Northwestern isn't that great

good location on lake

train to city fun is longer than you'd think
Evanston not a college town -- really restrictive liquor licenses

Has the potential, but isn't quite hitting it.

You can always tell the athletes from the non-athletes by sweatpants on campus(talking about girls). Athlete chicks were basically always sweats/mesh shorts.

mmmmm... ASU... visiting there so much fun.

Four Peaks Brewery last trip --- FTMFW

Nah, but if you have a chance to go to Northwestern you probably should despite the weather because it opens a lot of doors. That's the point. It's worth being cold and stuff during college if you're getting a great degree, but if my son is going to U of M, I'm going to tell him to just downgrade a bit and go to Pepperdine or something. If he's going to Northwestern, I'm going to make fun of him for the purple uniforms and let him go.

weather plays an important part sure. Also, we were talking about the locations of colleges not just the campus boundaries. I spent time on USC's campus and it was fine. It didnt blow Michigan out of the water or anything but LA did blow Ann Arbor out of the water.

tons of good restaurants and less than 15 min from Chapel Hill for hotter girls and different bar scene. Add in the Duke bars in Durham, proximity to Raleigh, and weather, and its solid. Far better than Ann Arbor.

shocker, mt2r saying something stupid about michigan.

Agree with this, but if youre going to Northwestern I think a better option would be to get into UChicago and suck up the fact that its tougher than most places. Definitely no point in going to a school like Michigan, tOSU, Oregon, Wisconsin (go to an SEC school or ASU if you want the party scene), etc.

actually, now that I think about it I cant find a reason to go to any big 10 school unless you are in state and want to stay close to home or save money. I cant say the same for any other major conference or the Ivys.

hmmmm.... I think Michigan degree opens more doors than Pepperdine.
And, I'm not the type to be blown away by degrees having much significance.

As always, the answer is it depends. If it's a general liberal arts degree, school differences rarely matter. If one's goal is to settle in Michigan and rise through middle management of some business, a Michigan or MSU degree goes a long ways. If going national, Michigan name carries a bit more weight.

yeah I can't for the life of me imagine why someone out-of-state would ever want to go to Minnesota/MSU etc, Michigan kinda makes sense ex-ante because you're 17 and the school is ranked decently and you don't understand the lifestyle difference between UM and something slightly worse like UNC or UCLA.

I agree with this. I only went to Illinois due to in-state academic schollie and the school was #1 or very close to it nationally in the majors in which I was interested.

If I was undecided or whatever, I would have gone South.

There is the exception that if you know you're going to settle in the state, it's good to go to the state school as it will help foot-in-the-door wise for interviews and such.

Yeah but it's not that big of a difference to justify the lifestyle hit. In my experience there's like 4 levels of college when it comes to job stuff:

Harvard/Princeton/Yale

...

Ivy+

...

Almost every other nationally competitive school where the school doesn't mean anything and you have to prove yourself (like every flagship state school, lots of others)

...

Schools where it's straining credulity to believe you're smart (The 2nd or 3rd best state school in most states or below)


Put simply: Fairly or not, no one is going to assume you're smart if you went to Michigan. They won't exclude the possibility, but they won't assume it. People will assume you're smart if you went to Northwestern. Maybe Pepperdine is a bad example, but there are a ****load of fun, warm schools where people won't assume you're smart but are open to being convinced.

Michigan has a ridiculously huge alum base, it definitely will get you in places Pepperdine won't. lol Pepperdine.

Upon further research Pepperdine is a terrible party school run by contraception-hoarding Christians. lol Pepperdine indeed. Replace "Pepperdine" with "UCLA".

I grew up somewhere colder, so southern Minnesota wasn't that bad.

more or less agree with this. I think the 2nd line is 2 distinct groups though and Stanford and MIT probably belong in the top group. Stuff like Northwestern, NYU, UVA, UNC, etc. belong above other state schools like Wisconsin or tOSU, but below places like Duke, Cornell, Cal Tech, etc.

try UGA. seems like a good parallel.

Honestly, the northern schools are left over from a day and age when A/C wasn't widely available and cheap. As the population shifts, the somewhat superior attitude held by many of their alums will decrease. For the longest time, the big MW land grant state schools were spitting out more alums than the other places. Strength in numbers.

It's a shame you'll be dead by the time their attitudes come back to earth. Really just a pity.

The way this "winter" is going, people will be coming back in droves.

Yeah bro, global warming is going to reverse the population shifts in no time. Michigan is going to be the new Cancun with all dem beaches.

lol

You lost major points to your argument by saying the "campus" is bad

The campus is gorgeous, they film there all the time, etc (yes, proximity to Hollywood helps)

The area surrounding is absolute dog**** I'll give you that, but it is improving

There are and have been major issues with the surrounding community that have severely limited the schools ability to just level all the crappy stuff (tons of which is on property the school owns)

Plus its not just weather, its close to everything

But even then, I'm cold when its 60. lol @ u

Notre Dame's campus was very nice, but there is a reason that everyone stays in Chicago for ND games

Yeah Pepperdine is uber religious and small and doesn't party

The campus is on the beach in Malibu, but the school isn't even that great, it just private

I'm fairly certain UCSB is ranked higher than Pepp as well if you're looking for a school on the beach

But you can catch herpes just driving through Isla Vista so enter at your own risk

sounds like butthurt