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Northwestern University

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Northwestern University reviews

4.0

75% would recommend to a friend

(4,083 total reviews)
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Michael Schill

56% approve of CEO

53% positive business outlook

Northwestern University has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 4,083 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Northwestern University employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Education industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

4K reviews
3.0
May 4, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Benefits and time off are pretty good.

Cons

Salary is below most other universities.

3.0
May 2, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- NU offers a nice retirement match, and the benefits (not pay) are competitive. - The campus is nice.

Cons

- The benefits are nice but the pay is really not competitive at all, and there is no salary transparency either. - The culture of your office really depends on who is the head. I had a good relationship with my Director of Operations and Center Director which translated throughout the office, but I have heard countless horror stories of horrible and psychologically abusive faculty to work with, especially in the Materials Science & Engineering department. - At the end of the day, you are staff and are treated as such. If you have toxic faculty members to work with, you are stuck, and HR will do nothing to help you because you are staff and replaceable.

4.0
May 2, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great benefits, flexible hours, winter recess time off, automatic retirement contribution from the employer and fully vested after only 1 year of employment, personal work environment heavily depends on if you're working for a particular lab or as part of a core facility

Cons

Federal funding has hampered Northwestern's cash-flow, one of the first things they cut was the pool for merit based raises, and healthcare coverage is significantly more costly since they switched to UHC as another cost saving measure

Viewing 37 - 39 of 4,083 Reviews

Glassdoor has 4,466 Northwestern University reviews submitted anonymously by Northwestern University employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Northwestern University is right for you.