Northeastern’s global expansion efforts add more campuses, unexpected challenges NU Around the Globe Northeastern acceptance rate drops to 5.6% after record number of applications

By Emily Spatz | Deputy Campus Editor

Skyrocketing application rates to Northeastern — which have risen almost 50% in four years — resulted in a record number of undergraduate applications to the university for fall 2023.

students to pursue a Northeastern education.”

By Marta Hill | Editor-at-Large

While some students are returning to Boston for another year of their Northeastern education, others are flocking to Northeastern campuses across the country and world to start their school years. Undergraduate and graduate students call more than 13 campuses and partner institutions home every year.

The school’s official satellite campuses include Arlington, Virginia; Boston; Burlington, Massachusetts; Charlotte, North Carolina; Miami; Nahant, Massachusetts; Oakland, California; Portland, Maine; Silicon Valley and Seattle in the United States, as well as London, Toronto and Vancouver abroad.

Northeastern is not alone in its quest for global expansion — colleges started pursuing this type of expansion about 25 years ago, according to Terry Hartle, senior fellow at the American Council on Education.

“When globalization first became the rage, we saw a number of schools actually build physical campuses,” Hartle said. “As Tom Friedman’s book, ‘The World is

Flat’ became so visible, people were thinking, ‘Well, you know, this is one way to help further connect the globe, is to connect educational opportunities.’ And so we saw schools doing that.”

Of the approximately 4,500 colleges and universities in the United States, 1,000 of them are community colleges that are not interested in global expansion, and another 1,000 are private liberal arts colleges just trying to hang on, Hartle said.

“You do have a number of institutions that have the visibility and the financial resources and the desire to expand their footprint,” said Hartle, who has an honorary doctor of laws degree from Northeastern. “You see them establishing campuses or finding other ways to deliver educational opportunities to students. And Northeastern is clearly among them.”

Northeastern’s expansion, while gradual, has become more vigorous in the last 10 years. Boston is the university’s flagship location, and began offering classes in 1898.

In Nahant, the Marine Science Center has been in operation for at least 50 years. The school’s first true satellite — in Charlotte — launched in 2011, followed by the Seattle campus in 2012. The remaining 10 locations have been announced over time since 2015.

Northeastern isn’t the only school expanding at an increasing rate — the Arizona State University and Northeastern are the leaders in the “effort to advance their educational footprint[s],” Hartle said.

“Arizona now has over 100,000 students online and in Tempe,” Hartle said. “Both Northeastern and Arizona are very exciting institutions to watch because of the ways in which they are trying to expand their ability to deliver high-quality education.”

Since the ’80s and ’90s, Northeastern has undergone an extraordinary evolution, transforming from a second-tier commuter school into one of the most selective institutions in the country, Hartle said. This change can be attributed, at least in part, to the co-op program, according to Hartle.

Northeastern accepted 5.6% of applicants from a record-breaking 96,327 applications for the incoming freshman class, down from 6.7% in 2022, according to a Northeastern spokesperson.

Northeastern officials attributed the appeal of the university to a global, research-centered education. The school has expanded to include a network of 13 campuses in recent years and offers “professional experience in 146 countries and on every continent,” according to a Northeastern Global News article. In February 2023, the university announced it would begin accepting students to the Oakland and London campuses for all four years in addition to long-standing alternative admissions programs such as N.U.in and Global Scholars.

“The global university system has absolutely enhanced the university’s brand. The opportunity to study, research and participate in co-op and other experiential learning programs remains very attractive to families,” a university spokesperson told The News in an email. “We are excited to have multiple entry points for

Aarushi Gupta, an incoming first-year student pursuing a computer science and biology combined degree, didn’t apply to any alternative programs but was accepted into the Oakland Global Scholars program — something she cited as both a pro and a con.

“I think my biggest con [of going to Northeastern] was that the first year will be in Oakland,” Gupta said. “I wasn’t expecting to have to move to both opposite ends of the country, but the more I think about it, the more excited I am to get a chance to live in both the Bay Area and Boston.”

Gupta applied to the university for its renowned co-op program, something many prospective students are drawn to, and said for her, it was a large factor in favor of attending. She was enticed by the opportunities and resources the university offers, as well as its study abroad and experiential entrepreneurship programs.

John Kuropatkin Jr., an incoming political science and economics combined major, will be spending his first year abroad at the London campus. Like Gupta, he didn’t apply to an alternative program and said he felt like he was given an “ultimatum” on whether to attend.

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