Beanpot schools battle off the ice
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The annual Beanpot Tournament pits four of the Boston’s largest universities against each other in a quest for local hockey supremacy.
Boston College’s hockey team is ranked second nationally, and with six Beanpot victories in the last seven years. It appears poised to take the title back to Chestnut Hill, but the competition is steep and underdogs often prevail in the tournament, so that beanpot-shaped trophy could go to anyone. That’s a story for our sportswriters.
We want to find out how the schools stack up off the ice. Here are our choices for Beanpot winners, based on how Harvard University, Northeastern University, Boston University, and Boston College fare in college rankings.
<script type=”text/javascript” charset=”utf-8″ src=”http://static.polldaddy.com/p/7770347.js”></script> <noscript><a href=”http://polldaddy.com/poll/7770347/”>Which Beanpot school is your favorite?</a></noscript>
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Overall smarts
Lumosity ranked colleges by the innate cognitive abilities—as tested by the company’s “brain games’’—of their students. Here’s how the Beanpot schools fared.
Harvard: 8th
BU: 28th
BC: 19th
Northeastern: Did not make the top 50 list
Winner: Harvard
This one’s not a surprise. The Ivy League school took the smartest category. -
Academic excellence
One of the most well-known rankings of schools is done by US News and World Report each year. Its National University Rankings help pair aspiring students with their dream schools, ranking them on overall and program excellence. In 2014, all four of the Beanpot schools cracked the top 50 list.
Northeastern: 49th
8th International Business; 42nd High School Counselor Rankings; 3rd Up-and-Coming Schools; 61st Best Business Schools (Graduate); 57th Best Engineering Schools (Grad); 86th Best Law Schools (Grad) 12th Criminology (Grad)BC: 31st
29th High School Counselor Rankings; 36th Best Value Schools; 40th Best Business Schools (Grad); 31st Best Law Schools (Grad); 19th Best Education Schools (Grad); 21st Nursing (Grad); 10th Social Work (Grad)Harvard: 2nd
1st High School Counselor Rankings; 1st Best Value School; 1st Best Business Schools (Grad); 3rd Best Education Schools (Grad); 2nd Best Law Schools (Grad); 1st Best Medical Schools: Research (Grad); 1st Economics (Grad,) Physics (Grad)BU: 41st
36th High School Counselor Rankings; 14th Up-and-Coming Schools; 40th Best Business Schools (Grad); 51st Best Education Schools (Grad); 38th Best Engineering Schools (Grad); 29th Best Law Schools (Grad)Winner: Harvard
Harvard is one of the top universities in the world. While the three other Beanpot universities are well-regarded schools, it’s really no contest. -
Sticker shock
It’s no secret that college tuitions are on the rise, especially at private institutions (like all of our competitors.) We compared their estimated costs of a four-year education.
Harvard: $169,168
BU: $179,640
Northeastern: $166,744
BC: $182,488
Winner: Northeasten
Cheaper is better. -
Bang for your buck
Another way to think about ranking colleges financially is whether their average net price, which factors in scholarships and grants. The US Department of Education released its college “score card’’ in an attempt to gauge the affordability and value of American higher education institutions.
Here are the Beanpot competitors’ average net price per year.
BC: $23,742
BU: $29,899
Northeastern: $32,493
Harvard: $18,277
Winner: Harvard
Harvard has cheapest net price of any Boston-area private institution. That plus its low median student borrowing per month and loan default rate make it our winner. -
Luxury accomodations
Boston-area schools offer housing options most apartment-seekers would love.
BU: Ever drive by Allston on Interstate 90 and see those high-rise apartments on BU’s campus? Those residences, called Student Villages 1 and 2, feature air conditioning, laundry facilities, bicycle storage, multipurpose rooms, music rooms, and 24-hour security–all for $7,595 per semester for a single.
Northeastern: West Village H is the most desired housing on campus and houses students who are at least 21 years old for $6,425 per semester.
BC: The apartments and townhomes in Gabelli and Voute halls offer private bathrooms, living rooms, and full kitchens. Students pay between $5,110 and $5,355 a semester for the two-bedroom, four-person accomodations.
Harvard: The most expensive and private of our noted residence options, Harvard’s 59 Banks St. offers one apartment of graduate housing in a wood-framed single family home for $3,468 a month.
Winner: BU
While not the priciest option, the location and city views of Student villages 1 and 2 top our list of fancy campus housing. -
Green living
We’ve reported on three of the four schools’ eco-friendly initiatives.
BU: The University installed a green roof on top of the Center for Student Services. BU will create a bed of vegetation on the roof to minimize the University’s carbon footprint.
Harvard: Harvard employees who ride their bikes to work are given tax-free reimbursements for bike expenses.
Northeastern: A team of Northeastern engineering students, along with their mechanical and industrial engineering professor Mohammad Taslim, invented a solar food dryer as a cheap alternative for preserving food. Another team created a solar-powered desalination system that produces drinkable ocean water.
Winner: Northeastern
Northeastern was ranked the greenest university in America in 2011 and the second greenest in the world that same year by the GreenMetric Ranking of World Universities. -
Newsmakers
Last year was a big year at Boston-area colleges–both in good ways and bad. We noted some of the top higher education stories of 2013 in early January, and three of the Beanpot schools made the list.
Harvard: Harvard was in the headlines many times that year, from a bomb scare in December to a cheating scandal to a massive expansion plan.
BC: The school’s threat to discline students handing out condoms on campus received national coverage.
BU: One of the three victims of the Boston Marathon bombings was a BU student.
Winner: Tie
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