Duke: Overrated?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Looking at the historical USNEWS rankings, Duke has never dropped below #8. However, I have always found that when it comes to perception of ACADEMIC caliber, it falls below, albeit close, to Dartmouth and Columbia specifically. Can someone elaborate as to why Duke consitently outranks Dartmouth & Columbia despite SLIGHTLY less prestigious graduate programs (compared to Columbia's and Cornell's), less endowment, higher acceptance rates, and lower yield?</p>

<p>Sorry if this seems like flame, it isn't. It's just that browsing some of these boards and speaking to professionals, both Dartmouth and Columbia seem to have a slightly greater academic cachet than Duke yet it consistently stays aloft in the rankings. I'm also asking because there is speculation, and a general feeling, that Duke will drop this year due to decreases in applications & controversy.</p>

<p>Let me reiterate:: Duke is an AMAZING school-- but it seems to be slipping.</p>

2

<p>Duke is a great school. As far as its ranking in relation to other schools, it’s all about the criteria that USNWR use.</p>

<p>Columbia for instance hasn’t had a Rhodes or Fulbright scholar in a while, which I think is part of the formula.</p>

<p>And of course Dartmouth and Columbia have more cache, especially in the northeast, they’re Ivies, for chrissakes.</p>

<p>In the south, you’d find that Duke would trump those school any day.</p>

3

<p>I’d say it’s underrated, if anything. Usually the schools in the northeast overshadow Duke simply because of a higher alumni base and more historic focus. Despite this bias, Duke outdoes these schools because it not only brings in many qualified students (more so than Cornell and Dartmouth, based on scores) but places these students into great programs after undergrad. In a recent WSJ article, Duke was ranked six for placement into elite institutions for medical, law and business schools. Considering this data alone, it would appear that Duke fosters better results for its students than other peer institutions. As for graduate programs, I am not sure what you are basing your data on. I know that Duke has top medical and law schools, among others.</p>

4

<p>I’d say definitely that Duke is underrated on CC. Academics/placement just as good as IVies, but the weather is better. Its too often dismissed as a jock/prep/rich kid school.</p>

<p>Duke = Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn, Brown in prestige, grad/professional placement, and ties or is better than all of them in terms of student body strength. I’m not sure what you are basing your data on btw with regards to grad programs, Duke’s grad programs are more prominent than Dartmouth (which is more undergrad focused).</p>

<p>In NYC (which isn’t in the South) you’ll see Duke is about as good as Dartmouth or Columbia at all types of placement. Seen that first hand, but look at Wall Street placement for further affirmation.</p>

5

<p>Also, Duke’s endowment is bigger than Dartmouth’s. That doesn’t matter, because what is important is how many resources per student:</p>

<p>Duke has 3.3 bn dollars, around 13,000 total enrollment
Columbia has 5.2 bn dollars, over 22,000 total enrollment (<a href=“http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/cu/opir/abstract_archive/2001enrol.htm[/url]”>http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/cu/opir/abstract_archive/2001enrol.htm&lt;/a&gt;)
Dartmouth has 2.8 bn dollars, around 5,500 total enrollment</p>

<p>Regarding grad school strength, Duke Columbia and Dartmouth all have similar Peer Assessment scores (4.5, 4.6, 4.4)</p>

6

<p>i agree with other guys on that Duke is underrated <em>academically</em>
and in my opinion, academic program is highly underrated in general population due to the great athletic programs, location, and relatively short history. (i wont discuss in too much details but i hope you get points)</p>

<ol>
<li><p>great athletic programs. often people think of college basketball when think of duke. it’s like when people talk about JHU, they only focus on the medical school that they do not mention how their IR is one of the best. also there are the most heated rivalry between duke and other universities (and their students wouldnt talk anything good about duke even when they talk about academics)</p></li>
<li><p>location. north carolina and RDU are awesome. weather’s near perfect year long, great cities with diverse interests/activities, and nearby NATURE!
yet.. it’s nothing like san francisco, boston, or nyc in terms of populations, jobs, money-market, and whatnot. duke would be placed even higher in its .. fame whatever, if it were in northeast region. </p></li>
<li><p>while duke’s origin dates back to 1830s, it’s not a pre-historic college haha.
well.. there you go.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>these are some reasons why duke academic programs are shadowed. however they all can be very positive sides of duke. alumni giving at duke is 3rd in the nation </p>

<p>well anyhow.. i dont think weather a school is overrated or underrated doesnt matter too much when it comes to a school of duke caliber. i can say (and would say) duke in many facets is better than columbia, cornell, and dartmouth. but who cares. i think later three schools are amazing too. yeah maybe columbia didnt produce any rhode scholar but it sure is one of the best universities. the same thing goes for HYP (do you think they’re overrated?). saying yale is absolutely the better school than columbia is just ridiculous. everyone knows cornell engineering is much better than harvard’s. </p>

<p>employers know better .. people who matters knows better.. and you can see that in job placement or graduate/professional school placement.</p>

<p>after all, dont worry too much about that kinda stuffs (esp if you’re in hs). if you are truly concerned about one school’s academic program, look at professors, professional journals, and etc.. not what a general population thinks..</p>

7

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<p>Otoh, many of the college BB commentators always talk about how so and so player must be smart/intelligent to have gotten into Duke when that really hasn’t been the case (this happens more frequently than with players from Stanford).</p>

<p>For instance, during the 4 year period from 1994-97, freshmen entering Duke on basketball scholarships during that period had an average SAT score of 968 - which was middling for the ACC.</p>

8

<p>one word: duke ROCKS! I’d say too that Duke is underrated here at CC and just that it’s not in the cluster like the other Ivies (Northeast)
I always try to ignore the USNEWS ranking by the way! :D</p>

9

<p>I am so sick of people asking why Duke is that great.
Just because it’s not stanford or caltech or not one of the ivies certainly doesn’t mean it doesn’t belong there.</p>

<p>It’s an early school… meaning it has to compete with Harvard/Upenn/etc. etc. which were founded many centuries before Duke was. I think Duke just opened in 1920ish?</p>

<p>And I think basketball (and lax scandal) overshadows Duke’s academic poweress</p>

<p>and stop looking at the rankings; anyways, i think where USNews put duke is perfect. It was #3 a while ago, which I agree, was too high. but it definitely is in the top 10.</p>

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<p>^^ Duke was founded in 1838, but has undergone many changes in name. The school was named “Duke University” in 1924. So those colleges aren’t “many centuries” older.</p>

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<p>Err…Duke as we know it didn’t exist until 1930s, but some of its buildings did exist as early as the 1800s.</p>

<p>Either way, just as good as Columbia/Dartmouth/Penn/Brown when it comes to rep with places that matter (just NYC lol imo) and placement, plus better weather and sports. Kind of like comparing Stanford to Yale/Princeton - similar academics and placement, nicer weather and different atmosphere. And threads like this demonstrate the lack of info people have about it and how underrated it is by some people who are Ivy-centric (ie can’t believe schools exist where kids do just as good but aren’t Ivies).</p>

12

<p>Duke is not overrated. Duke is one of 15 or so universities that truly deserves to be considered among the top 10. In terms of overall academics, I would compare it most to Brown and Dartmouth.</p>

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<p>If anything, Duke is underrated among academics and definitely here on CC. In the real world, Duke is an exceptional college that belongs in the Top 5 nationally. </p>

<p>In competition for jobs in NYC, Duke holds its own against virtually any school not named HYP in the country and its students are highly regarded there across all the many disciplines within the financial services industry. Outside of NYC, Duke has tremendous brand power and national name recognition (thanks Coach K)-in the South, Duke would be at a premium to all of the Ivies and in the Southwest and West would be more professionally competitive than all but HYP. </p>

<p>In terms of the whole undergraduate college experience, IMO Duke has a stronger argument than any school in the Ivies. Duke is one of the premier academic institutions in the land, but it brings much more to the undergraduate student than that with its nationally recognized sports teams across a wide spectrum of highly competitive sports and an active social scene encompassing many different personas. The only comparable institution is Stanford. And they do it all in a climate that is mild and enjoyable throughout the school year.</p>

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<p>

hawkette, are you basing this on any facts or statistics? Or is this just your impression?</p>

<p>I think you are once again underestimating the national presence and reputations of the non-HYP Ivies and other top schools. I agree that Duke is an excellent school with a terrific national reputation but, e.g., in the Southwest and West, it would not be “more professionally competitive than all but HYP.” For example, comparing Duke to Penn (the school with which I happen to be most familiar), 11% of Duke’s Class of 2010 are from the western and Pacific states, whereas 14% of Penn’s Class of 2010 are from those same states.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.admissions.duke.edu/jump/applying/who_2010profile.asp[/url]”>http://www.admissions.duke.edu/jump/applying/who_2010profile.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://www.admissionsug.upenn.edu/applying/profile.php[/url]”>http://www.admissionsug.upenn.edu/applying/profile.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Additionally, Penn now gets more applications from California than from any other state in the nation.</p>

<p><a href=“http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com/media/storage/paper882/news/2007/07/26/News/Stetson.Resigns.As.Dean.Of.Admissions-2927410.shtml[/url]”>http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com/media/storage/paper882/news/2007/07/26/News/Stetson.Resigns.As.Dean.Of.Admissions-2927410.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Further, Penn has been the third most popular destination (after only UC Berkeley and USC) for graduates of L.A.'s Harvard-Westlake School for the last 15 years, with 214 going to Penn (and, incidentally, 295 to Berkeley and 263 to USC) compared to only 41 going to Duke:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.hw.com/AtaGlance/CollegeP...2/Default.aspx[/url]”>http://www.hw.com/AtaGlance/CollegeP...2/Default.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>You should check out that Harvard-Westlake page (click on the “All HW Grads” tab)–it’s interesting to see where the graduates of one of California’s top private schools end up going to college.</p>

<p>Of course, that’s the “input” side of the equation, but I’m confident that the “output” side (i.e., career placement) would also show Penn’s relatively strong presence in the West (I know I’ve given you Penn West Coast alumni club web sites and alumni numbers in the past).</p>

<p>And this is not only true for Penn–I’m sure that the other non-HYP Ivies and other top schools do as well nationally as Duke.</p>

<p>Again, I’m not detracting from Duke’s stellar quality and reputation in any way, but I think you overstate it a bit vis-a-vis these other schools. And I think it would be silly to suggest that serious corporate, professional, or other employers in any part of the country would be more likely to hire graduates of Duke than of, e.g., Penn, Columbia, or Brown, simply because Duke’s basketball team is nationally competitive. Besides being illogical, the stats simply don’t back that up.</p>

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<p>^ If that Harvard-Westlake link doesn’t work, try this one:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.hw.com/AtaGlance/CollegePlacement/tabid/892/Default.aspx[/url]”>http://www.hw.com/AtaGlance/CollegePlacement/tabid/892/Default.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>

Not really. Duke certainly has a very good reputation on the West Coast, but no better than any of the Ivies. At my rather good public high school, hardly anyone even applies to it (though the same is true of the non-HYP Ivies).</p>

17

<p>Duke is an excellent academic and research institution that unfortunately suffers from many stereotypes. The great reputation reached in the last decade stems primarily from the graduate programs and not the undergraduate. This is something that the administration has very effectively manipulated to achieve higher rankings in the USNews.</p>

<p>Like it or not, the ivies have a cachet that none of the other top institutions in the country are able to carry (Stanford and MIT included). Add to that the general perception of the “sophisticated” Northeast vs the South and some further stereotypes are reaffirmed. </p>

<p>Also, the fact that Durham really sucks and the perceived prominence in sports adds further to …confuse some people.</p>

18

<p>“The great reputation reached in the last decade stems primarily from the graduate programs and not the undergraduate. This is something that the administration has very effectively manipulated to achieve higher rankings in the USNews.”</p>

<p>Duke’s undergrad is comparatively better than the grad programs. Look at Duke’s wall street placement, professional school placement, or strength of enrolling undergrad students. Just as good or better than every school in the country other than 5 or 6. Thats just reality. In contrast, its professional schools are all barely in the top 10 and its grad programs are lower ranked than Universities with similar undergrad strength such as Columbia. </p>

<p>Also, the idea that an administration effectively manipulates grad strength for higher rankings is hilarious…Duke is much more undergrad focused than most schools with strong grad programs, and its peer assessment score on US News isn’t that high, and it actually brings its ranking DOWN rather than up (the opposite is true for Cornell, Mich, Berkeley, JHU - which thrive from having a high PA score since they have strong grad programs).</p>

19

<p>AMEN! Duke is definitely underrated. It is a very young school that has raised itself to the caliber of Ivy Leaguers without giving up athletics. Ivy grad programs LOVE Duke students (e.g. Duke had more undergrads than any school except Harvard get admitted into Harvard Med School last year).</p>

20

<p>True. The only grad program at Duke which is as highly regarded as the undergrad is the med school (compared to other institutions of similar caliber). Someone (probably Hawkette) posted earlier that if PA was taken out of Duke’s ranking for USNews it would be ranked 4 spots higher. Don’t quote me on that though.</p>