<p>Duke's SAT Scores:
CR 660-750
M 690-780
W 670-770
Total: 2020-2300</p>
<p>Northwestern's SAT Scores:
CR 680-760
M 700-780
W 680-770
Total: 2060-2310</p>
<p>It also seems that Northwestern will likely have a higher yield than Duke next year with its recent increases. Northwestern's yield is at 43%, while Duke's yield is at 44%. While Duke has worked to decrease its acceptance rate, it seems that its student quality has stayed the same or even declined, perhaps as a result of admitting weaker students now that Duke can no longer win top students from colleges that used to be peers.</p>
<p>It is quite likely that Duke will get knocked out of the top 10 in the US News Rankings this year. How will Duke accept this when it happens, and what measures does Duke need to take to stop its precipitous decline? Sad as it is, it seems more and more likely that Duke's new peer group is Northwestern, WashU, Johns Hopkins, and Notre Dame.</p>
<p>And, soon, Northwestern will be knocked out by USC. Too bad for Northwestern that most people outside of CC think of Northwestern as just some hick directional university. That will never happen with Duke. UChicago is more like to drop out of the top 10 – talk about a parvenu!</p>
<p>^OP dislikes Northwestern also.</p>
<p>My response…who cares about Northwestern or comparison of SAT scores. Duke has vascillated from 3 to 10 in the US News rankings over the last 20 years and I expect will continue to do so. </p>
<p>A bigger question is why you feel the need to ■■■■■ over here and instigate such a petty discourse. I have tremendous respect for the University of Chicago and have always felt that their students, alumni, faculty, etc held themselves “above the fray” of the petty and meaningless rankings game. In keeping with the values of their core curriculum, Chicago seems to have always taken pride in their academia and love of learning for learning’s sake. Since abandoning their unique application and “giving in” to the common app and rankings rat race a few years ago, their admissions rate has gone from 40% to nearly single digits in just a few years. Congratulations. I guess you now have the recognition that you always deserved. However, by initiating such an insipid conversation, all you are really accomplishing is showing an inferiority complex and defensiveness that is really unbecoming for anyone associated with such a fine university. Why not just be proud of UChicago and the recognition that the school is getting now? Why the need to cast stones at Duke? Does this make you feel better because you find equally obnoxious posts from individuals associated with Duke on the UChicago board?</p>
<p>Duke will do just fine in the upcoming rankings, and its student body quality has improved and not declined. You are just erroneously conflating SAT score with student body quality, and they are different things. Indeed, it is the mark of the top schools that they look well beyond SAT scores in putting their class together unlike the wannabe’s who focus primarily on SAT scores. If SAT scores were all that mattered, Vandy would be #1 instead of somewhere between 15 and 20. </p>
<p>NW is also a good school and in my view a peer of Duke, Chicago, and most Ivies. But by flaming Duke you are just showing your insecurity.</p>
<p>The stats listed by the OP appear to come from the universities’ About.com profiles, which also list Duke’s acceptance rate to be 16% and Northwestern’s at 23% (versus 11% and 15% for the Class of 2016, respectively), both of which are outdated values. </p>
<p>On the Duke website, the stats for students accepted into the Class of 2015 are listed as follows:</p>
<p>Trinity
CR: 680-780
M: 690-790
W: 690-790
Total: 2060-2340</p>
<p>Pratt
CR: 690-770
M: 760-800
W: 710-790
Total: 2160-2340</p>
<p>Average Total: 2110-2340</p>
<p>I realize these values describe accepted, not matriculated, students, but the stats of matriculated students are likely within about 40 points of the numbers above. </p>
<p>In any case, the previous posters are correct; SAT scores do not determine the overall quality and prestige of an institution. If this were true, Caltech would top HYPS.</p>
<p>muckdogs07,</p>
<p>It’s NU, not NW. </p>
<p>OP is a UChicago grad. </p>
<p>Please don’t mistake any one from NU as a ■■■■■ because so far, in my few years as a CC member, not even one CC member affiliated with NU has done that.</p>
<p>I agree with Sam; no one from NU has ever really tried to bash other schools before on this site.</p>
<p>On the topic of SAT scores, I think they are effective in some capacity but quickly lose value when you’re starting to compare the top 12-13 private schools. Stanford, Duke, and NU’s SAT scores are a bit lower than UChicago’s since the former three schools have huge D1 athletics programs. Whether we like it or not, these athletes don’t have quite the academic chops as the regular students but there are some impressive standouts nonetheless.</p>
<p>I’ve rehashed this point many times, but when schools reach a certain level of selectivity, simple numbers do not show the entire picture. All top schools have enough 2300+, top 10 percentile applicants to fill their schools many times over. Schools these days are becoming much less numbers driven. This is why we see schools rejecting 4 out of every 5 valedictorians who apply and only a marginal increase in acceptance rate between people who score 2200s and 2300s on their SATs. I think Brown listed somewhere that they only accepted 20-30 percent of people who scored 800s on each respective SAT section. Surely, if they wanted to, they could drive their numbers way up. But they chose not to and focus on applicants holistically. A common saying is that a school’s selectivity is not determined by who they accept, but rather the strength of the people they reject. Admissions are becoming increasingly holistic and different schools are placing different emphasis on parts of an application. This trend has been going on for years, so I have no idea why you chose to rely on numbers to prove a school’s superiority over another.</p>
<p>If we relied on numbers alone, several schools including WUSTL and UChicago would be considered more selective than Stanford and MIT. And we all know that isn’t true.</p>
<p>Way to leave out ACT scores…</p>
<p>Duke’s campus and community>that of UChicago and you just proved that point. Congratulations!</p>
<p>Also, Northwestern’s % of students graduating in the top 10% of their classes also increased this year about 5 points to 91%, which for the first time surpassed Duke’s figure of 90%. This item and SATs are 90% of the academic selectivity figure, which means that as of last year, Northwestern was more selective than Duke by USNWR measures.</p>
<p>This likely points to Northwestern surpassing Duke in this year’s ranking, perhaps pushing into the top 10 for the first time in quite a while. Duke will likely fall to 11 or 12, depending on the performance of Dartmouth. I’m thankful that things are finally falling into place. Northwestern has been underrated for quite some time, while Duke has been seriously overrated. Northwestern clearly has the better student body, which USNWR’s selectivity measures indicate. (And anecdotally, the Duke posters here show why the school is falling so quickly… a lack of a logical foundation clearly has repercussions for student body quality.)</p>
<p>Actually OP, your data for Duke is old. This is Class of 2015’s data for Trinity:
SAT Verbal/ Critical Reading 680-780<br>
SAT Math 690-790
SAT Writing 690-790<br>
Total SAT Comp: 2060-2360</p>
<p>Also what year is the SAT’s for Northwestern? You can’t compare two different years and conclude on something that is CURRENT.</p>
<p>Source:
<a href=“http://admissions.duke.edu/jump/applying/who_2013profile.html[/url]”>http://admissions.duke.edu/jump/applying/who_2013profile.html</a></p>
<p>Based on your USNWR bs data, how has Duke “fallen” to “lower” peers if Brown and Cornell are ranked even lower than it?</p>
<p>Also, you say “it seems that its student quality has stayed the same or even declined, perhaps as a result of admitting weaker students now that Duke can no longer win top students from colleges that used to be peers.” Where the heck did you even get that info? Do you have evidence or data to support this claim?</p>
<p>I think I’m gonna have to call the bull**** hotline.</p>
<p>Source for Duke statistics:</p>
<p><a href=“BigFuture College Search”>BigFuture College Search;
<p>Collegeboard also reports an acceptance rate of 14%, so the data should be for Class of 2015. Your website shows the data for ACCEPTED students, which is different from ATTENDING students. Duke and Northwestern might ACCEPT students with approx. the same statistics on average, but apparently the ones with the higher SATs are choosing to ATTEND Northwestern.</p>
<p>Duke and NU have approx. the same acceptance rate and yield, yet a disparity in SAT scores. That likely signals that when it comes to where students choose to go, the smarter ones are choosing NU and the lesser ones are choosing Duke. Anecdotally, from this board, that certainly seems to be the case.</p>
<p>phuriku, you came here only to stir up an argument.</p>
<p>Can you go back to UC board now?</p>
<p>Oh, so you don’t think it’s significant that Duke, who likes to look at Northwestern in its rearview mirror, now has lower SATs and top-10% H.S. graduates than NU? I’m bringing this up for the sake of Duke. Obviously, people haven’t thought about it here, and the situation’s going to get really serious when NU surpasses it in the rankings this year. Duke hasn’t been cautious about maintaining its position and has been slipping for years in the rankings, and now it’s likely going to be pushed out of the top 10 this year, and you don’t think this is relevant, significant, or worrisome? </p>
<p>A lot of criticism of administration policies happen in other forums, but I don’t see a lot of it on the Duke forum, despite the fact that Duke has slipped in the rankings faster than any elite school in the last 5 years. This lack of cautiousness is the exact reason that Duke is fading, and I think it’s important that people at Duke start changing their mentalities. I don’t think this is even a point that can be easily argued against.</p>
<p>Does it even matter, though? I think not. It’s harder to get into Duke anyway, so thus it’s more impressive, I guess, but who cares…44% vs 46%, nothing major and sufficient to argue and conclude that Duke will drop out of the top 10 rankings.</p>
<p>Do you really not have anything else to do? ~3/4 of the valedictorians who applied were denied this year. If Duke wanted to have their students from the top 10% of a high school class, they could, but they look at the bigger picture. NU could easily try and game the system by over accepting top 10% students who didn’t do anything outside of school or went to an easy high school. Not claiming that they do, but those numbers don’t tell the whole story.</p>
<p>“But by flaming Duke you are just showing your insecurity.” Muckdogs hit the nail on the head. You’re merely demonstrating that Chicago still doesn’t belong in the big league, the student body is too insecure. Maybe in the next 50 years you’ll finally be able to say that you graduated from a ‘good’ school without people laughing, or staring blankly at you in response. Also, you should really start doing something more constructive with your time. I hear that Chicago grads don’t earn as much as their Duke and NU counterparts. Perhaps they’re too busy feeding on thoughts to care about sustenance?</p>
<p>Yield isn’t even taken into consideration in USNWR’s formula. If Duke drops out of the top 10 no one will take USNWR seriously anymore. It’s just like dropping Harvard out of the top 3. It would be too much of an anomaly in the rankings given Duke has been top 10 every year except '89. And USNWR needs to sell magazines. Please just leave this ■■■■■ alone.</p>
<p><a href=“http://web.archive.org/web/20070908142457/http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/[/url]”>http://web.archive.org/web/20070908142457/http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/</a></p>
<p>I think Northwestern should take it personnally that UCHicago blew their doors off in last year USNWR rankings – whether Duke descends or Northwestern increases is off the point: UChicago dominates Northwestern totally and completely in every conceivable aspect known to mankind. </p>
<p>If Harvard drops out of the top 10, and by some quirk Northwestern ascended to the top, do you think that would matter at all to anyone at Harvard or elsewhere? Northwestern is truly the ultimate “blank stare” university, and nothing is going to change that.</p>