Academic Building @ Suffolk U | 20 Somerset Street | Beacon Hill

Emerson was fairly niche and not in the hierarchy (along with Berklee / NEC). Brandeis would probably be between BU and BC.
 
Insofar as you can trust US News and World Report college rankings, NU has really taken off in terms of reputation. It is now (just) in the top 50 "national universities" in the US (along with BU, BC, Brandeis not hugely above them, and of course, Tufts, Harvard, MIT). Pretty amazing turnaround for a school that was thought of as a "safety school" even 5 years ago. Average SATs at NU are now higher than at BU, BC or Brandeis.
 
Even 5 years ago a lot of applicants to NU who thought of it as a safety ended up getting rejection letters.
 
TomOfBoston said:
When I was looking at colleges (40 years ago) Northeastern was a few notches above Suffolk. Suffolk and the former Boston State College were the bottom of the barrel. By the way, in the early 1970's, BU and BC were facing bankruptcy and there were rumors that BC would be forced to close.
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Tom of B -- Not in the technical area by my recollection [circa 1970-1980]:

The hierarchy for Engineering and hard sciences [physics, chemistry] back then was quite different than for general education, and even physics/chem and engineering had some divergence

In the hard sciences MIT and Harvard fought for 1st -- it was a battle of Nobel Prizes
a considerable way down were BU, BC, Tufts, Brandeis, UMass Amherst
there were no significant others

In Engineering [particularly EE&CS]:
1. MIT
2. NU
4 way tie
WPI, BU, Tufts, Umass Lowell

substantially lower UMass Amherst, UMass Dartmouth, WIT


In the Bios it was Harvard with MIT coming on strong ---- then a huge gap to
BU, UMass Medical

Today: there have been many changes mostly due to the conversion of traditional commuter schools to residential schools with "imported students" and the ability of the schools to become much more selective

in Physics, Chem, Bio --- MIT and Harvard are clearly at the top with no-one in sight

However the 2nd tier is nearly a multiway tie of the rest of the heavy weights

In Engineering -- it is MIT followed way down -- by nearly an all-way tie of the rest with FW Olen surging into contention in Engineering and WIT making strides to become the NU of 1990 by 2020

Anyone not in the above discourse needs a niche to have a chance to even exist in 30 years

Niches already are filled by:
Simmons -- Information Science
Berkley College of Music
Emerson
some of the other Fenway area schools

not sure about Suffolk
 
Whiglander: Harvard and MIT are a separate world. I am referring to schools for us mere mortals. As I posted earlier, Suffolk should form a niche for out of state students who desperately want to go to college in Boston but lack the stats for NU, BU, BC etc.

Northeastern's rise in the past 20 years is truly amazing. BU on the other hand was stagnant for decades under Silber (in the latter half of his reign) and had a leadership crisis due to a botched presidential search. BU president Brown has finally got the school moving in the past few years. The size of their freshman class and the existence of CGS is suppressing the stats of entering students though.
 
I think of Suffolk as primarily a law school, with a small undergraduate college attached. Is this an accurate perception?
 
UMASS Amherst in ranked 20th in the nation in computer science, MIT tied 1, Harvard 17, Brown 18 according to US News for CS grad programs. BC and Tufts have strong engineering grads but IMHO BU and NU are not as strong. NU is rising but my firm does not hire many CS grads from there or BU but we have lots from MIT, Tufts, BC, and UMASS Am an Low and we interview grads from all.
 
tocoto said:
UMASS Amherst in ranked 20th in the nation in computer science, MIT tied 1, Harvard 17, Brown 18 according to US News for CS grad programs. BC and Tufts have strong engineering grads but IMHO BU and NU are not as strong. NU is rising but my firm does not hire many CS grads from there or BU but we have lots from MIT, Tufts, BC, and UMASS Am an Low and we interview grads from all.
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Tocto -- not sure what kind of stuff your company does -- but NSF Centers don't usually go to run-of-the-mill colleges and Northeastern has Two

The Bernard M. Gordon Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems (Gordon-CenSSIS) along with BU and RPI

Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing (CHN) along with UMass Lowell and UNH

The Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing (CHN) is a research center focused on nanomanufacturing processes and and designing sensors and other products using these processes. Headquartered at Northeastern University in Boston, we create and translate knowledge so that nanotechnology can better meet global and societal needs.

Our research and development work falls into four broad categories: (1) Nanotechnology products and applications, (2) Nanomanufacturing processes, and (3) Environmental health & safety of nanomanufacturing and nano-products, and (4) Regulatory, legal and ethical issues related to nanomanufacturing.

Nanomanufacturing is making products at the nano-scale (one-billionth of a meter). CHN was an early leader in the global nanomanufacturing community. In the past decade, government agencies, multinational corporations, academic researchers and individual entrepreneurs have used the center’s scientific facilities and its experts, patents and intellectual property. Our research labs house over $6 million of advanced equipment, and each year the CHN hosts visitors from around the world.

CHN discoveries at Northeastern have led to dozens of patents for products and processes. Some patents will be licensed to multinational corporations, while other ideas have been commercialized by new entrepreneurial spin-off businesses. CHN activities have been funded by the US National Science Foundation ($24 million over 10 years), the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative ($2 million over 5 years), and the private sector (over $20 million since 2004).

Education is also part of the center’s mission. Programs provide information to a range of audiences, from teenagers who may seek employment in this sector to leading business executives who are seeking information on the most recent developments.

Northeastern University was the lead partner in the establishment of the NSF Center for High-rate Nanotechnology (CHN). The University of Massachusetts-Lowell and the University of New Hampshire in Durham are key partners, along with other collaborators at the Museum of Science, Michigan State University, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, and private sector firms.
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The Bernard M. Gordon Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems (Gordon-CenSSIS) is a multi-university NSF ERC founded in 2000. Its mission is to revolutionize the existing technology for detecting and imaging biomedical, environmental, or geophysical objects or conditions that lie underground or underwater, or are embedded in the human body. The Center's unified, multidisciplinary approach combines expertise in wave physics (photonics, ultrasonic, electromagnetic,...), sensor engineering, image processing, and inverse scattering to create new sensing modalities and prototypes that may be transitioned to industry partners for further development. A key element of the CenSSIS education mission is to immerse students in efforts to solve important real-world problems such as noninvasive breast cancer detection or underground pollution assessment.

The Center's academic partners are Northeastern University (NU-lead), Boston University (BU), Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and the University of Puerto-Rico at Mayaguez (UPRM). Strategic affiliates include Massachusetts General Hospital, Lawrence Livermore and Idaho National Laboratories, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Industrial partners include Raytheon, Analogic, Textron, Lockheed Martin, Cardiomag Imaging, Mercury, Transtech, GSSI, and Siemens; and other partners include AFOSR, NCPA (National Center for Physical Acoustics), and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

The Center is directed by Michael Silevitch (NU), and David Castanon (BU) is the Deputy Director. The annual budget is approximately $4M from NSF and $3-4M from cost sharing and other sources. There are over 40 faculty members and 200 students affiliated with CenSSIS.
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ToB - I was talking about the ranking for CS grad programs and talking about CS majors and to a lesser extent EEs.

Whigh - My comments are IMHO and experience. Each university in this discussion has special programs, and some of those, such as the NSF funded centers you mention, may develop great grads. I was focused on CS and EE. On a general level, in my experience, UMASS Amherst and UMASS Lowell graduate some great engineers and scientists.
 
Whigh - My comments are IMHO and experience. Each university in this discussion has special programs, and some of those, such as the NSF funded centers you mention, may develop great grads. I was focused on CS and EE. On a general level, in my experience, UMASS Amherst and UMASS Lowell graduate some great engineers and scientists.
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I work with many UMass CS folks (quite a few from Darmouth) and I agree - they are mostly very bright.
 
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Slowly but surely coming along
 
Ha. I can also see your window from my window.
By the way, they are linking the caissons with horizontal rebar cages today.
 
Crane base installed.

If a crane is going up, and nobody gives a crap about the building, does it matter?
 
Beh. This building is architectural drivel. The old MDC building was nice and preserved what remained of the classic charm of the area. This hideous new pastiche pushes the area further in the direction of the McCormack / RoboCop City.
 
File under "whatever".
Rebar for the slab is going down today. Look for the slab to be poured in the next couple of days.
 
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