<p>I appreciate all the feedback about sports life and greek life. I like sports, but I’m not an athlete and wouldn’t want to feel socially second-tier because of it. I would probably rush but I’m not the type of person who would want to breathe every breath for their sorority, so that might not work out.</p>
<p>If you’ve visited both schools, then you have more first-hand experience of both schools than the vast majority of posters. The two are so different, and located so far apart, that there couldn’t be too many people here who have visited both.</p>
<p>What are the most important common characteristics that these two schools share, making them your two top choices? If you could explain that, it might help clarify your priorities.</p>
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<p>[Graduate</a> Schools](<a href=“http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/outcomes/grad-schools.php]Graduate”>http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/outcomes/grad-schools.php)</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, here’s a link to one of the few studies cited on CC comparing professional school admission outcomes. Be aware, it’s a little dated (and often criticized for how it was done.)</p>
<p>[IPCN</a> Library](<a href=“http://inpathways.net/ipcnlibrary/ViewBiblio.aspx?aid=1577]IPCN”>http://inpathways.net/ipcnlibrary/ViewBiblio.aspx?aid=1577)
Duke was #6. But Claremont McKenna was a respectable #22, ahead of Cornell, Caltech, Michigan, UVa, Berkeley, etc. I’m unaware of any subsequent, more reliable study that came to very different conclusions. Maybe RML has seen one?</p>
<p>CMC is a great choice (although I’d choose Pomona over it any day). Your odds of admission would probably be better there as well.</p>
<p>Here is my dilemma. I would be happy to go to either school, but CMC would be much easier for me to get in. My test scores are at 75th percentile and the average for Duke, I’ve taken hard classes at a hard school, but my GPA is slightly lower than I would like (mostly due to fresh/soph grades). Anyways, I feel that even ED Duke probably won’t happen for me. Everybody tells you that you can find success no matter what school you go to…but these numbers are really worrisome. I do like CMC’s approach: practical learning, but feel that if they emphasize their pre-proffessionalism so much more kids should be going to top B-Schools.</p>
<p>Location wise, CMC is much more accessible so it would be easier for me to get home, but I’m don’t like L.A, and I kind of want to explore another part of the country.</p>
<p>Thank you guys so much for the data and opinions! I know that ultimately this decision is up to me, but it helps to be more informed.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about CMC not being well-known. It is well known by the people who count - admissions officers for MBA programs. They will not turn up their nose at a degree from CMC. </p>
<p>Duke is well known on the street because people think of it as a basketball program with a university attached, which is unfair, as it’s a great school. The street would be shocked to know that it’s as good a school as it is.</p>
<p>FWIW, most schools don’t show you the social scene. There’s a reason they tend to allow overnights only Sun-Thurs. - parents would not be happy with some of the activity, particularly with HS juniors and seniors. For a more honest assessment of the social scene at any college, take a look at Princeton Review or Fiske.</p>
<p>“Duke is well known on the street because people think of it as a basketball program with a university attached, which is unfair, as it’s a great school. The street would be shocked to know that it’s as good a school as it is.”</p>
<p>Again, not true. I want you to stop throwing around false perceptions. It’s bordering insulting. People on the street are very well-informed about Duke’s academic prowess much more so than it’s athletic prowess. When wall street firms choose Duke as a target school, the athletic success will always come secondary to the academic success of students when it comes to recruiting.</p>
<p>Your average ESPN or Final Four viewer does not realize Duke is a great school. Try getting out of your Duke bubble and asking a few what they know the school for. Of course Wall Street firms know Duke for it’s academic prowess, that’s why they hire the graduates. They also hire CMC grads because they know the school. </p>
<p>The average ESPN or Final Four viewer does not know CMC even exists. Ask your average American "What are the top five colleges in America? and they will likely answer “Alabama, Oregon, Florida State, Ohio State, and Baylor”.</p>
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<p>TK, </p>
<p>The link you provided says, “In the last four years”.
In the last 4 years CMC grads made acceptances to some top B-Schools. But who knows what exactly does it mean? Maybe 2 or 3 CMC grads made it to 3 top B-Schools over the span of 4 years. Or, maybe, there was only 1 CMC grad who got accepted to about 7 or 8 top B-Schools in the last 4 years. Who knows, the data were not explained.</p>
<p>The link I provided was a for the list of schools that sent grads to those top B-Schools in one particular year, as the author summed up the numbers for the freshmen students only. There you can see Duke has about 90 freshmen in those top B-Schools. CMC does not have even one freshman in those top B-School, or if it does, it was not reported by the author. </p>
<p>Going back to the OP’s concern, if he isn’t particular about the kind of B-School he’d be going after undergrad, then it doesn’t matter if goes to Duke or CMC. But if he does, then Duke would be a clear choice here.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice. OP is a she. And I want to go to Chicago. I’m a legacy there (not sure if that matters for B-school). Duke is probably better for B-school. But its also 4 years of my life. While Duke would give me more options…I could probably still succeed at CMC in terms of getting into a good B-school.</p>
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<p>Statistically, that is not quite correct. CMC had a lower admission rate than Duke until the last two years. Now, their admissions rates are similar. </p>
<p>Since your question is really about ED, just realize that your odds are BETTER at Duke in landing one of the ED spots as the school accepts a much larger percentage of its class via ED. Check schools as a Penn to understand how much of a class is culled from the ED ranks. </p>
<p>If I were you I would not pick an early candidate, except for one of the non restrictive EA schools. And you seemed to be impressed by Chicago. :)</p>
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<p>Fair enough. Without those numbers, we don’t know. But until we do, it’s a leap to suggest that CMC grads “rarely” get admitted to top B-schools. Keep in mind that CMC is far smaller than Duke. Even if only a handful of CMC alumni enter the set of target B-schools each year, their attendance rates would be comparable to a school like Berkeley’s (with ~20X as many undergrads). To be a very meaningful comparison, though, we’d have to know how many students at each school even applied.</p>
<p>tk21769, I would imagine most liberal arts graduates wouldn’t be interested in graduate vocational programs to begin with.</p>
<p>Jwest22, the OP expressed that she wants to get onto a grad business program someday. I think it is also important that she considers it as one of her major criteria in choosing a school to attend for undergrad especially that the top MBA programs are known to be snobbish. If she attends an undergrad school that very rarely sends grads to top MBA programs, she might be jeopardizing her plans of getting into a top MBA program. </p>
<p>I am inclined to believe that the top MBA programs have a few selected schools they consider “favorites”, and I strongly think that Duke is one of them. </p>
<p>Therefore, if the OP envisions herself working on her MBA at Harvard or Stanford or Wharton and such schools, she will be doing herself a favor if she will attend in one of those “favorite” feeder schools. Now, if she doesn’t care about attending a prestigious grad B-School, either school will serve her well. </p>
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Maybe. But the OP expressed her interests in going to grad B-School someday. (She just didn’t say whether she wanted to go to a school like HBS.) So, I think she should factor that in in making her decisions. And, BTW, Williams has 24 grads at 6 of the top 14 B-Schools. I’d imagine that # would double when the data from the other top programs are tallied in.</p>
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<p>TK, we already have data from HBS, Stanford GSB, Wharton, Chicago, Tuck and Columbia. Duke has 95 freshmen students there. And, whilst Williams has 24, CMC has none. So, I wonder what data do you wish to have to be able to say that Duke is clearly the more favorite undergrad school between the two.</p>
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<p>That’s “none” according to your social media source, apparently.
But unless we think the CMC site is lying, we know that at least 9 CMC graduates have entered top B-School programs in the cited 4 year period (including at least 5 of the 6 schools you listed). That’s assuming 1 and only 1 CMC graduate entered each of those schools in that period (unlikely, I think). </p>
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<p>I would want to see acceptance statistics for the two schools (the number of acceptances divided by the number of applications), and ideally some data about the mean GPAs and scores for each applicant pool, before concluding that either school “brand” per se had a significant influence on the application outcomes.</p>
<p>Here, evidently, is the source of RML’s numbers:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/business-school-mba/1224650-top-feeder-colleges-americas-elite-b-schools-5.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/business-school-mba/1224650-top-feeder-colleges-americas-elite-b-schools-5.html</a>
(post #64)</p>
<p>Notice that in addition to CMC, none of the following schools appear on the list of B-School “feeders”, either:</p>
<p>Pomona
Swarthmore
Carleton
Harvey Mudd
Oberlin
Wesleyan
Colgate</p>
<p>What is the most likely explanation?
- Williams (with 24 top B-School enrollments) and Middlebury (with 11) have far more brand cachet than any of these other selective LACs, OR
- The list is not comprehensive. It is missing many schools.</p>
<p>Note, too, that Williams has 24 to Amherst’s 6. Assuming the figures are correct, and without worrying about school size differences, do we really believe that the Williams brand (or something about its instructional program) gives it that much more influence than Amherst in placing graduates into MBA programs? A more plausible explanation: the different numbers for such similar schools reflect, more than anything else, different choices by the students themselves.</p>
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<p>Actually the graduate school criteria is one of the dumbest a student could use when choosing undergraduate schools. And especially after paying attention to the silly statistics debated in this thread. </p>
<p>While it is a given that gifted and well-prepared students attended highly selective undergraduate schools, such attendance is hardly a sine qua non condition. The leading business schools are full of students who graduated from lesser known schools, including plenty of lesser foreign universities. </p>
<p>The admissions are based on plenty of criteria and they are based on the individual. Tests scores, work history, essays, future promise, and other attributes easily trump the name of the UG. </p>
<p>And again, considering how students change majors and career choices, it is more important to pick schools based on the potential experience at the UG level, and not some elusive graduate school possibility.</p>