Northeastern University

Date: Sep 02 2003
Major: Political Science (This Major's Salary over time)
Where do I begin 14 years since receiving my undergraduate degree in Political Science, I can’t thank the university enough for all that I learned there. Two graduate degrees later and I can’t help but tell you that looking back the education I received was top notch. Later, when I attended prestigious programs in Business (Penn) and Pubic Administration and Urban Planning (NYU) I realized that I was now competing with many students from the Ivy League and those from the top tier liberal arts colleges across the Northeast. I am not saying Northeastern education made me smarter, what it provided was a foundation and formulation of one simple principal, work hard. The Northeastern I attended had soft numbers upfront, due to a liberal admissions policy.

However, I never saw any numbers that rated the survivors of this institution those who pressed on through 5 rigorous years of work and study. My entering class had roughly 4000 but we graduated only 1800 of those students. Does that make a university bad? I don’t think so. Looking back, that Northeastern degree was perhaps the most difficult task I have had to tackle from an educational standpoint. By the time I graduated I had almost 2 years of relevant work experience and at least 10 letters of recommendation to my credit.

At Northeastern, I was always challenged; I had access to intelligent professors who made themselves available to mentor me. People like Clay McShane and Gerald Herman in History, Chris Bosso and Bob Cord in Political Science, Bill Kirtz in Journalism and Richard Bailey in Geology. These guys are classic professors, who take interest in their subject matter and their students. Heck, I can still look at a section of rock in an outcropping and tell which is the oldest rock in the strata.

Northeastern also taught me how to work smart, plan, schedule and keep my nose close to the grindstone.

Today, I hire co-op students frequently and will be extending an offer to another recent NU graduate to join our firm in a few days. I am still amazed how advanced NU students are with regard to workplace politics, adequate and over all understanding business principles. I can’t tell you the individual success rates of students based by undergraduate degree, we just don’t keep these type of statistics but I will say I have hired a lot of top notch graduates who just fall apart in the pressure cooker that is today’s business place.

Clearly, Northeastern is a great value, during my 2 years of cop jobs I made roughly 25k in 1988 dollars. That covered roughly of the tuition at the time. Who could argue with these kinds of economics? Lets see, today, the campus is robust green and wins awards for urban design. The university is located smack dab in one of on of our nations greatest cities. It is surrounded by a multicultural neighborhood, Fenway Park, a fabulous art museum and a highly regarded symphony all within 5 minutes walking distance. By the way, during my tenure as a student NU owned the Hockey Beanpot and we were consistently ranked among the top collage basketball teams in the country.

Northeastern graduates have been leaders in the business world for over 50 years, it’s a gem of a university, that’s is just now 105 years into existence getting the recognition it deserves. Now it can boast 1200 combine SAT too. Boston University…Who?