<p>Seriously, they dont deserve to be #8 on the undergraduate rankings. Schools like Berkeley, UCLA, UMich, and many more are much better academically. Besides Biomedical engineering which is a small field, none of Dukes programs are top.</p>
<p>Sure their social life may be good but social life at schools like UCLA and UMich are just as good or may be even better. (and you can't really measure social life since it depends on you).</p>
<p>So can someone explain why they are so high on the rankings.</p>
<p>Everyone wants a different social life. I knew someone who knew someone who got into Yale and Duke, but picked Duke because they thought that the people were easier to relate to. Go figure...</p>
<p>Duke's not overrated in my opinion, I think they deserve to be where they are..just a couple years ago they were "ranked" number 3....that's overrated..I believe they're a top 10 university.</p>
<p>In what way is Duke UNDERGRAD overrated? Departmental rankings are for GRADUATE RESEARCH programs which are only slightly related to the strength of undergraduate education and reputation. Concerning factors which are relevant to the everyday undergraduate experience, e.g. class sizes, academic strength of students, facilities, etc., Duke is neither overrated or underrated in the rankings - it places where it places based on a fixed formula used to rank every undergraduate program. For example, Berkeley has a better PhD program in sociology than does Duke but that does not mean it has a better undergraduate program in sociology due to the relevant undergraduate factors I mentioned. That would be like saying Brown or Dartmouth undergrad are overrated because of their lack of graduate research strength in general.</p>
<p>Duke undergraduate is way overrated in rankings. Most average people know of Duke because of their sports anyway. The research and money generated by the graduate programs tends to raise their undergrad rankings, which it should not. Brown and Dartmouth are much better undergrad programs than Duke, yet ranked lower. No one would ever say that there programs are "overrated" and your point is very dubious. Presence or absence of graduate research strength do not affect the quality or the teaching of undergraduate programs. Some people would even argue the opposite.</p>
<p>I think most people assosciate Duke with basketball over academics...or at least the people I know do. But you know as someone said once there are only two things that matter about a school: the people that graduate and the people that want those that graduate.</p>
<p>Just because Duke is not an Ivy named MIT/Stanford, you really need to say its overrated. Really, some of the arguments in this thread is total moot.</p>
<p>Just because top public USNWR is undertranked/rated, you don't have to bash Duke.</p>
<p>I agree that Duke is only slightly overrated in rankings, since its reputation, selectivity, prestige, and PA scores don't match up to other top 10 schools like Columbia, etc. I think that it is comparable to schools like Northwestern, so its rank should be within top 15, not top 10.</p>
<p>No one is bashing Duke. Duke is a great University. At the end, the top 10 are not much different than the top 20 except in reputation. I think that Dukes suffers a bit of an inferiority complex with that obsessive need of always trying to be compared to the ivy league. IT IS NOT. Duke is peers with Northwestern, Chicago, Hopkins and the like.
Duke is a power house research university. The superiority of Brown, Dartmouth and some the liberal arts colleges as far as undergraduate education is well known since it is only comparable to Yale and Princeton. Furthermore, there is plenty of information which indicates that not even Harvard is as great as an undergrad learning place.
No need to even get into that now. It goes beyond personal "opinions".</p>
<p>I don't think it is overrated, it's a well rounded school. Duke is a research powerhouse, but the graduate schools are not completely separate from the undergrads, a college's grad school does have an effect on the undergraduate experience.</p>
<p>^^ Disagree. I do not feel like going into this discussion here now. Plenty of data around to answer that question. But i do respect your opinion :)</p>
<p>I don't think Duke is overrated at #8. At #3 or even #5, perhaps, but not at #8. Duke is definitely a worthy top 10 university. I agree that many universities, particularly elite state universities, are underrated, but that is another subject altogether.</p>
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The superiority of Brown, Dartmouth and some the liberal arts colleges as far as undergraduate education is well known since it is only comparable to Yale and Princeton.
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<p>Yea, well that's just according to your name...</p>
<p>In all of these overrated and underrated threads, HOW do you folks come to your conclusions? It's difficult enough to prove that a Big Mac is better than a Whopper, much less that Dartmouth is "better" than Duke.</p>
<p>To me, this has little to do with perceived social life or sports programs. The average student at Duke is smarter than at Cal, Michigan, UCLA or at least their SAT avg is more than 100 points higher than these three other schools. If you choose to ignore that because the profs at the latter three are producing more research that probably doesn't tangibly benefit the UG students in any way, then so be it. However, as an hiring manager, I'm going to be a lot more concerned about the quality of the students at a school than the quality of the research being produced by its professors.</p>