<p>^^ i was speaking about football, division I-AA</p>
<p>dartmouth: 65th</p>
<p>To me, the school that most resembles Dartmouth is Williams. Princeton and Brown also have some similarities, but not to the same extent.</p>
<p>Hawkette, I respect W&L a great deal, but I agree with Slipper that there isn't much of a comparison between W&L and Dartmouth. Yes, both are some and LACish. Yes, both are rural and have a large Greek system. Yes, both have very talented and spirited student bodies. But at the end of the day, they have a lot of differences. I'd say W&L has more in common with Wake Forest, Davidson and W&M than it does with Dartmouth.</p>
<p>You can go overboard with the Duke comparisons, too. Let's not forget that Duke has athletic scholarships. No coach at Dartmouth has the kind of power Duke's Coach K has.</p>
<p>Both Dartmouth and Duke are top academic schools, relatively pre-professional, have a large active frat scene, lots of school spirit, have a largely on-campus social scene, very similar student bodies in terms of academic strength.</p>
<p>Dartmouth is much closer to Duke than it is to Brown or Middlebury. </p>
<p>I guess one having a top basketball team and athletic scholarships is a key difference. But Coach K has no effect on academics, and doesn't influence the social scene either. Anyways, I'm interested to hear what kind of power Coach K has outside of the athletics program?</p>
<p>Average SATs, WSJ Feeder rank (pre-professionalism), % in top 10% HS class, # National Merit Scholars/Class Size
Dartmouth: 1350 - 1550, 6th, 90%, 70/1000
Duke: 1380 - 1550, 7th, 87%, 120/1600
Middlebury: 1270 - 1480, 23rd, 80%, 6/600</p>
<p>In selectivity, Middlebury is pretty far behind both Dartmouth and Duke.</p>
<p>% of Male students in frats:
Dartmouth: 37%
Duke: 30%
Middlebury: 0% </p>
<p>There we go. Maybe Middlebury has off-campus frats?</p>
<p>Either way, academically and socially, Duke and Dartmouth are closer.</p>
<p>Alexandre,
I agree with your comparisons as W&L is more similar to Davidson than to Dartmouth though all three have many similarities, most prominently in the quality of the students that attend and graduate and work in the workforce. </p>
<p>Re Duke and Dartmouth, over the last decade Dartmouth has become more like Brown than like Duke. IMO Duke provides a broader and better social scene than either and the athletic scence at Duke dwarfs that of any school in the Ivy League. Some will see this as a negative and some as a positive. Academically, all three are terrific schools and have superb placement abilities for postgraduate work and education.</p>
<p>We've had these threads before. And there's no final answer to them. They basically boil down to whether or not you see academcis and athletics as zero-sum solutions. Some will argue that the athletics program at Duke pays for itself. Others will argue that athletes at Duke and other big time sports schools, exist in their own bubble, and are therefore separate from the rest of the student body and that, perhaps in itself, has an impact on academics. Maybe, at a university Duke's size, no one notices or thinks it's a big deal. But, I think it would be noticed at a smaller college. Which brings up the other difference between Dartmouth and Duke. Dartmouth, on some level, still thinks of itself as a small college. Duke doesn't.</p>
<p>Excellent point, johnwesley.
Duke has a signature sport, basketball (whose players, by the way, bear little resemblance to other Duke students), and otherwise is regularly pounded in the ACC. Tiresome being a doormat in sport after sport. Steve Spurrier led them to an ACC football championship, which the Duke alums I know regard with greater awe than the basketball record.
Dartmouth is a small school that excels in selective small sports- NCAA skiing championship this year, women's hockey (the two top scorers on Canada's Gold Medal Olympics team), women's LAX final four.
Otherwise I agree that they tend to be similar schools with similar students, although Dartmouth, due to size or isolation, tends to have a slightly tighter knit student body and stronger alumni identification.</p>
<p>Duke's men/women's golf and lacrosse are good, right? The football team game is pretty good too...only one way to go, and thats up (i'm kidding, Duke won one game in the last two years). </p>
<p>What are the respective alumni giving rates of Duke and Dartmouth to verify the "stronger alumni identification" of Dartmouth? Is there a significant difference.</p>
<p>Like most aspects, I'd think Duke and Dartmouth have similar alumni network strength.</p>
<p>Hmmm,
Can't locate my 2007USN&WR. The 2006 one says Dartmouth's alumni giving rate is 49% to Duke's 45%. A difference. Not huge.
Two fine schools.</p>
<p>For 2007, Duke was at 44% (5th nationally) while Dartmouth was 50% (2nd).</p>
<p>Athletically, however, these two schools are not remotely close. For 2006-07 Directors Cup, Duke was 11th and Dartmouth was 124th.</p>
<p>I don't think Duke was a doormat in the ACC in anything except for football.</p>
<p>The Director's cup is a foolish metric if what you care about is what counts to students, other than friends and family of participants.</p>
<p>danas,
The Directors Cup is a useful metric for comparing the athletic achievement of a college across their entire athletic department and usually is indicative of the prominence that sports plays at that college. If your point is that students care mostly about football and basketball (and sometimes a more localized sport like baseball or hockey or lacrosse or tennis or volleyball or women's basketball or whatever), then I agree. Football and basketball pay the bills and atract the alumni dollars. But please don't diminish the Directors Cup so completely as it is a pretty impressive accomplishment if a school does well in this. Schools like Stanford (and Duke and many of the top publics) take it pretty seriously and care about the results. And as for the more minor sports, I can tell you that the folks at UCLA are pretty proud of the fact that their school has won 100 national championships and they don't care if a lot of them came in swimming and water polo and not all in basketball. It just shows a commitment to excellence among the student-athletes that attend the university.</p>
<p>People don't care about badmiton as much as football, attendance shows this. That's why the directors cup isn't a useful metric.</p>
<p>People care about 'money' sports, people care about the events they go to. I would love to go to a school with a sweet water polo team. However, the school is more athletically inclined, and will have more of a 'sporty' feel, if they are good at those football style sports.</p>
<p>I mean, we ARE comparing Duke and Dartmouth...not Duke and Florida.</p>
<p>Well, it sounds to me like, if you were to take a snapshot of the two schools (Duke and Dartmouth) at just this moment in time, you would find more things in common between them than at any moment in their histories. But, again, as with any two moving targets, it depends on which way the momentum is going; is Duke happy with <em>just</em> being a basketball powerhouse? Will Dartmouth continue increasing the number arts students it enrolls? I mean, it's hard to predict where they'll be in five years.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Average SATs, WSJ Feeder rank (pre-professionalism), % in top 10% HS class, # National Merit Scholars/Class Size
Dartmouth: 1350 - 1550, 6th, 90%, 70/1000
Duke: 1380 - 1550, 7th, 87%, 120/1600
Middlebury: 1270 - 1480, 23rd, 80%, 6/600</p>
<p>In selectivity, Middlebury is pretty far behind both Dartmouth and Duke.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>thethoughtprocess, you're mixing and matching stats from different years to make your point seem stronger. Middlebury's % in top 10% is 84--very close to Duke's 87%. In addition, SATs are optional at Middlebury, and the numbers you're using are for all students, regardless of whether the scores were used in admissions.</p>
<p>Our experience with Dartmouth suggests that no it isn't going to be as interested in increasing its arts students. Dartmouth S's only rejection at schools of that caliber and selectivity. The chair of the music department told us he has little or no say in admissions decisions. Not of the oTher chairs communicated this to us.</p>
<p>i think thoughtprocess has collegeboard.com as a bookmark, he spits out sat ranges like one drinks water and eats food.</p>