US Top 50 · Evanston, Illinois · Extreme Reach

Northwestern University西北大学

US News 2026 #7 (US News 2026 National Universities)

“Quaecumque sunt vera”

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At a glance

Northwestern University is a Extreme Reach school on our readiness map — that label describes how demanding the preparation is for international-school applicants, not an admission probability.

Based in Evanston, Illinois (US Top 50, US News 2026 #7 per US News 2026 National Universities), it reviews both AP and A-Level curricula, so the question is not which system you study but how strong your core-subject evidence is.

The benchmarks and admit-case chart below come from anonymized application records of Chinese international-school students, aggregated with percentile ranges to protect every individual case.

Case benchmarks (anonymized aggregate)

Median GPA3.92P25-P75: 3.70 – 4.03

Median SAT1545P25-P75: 1360 – 1590

Median AP count6P25-P75: 4 – 11

Ranges use P25/P75 percentiles instead of extremes so a single outlier cannot skew the picture.

Anonymized admit cases

媒体与传播学 (Media and Communication Studies)AP

TOEFL 95-106 · AP 5-6 门

传播学 (Communication)AP

GPA 3.9+ · AP 5-6 门

新闻学 (Journalism)AP

GPA 3.6-3.79 · AP 5-6 门

Cases never include student names, school names, teachers, essay text or external application ids.