<p>I keep hearing that Duke is really high for undergrad education. Almost ALL aspects of undergrad education.
But for grad school...its not as great? What do you guys think?</p>
<p>Duke is kind of safety school.
No one really actually has the thing for Duke except for basketball, at least from CA.
I dont even know how they are ranked in top 10 claiming they are imitation harvard.
I got into Duke and other ivys, but paying 40,000 per year to go to Duke for me isn’t that pleasing.</p>
<p>I chose berkeley regents over duke and others. I would prefer to attend an ivy school just because the area and everything if my only choice were between duke and ivys.</p>
<p>Sigh. Looks like someone’s March Madness didn’t go too well.</p>
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<p>This doesn’t make much sense. For graduate school, all that matters is the quality of the unit granting the degree, not the university as a whole. The reputation of a school’s graduate programs may be only loosely correlated with its reputation for undergrad experience. Many not-terribly-prestigious schools have stellar graduate programs in a few areas. Conversely, some very famous universities will nevertheless have departments whose graduate programs have a very poor reputation amongst their peers.</p>
<p>^ I agree with padastra with a few other thoughts. I’d venture to say that the quality of graduate education is actually more dependent on the PI whose lab you join. By the time you get to the most important part of your graduate education, the thesis research, your field of interest will have become so narrow that any so called “ranking” of the graduate school or department as a whole is pretty much irrelevant. The only thing that matters really is how well-known your mentor is in your chosen field. </p>
<p>Professional schools are another matter and Duke definitely has a superb medical school as well as well-known business and law schools.</p>
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<p>Right, in lab-based sciences this matters a lot. It’s a little different in the humanities and social sciences, but even there the quality and status of your advisor is a very important consideration.</p>
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Duke Business, Law, and Medical School are among the elite professional graduate programs.</p>
<p>Hmmm . . .I am not sure what you’ve heard but I think you may be confused.</p>
<p>In academia - when looking at doctoral programs, the strength of an individual department is considered most important, not the school overall. Departmental strength is often based on reputation - the quality of research and, in most cases, the quality of the tenured faculty. </p>
<p>For example, Duke’s political science program is ranked #9 in the country (tied with MIT), behind UC-San Diego (#8) but lightyears ahead of Johns Hopkins (#39) or Brown (#46). Most people in “CC Land” (;)) would probably guess that JHU or Brown is “better at graduate school” than UC-San Diego, but if one was going into political science, UCSD could be a MUCH better choice, generally speaking (I’m being very general here; of course individual situations/anecdotes may vary. My analysis also requires some suspension of disbelief and agreement with US News & World Report rankings, of course!).</p>
<p>Of course, let’s break this down even further. Let’s imagine someone was interested specifically in a political science subfield, political theory. In that case, Duke is ranked #6 and Johns Hopkins is ranked #8. UC-San Diego is not ranked in the top ten. So, JHU might be a better choice for a student in this scenario than UCSD. </p>
<p>That said, Duke has some very good graduate programs, with several “top ten” departments, including the aforementioned political science department. Duke’s sociology department has traditionally been a powerhouse, with a #6 ranking in social psychology (ahead of those “good grad schools” like Harvard and Yale). In public policy, Duke’s program at the Sanford School comes in #5, besting Princeton (#6) and Univ. of Chicago (#7). Duke’s English department comes in at #10, despite a Stanley Fish-induced hemorrhage in the early 90s (google Stanley if you’re curious about that one). Duke’s history program pops up at #14, the biology department comes in at #12 (tied with Princeton and Cornell), and so on and so forth.</p>
<p>So, the answer is that Duke has many very good departments that are very highly regarded. Is every program the best program in the land? Of course not. Are USNWR rankings the best way to determine a program’s quality? Probably not, but they reflect the realities of academic life - that reputation (whether it’s in rankings or word of mouth) is very important. </p>
<p>Simply put, Duke has a top-notch graduate school with some absolutely fabulous departmental programs. </p>
<p>Not to mention the professional schools. . . . . you do know that Duke Medical School is #6 in the country, tied with Stanford’s, right?</p>
<p>Wanted to also add:</p>
<p>When it comes to graduate programs, faculty and fit are key.</p>
<p>There’s no point in going to the overall ranked #2 university in history, if your area of interest is East Asian colonial history and the department has no faculty in that field (of course, how you got admitted without a hypothetical faculty advisor is for another post. . . .:-D). Not all universities, even those “top” ones, have strong research agendas/faculty members across all subfields. </p>
<p>Just worth mentioning.</p>