has also placed more emphasis on improving town relations by reaching out to leaders of the communities surrounding the university.[16] In addition, Aoun has created more academic partnerships with other institutions in the Boston area including Tufts, Hebrew College and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.[citation needed]
Under Aoun's leadership, the university continues to climb in the rankings.[citation needed] In the 2013 edition of U.S. News and World Report's "Best Colleges Guide", Northeastern increased its ranking to 56th, up 6 spots from 2012.
