<p>Between Cornell and Duke, which is the more selective?
Which one would you prefer?
I've heard rumors of Durham being a "dangerous" city; is that necessarily true?</p>
<p>Cornell accepts about 12% in last news US News stats while Duke accepts about 19% with mid 50% SAT being almost identical so Cornell is probably a hair more difficult to get into.</p>
<p>Durham isn’t dangerous unless you do some stupid things. There are a few older less safe areas of the city, but it’s not the wrong side of Chicago or NYC or Atlanta or Houston The campus is as safe as any University campus ever will be and most of the issues are almost assuredly internal. </p>
<p>Given the choice I’d probably choose Cornell just because it’s unique to me – I’ve been on the Duke campus and Hospital system enough that it’s not special anymore. </p>
<p>If you want to close to the Beach, avoid most of the Winter White, you love the Durham Bulls, or want more big time college sports then obviously the coin flip changes. Having UNC, Wake, and NCST within earshot leads to some fun trash talk (sometimes more good natured than others).</p>
<p>If you are looking more for Medical/Biological Sciences then Duke wins. Engineering and many of the Advanced Hard Science areas I think Cornell wins.</p>
<p>^^ No, Cornell accepted 19% in the latest US News Rankings.</p>
<p>Last year, Duke accepted 16%. Cornell accepted 18%. I’d say that they’re almost identical in terms of selectivity.</p>
<p>Please refer to phuriku’s post, as it has the correct acceptance rates for last year. I’d also agree with phuriku that their selectivity is very comparable; although the acceptance rate varies by 2 or 3 percentage points, it’s not like comparing Harvard to Duke. That being said, you may get into one but not the other for reasons that the world will never know. o_O</p>
<p>The acceptance rate in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences was 15.7% this year.</p>
<p>The 25th and 75th SAT percentiles were 1300-1510 in Cornell’s Arts and Sciences.
Cornell Engineering was 1360-1520.
Duke’s middle 50% SATs were 1340-1530.</p>
<p>I would prefer Cornell.</p>
<p>Sorry guys, the page crossover in the book messed my old eyes up – 19% it is. I knew that in the past the rates had been pretty similar, but the red flag didn’t make me triple check the numbers.</p>
<p>
Overall, I believe Duke is more selective at this point, but some schools at Cornell are much more selective than Duke (which only has two schools).
Duke.
Any city can be dangerous. Durham may have some shady parts, but so do most other cities. That said, most Duke students spend their time on campus, so this shouldn’t be an issue. See this thread: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/duke-university/561460-hows-durham.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/duke-university/561460-hows-durham.html</a></p>
<p>I think they have an almost identical selectivty level. </p>
<p>I prefer Duke over Cornell despite that Cornell is an Ivy and has a stronger comsci program.</p>
<p>If you look at the Naviance data from my high school (competitive top public without strong ties to any particular institution) it seems pretty clear that Duke is the more selective school. Average GPA of acceptance is about .2 higher and average SAT is about 100 points higher (all 3 sections). Keep in mind that Duke makes…great allowances for athletes, something which our school tends to univerally lack.</p>
<p>Naviance does not distinguish among Cornell’s various colleges, which have different applicant pools, selectivity levels and fit profiles, it lumps them all together,.</p>
<p>^ That’s precisely true for most, if not all, large schools. </p>
<p>I suspect it’s slightly harder to get onto Cornell engineering than Duke engineering.</p>
<p>" ^ That’s precisely true for most, if not all, large schools."</p>
<p>Probably so, for Naviance. It is significant for Cornell because only 1/3 of its students are in its Arts & sciences college, and the rest are in various specialty colleges which, save for engineering, do not have matches at most of the places that university is being compared to. So for example I imagine the large majority of Duke students are studying in Arts & sciences, this is typically the case at the other schools. Students applying to same would be substantially more likely to be applying to the Arts & sciences college at Cornell than, say, its Hotel school. At a NY public school such as monstor344s, it is quite likely that a significant number of those applicants are to Cornell’s contract colleges. The clearest comparison would be if Arts & Sciences (and the other colleges) were listed separately.</p>
<p>My son’s guidance counsleor said they actually did used to track them separately, if I understood him right they stopped when they started using Naviance.</p>
<p>Cornell (Arts and Sciences and Engineering) and Duke are equally selective.</p>
<p>Duke is more selective, IMO. Around where I’m from (NJ) Cornell is viewed as the school to apply to if you want an easy way to say you go to an Ivy. Duke is more exotic-sounding (and therefore more respected) despite the fact that there is a huge NJ representation at Duke. </p>
<p>I really don’t think Duke is significantly stronger academically than Cornell, but it is more selective. The same goes with Brown vs Cornell… about similar quality student body but Brown is just much pickier. I think it’s more than just a matter of Cornell being bigger than said schools however.</p>
<p>schrizto, you are confusing fact with perception. To some, Cornell may seem less selective than Duke. But in reality, when comparing appple to apple, Cornell and Duke are equally selective. However, from your comment about Cornell’s size, it would seem that you are not comparing apple to apple. The only reason Cornell is so big is because it has large, non-traditional programs such as Agriculture (over 3,000 undergrads), Human Ecology (1,000 undergrads) and Hotel Management (1,000 undergrads). Cornell’s colleges of Arts and Science and Engineering combined have 7,000 undergrads and are as selective as Penn’s colleges of Arts and Sciences and Engineering or Duke.</p>
<p>Both these schools, for all practical purposes, are about equally selective. You cannot go by admit rate alone, because the applicant pools may not have the same rank and score profile (though in this case, they’d be pretty close). </p>
<p>Maybe Duke is a hair more selective overall, but they are so close that the applicant’s personal characteristics probably make an overriding difference in many cases. For example, an applicant from Tennessee might be relatively more competive at Cornell, but a similar applicant from Connecticut more competitve at Duke (assuming adcoms at both schools care about geographic diversity.) Extracurriculars also come into play; one school or the other may care more about a given EC in a given year.</p>
<p>@Alexandre: One could say that the perception of a school’s selectivity rather than the actual statistical selectivity is all that matters anyway. To many a potential employer or grad school adcom it’s going to be the perceived selectivity that is taken into account. Selectivity really isn’t only about which school has the students with the highest SATs, it’s about which one appears to be the most discriminating in who they choose to accept. In this case I don’t think the OP was asking about a strictly numerical breakdown of selectivity. </p>
<p>Penn, Duke, Brown etc. also seem to take into account more intangible factors such as interesting hooks more than Cornell does which is why they appear more selective despite similar academic profiles. This is likely a reason why top private schools became more prestigious than top public schools, because to be accepted at a top private school you are thought to have had both high numbers and a special something, while at a top public school high numbers alone are known to be able to do the job. So selectivity is more a matter of unpredictability than anything.</p>
<p>You haven’t even finished college – how would you know what’s “important to potential employers”? Potential employers don’t memorize college acceptance rates or avg SAT scores – they’ll think Cornell and Duke are both elite schools, and go from there. No employer is going to parse the difference as much as CC thinks – or if they do, it’s based on convenience (eg the company based in Charlotte will prefer to interview at Duke because it’s convenient and more students want to stay in that area).</p>
<p>“Penn, Duke, Brown etc. also seem to take into account more intangible factors such as interesting hooks more than Cornell does …”</p>
<p>??? Brown probably does, I’ll grant you that, they have, what, half the admissions rate. The Arts & sciences college at Cornell most certainly takes a holistic approach to admissions, this was front and center at their info session. I’m sure the Arts & Sciences colleges at these other schools do as well, but when they are all constrained by similar admissions rates it is hard to see where there would be a huge difference. As for the specialty colleges, fit with their particular missions is a large admissions factor outside of quantititative metrics.</p>
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<p>Don’t twist my words, I never said I knew what was “important to potential employers”. I said “To many a potential employer or grad school adcom it’s going to be the perceived selectivity that is taken into account.” That’s exactly what you go on to elaborate on, that employers don’t memorize and compare average SAT scores and admit rates, so you’re basically agreeing with me. </p>
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<p>Nor did I say Cornell did not have a holistic approach to admissions. I said that Brown, Penn and Duke tend to be more holistic in their evaluations than Cornell. As in it is easier to predict whether the kid who is smart and has good grades but otherwise has ECs fairly typical of Ivy League applicants would accepted to Cornell than Duke.</p>