Northwestern MS in AI vs. JHU MSE in CS

[NLP2021]

I'll be starting my master's this upcoming Fall and having a hard time deciding which school to attend. Here are some information about two schools that I'm considering.

	Northwestern	Johns Hopkins
Program	Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence	Master of Science in Engineering in Computer Science
Location	Evanston, IL	Baltimore, MD
Cost of living	Evanston/Chicago's cost of living is little higher
Academic system	Quarter (Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer)	Semester (Fall, Spring, Summer)
Tuition	Similar tuition rate
Funding	No funding available from the department. However, I can look for TA positions in lower-level courses.
Duration	5 quarters (Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall)	3 semesters (Fall, Spring, Fall)
AI/NLP faculty	Big names. Ex. Ken Forbus, Kristian Hammond There is no NLP-specific lab	Quite a lot of NLP papers published and two NLP-specific labs
Curriculum	All AI-related courses. No algorithms, theory, systems and software courses, which I think is both pro & con.	can & must take most CS courses (Theory, Applications, Systems, Software, and Reasoning)
Thesis	MSAI is more of industry focused program rather than academia. So an emphasis on thesis seems very weak. But I guess it's up to me to contact a professor to conduct a research and write a thesis. No restriction on this by the program.	Graduation requirements include: 2 additional (graduate-level) courses in Computer Science, approved by their CS advisor. An original, faculty-approved master’s essay, submitted to the Milton S. Eisenhower Library. A faculty-supervised research project including an approved project report that will be made publicly available.  For students enrolled in the PhD program, a PhD qualifying project may be used to meet this requirement. A student must fulfill one of these requirements and I think I can use #2 or #3 to write a thesis.
Class size	40 students per cohort	Not sure about the exact cohort size, but expecting the size to be larger than NW's
Things to consider as I'm planning to pursue Ph.D. in the future	MSAI's program overview is somewhat clear that the program prepares its students to become a part of the industry rather than of academia. However, as I mentioned earlier, I'm planning to get my Ph.D. later on. So, I'm wondering if the program's purpose might hinder my plan for any reason.	Because this is a Master's in CS, I will be taking most of general CS courses. However, I wish to focus on AI rather than taking general CS courses. On the other hand, when applying for Ph.D. I think having those CS background will be beneficial.

Based on the information above, Is there anyone who can provide any thoughts on my concern? Thanks a lot in advance!

Edited March 25, 2021 by NLP2021