<p>i guess my sarcasm needs to be more obvious. </p>
<p>the rape thing won't affect duke in the rankings this year, but perhaps next year due to the natural delay of peer assessment rankings.</p>
<p>I wasn't sure if you were serious or not. A significant portion of the Duke population thought that article was accurate, actually. :eek:</p>
<p>i don't think there's any need to berate those students in the uae for choosing a second choice school over duke during this situation.</p>
<p>i'm going into my third year at duke. i am absolutely in love with my college. i have had the most wonderful time-- academically and socially here. i don't ever regret coming here. that said, april of my senior year of high school i was completely on the fence between duke and another top school. had this debacle occurred then, i'm sure i would've chosen the other school. it's not that i would've looked down on duke, it's just a decision my family and i would have made (we've even talked about it, over dinner at the waduke in may with a few close friends who agree and would have made the same decision). </p>
<p>maybe duke's rankings in us news will drop. no one can predict that. and even if they were to drop, do you honestly see them plummeting, or just falling a spot or two? personally, if anything, i see the latter. i cannot believe that this could justify a school sitting comfortably in us news' top 10 to entirely fall out of it. especially not when a school like duke continuously grows as an institution and makes tremendous academic strides each year. </p>
<p>to those who said that duke is way overrated, i'm not attacking you. i respect your opinion. why is it that you feel that way? which schools do you feel deserve to be ranked above duke? where do you think duke's best ranking is? i personally pay no mind to us news-- i don't now, and i didn't when i was applying to colleges. i think the whole thing is bs. so i'm just curious to see your reasoning, since you obviously care more about the system than i ever did.</p>
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which schools do you feel deserve to be ranked above duke?
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<p>I'm not who this was directed to, but I'll chime in and say MIT and Stanford are the most indisputable choices. I think Duke can make a legitimate claim to being part of (the bottom half) of the top ten, so I don't think it's <em>way</em> overranked, but it certainly doesn't deserve to be top five.</p>
<p>"These Duke lacross players raped a woman because they were in the South? What about the fact that they are priviledged, wealthy, white kids who probably hardly ever hear the word "no"?"</p>
<p>I agree with most of the rest of your post but I don't see how this as anything to do with them being white or wealthy (other than it makes good headlines). By the way, a lot of the kids on the lax team are not really wealthy (but then again a lot of the people on CC seem to have different ideas of wealth than the ones people around here do) so it's not like they just have everything handed to them. They are, for the most part, good students and a lot of them are really nice people and really didn't deserve all of this negative attention and complete disruption of their lives on the basis of a stupid lie</p>
<p>All universities have scandals and they don't drop in the ranks as a result. Michigan has had its fair share of troubled student athletes. Duke will not suffer in the rankings as a result of this incident.</p>
<p>I wouldn't ever apply to Duke anyway...so no.</p>
<p>Lets not forget, that guilty or innocent, almost all the accused are from wealthy, white, mid and northeastern families- if in fact, they were involved, maybe the media should focus on the values that area may be instilling. Parents here are relentless in the quest to show success. Constant pressure to compete, starting in preschool, will show it's ugly face eventually........</p>
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to those who said that duke is way overrated, i'm not attacking you. i respect your opinion. why is it that you feel that way? which schools do you feel deserve to be ranked above duke? where do you think duke's best ranking is? i personally pay no mind to us news-- i don't now, and i didn't when i was applying to colleges. i think the whole thing is bs. so i'm just curious to see your reasoning, since you obviously care more about the system than i ever did.
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<p>Stanford, Caltech, and MIT for sure deserve to be ranked better than Duke. Do you honestly believe Duke deserves to be ranked ahead of these schools? I'd also add Columbia, Brown, and possibly Dartmouth.</p>
<p>I know some kids who were in the top 200 applicants for Duke for some scholarship, and got waitlisted or denied at places like Columbia and Brown. The top 4 kids in my class were all in the top 200 applicants of Duke, but then all other people who were 5-15th or so were flat out denied. I think it's ridiculous how Duke is so black and white with admissions. The valedictorian was a top 200 student, but got waitlisted at Columbia, denied to Dartmouth, denied to HYP, denied to MIT, denied to Stanford. He was left with a choice between Michigan and Duke, so now he's a blue devil.</p>
<p>It amazes me about how passionate people are about their obvious dislike for Duke. (although I am not a blue devil fan, I have high regards for the university) What is is? Why are there so many anti-dukites? Does the school threaten your school in some way? Most people display that kind of hatred when they feel threatened.</p>
<p>Dukites??? Why not Dukies? :)</p>
<p>Just because someone qualifies for a particular scholarship at a school, it does not necessarily make them a "top 200 applicant". As discussed on some other threads, many of these so called merit scholarships may take in to account other issues such as ethnicity, financial status, gender, residency, etc.</p>
<p>Most elite schools do not have a black and white policy on admissions. They are all looking to get the best possible "mix" of the best possible applicants.</p>
<p>njmom: Many of those who show disdain for certain elite institutions have been rejected by such, or may not even apply because they know they won't be accepted. :)</p>
<p>No, 1sokkermom, the scholarship is a competition between the top 200 applicants to duke. I saw the letter they sent my friend myself. The kids knew they were accepted like a month before the actual letter came because they were told they were accepted, were top 200 from the applicant pool, and to come down to duke to compete for the scholarship. I think they do it every year I think because last year we had two girls get top 200 too.</p>
<p>Thanks atomic. I am quite familiar with the scholarship prgrams at Duke. Which one are you referring to? (Full disclosure: I have a son who goes there and was "in the runnning" for one of them a couple of years ago.......)</p>
<p>P.S. He didn't make it to the final selection for the scholarship, but he did get accepted. Was he top 200? I doubt it! But he is a blue devil. :)</p>
<p>Hi AtomicFusion, lets see how your claims about Duke being overrated compared to the non-top 3 Ivies stack up with facts:
Institution, SAT percentiles, percent of class ranked in the top 10 percent:
Dartmouth 1370 - 1540, 88%
Duke 1370 - 1540, 89%
Penn 1360 - 1530, 93%
Columbia 1360 - 1530, 87%
Cornell 1300 - 1480, 80%
Brown 1340 - 1530, 92%</p>
<p>^Courtesy of school websites/collegeboard
Hmmm...ok, so the students coming into the institutions are pretty much even, with Duke being atleast as good and maybe better than the rest</p>
<p>The WSJ feeder rankings, one of few rankings of what students do after graduation, takes into account what schools send the highest proportion of students to top professional schools...I don't have a copy in front of me, but Duke is 6-7th on it, I'll look for it</p>
<p>So, the few people you actually know (based on what you say) might actually have made those decisions, but if they really did, they still represent a minority</p>
<p>Also, facts about Duke when students choose - between 45-55 percent of students accepted to one of Brown, Columbia, Penn, or Dartmouth choose Duke, 20-25% of students accepted to one of HYPSM choose Duke, and 70-80% of those accepted to Duke and one of the Cornell, NU, and JHU choose Duke. Thats coming from the Dukenews site so its as accurate as the site itself.</p>
<p>can anybody comment on how individual programs at Duke stack up to its peer schools?</p>
<p>"can anybody comment on how individual programs at Duke stack up to its peer schools?"</p>
<p>Based on what specific criteria? Most people who attend Duke are really only familiar with what it offers. I would assume the same applies to any other institution as well. Subjective opinions are interesting, but probably not that worthwhile.</p>
<p>"The WSJ feeder rankings, one of few rankings of what students do after graduation, takes into account what schools send the highest proportion of students to top professional schools"</p>
<p>-This ranking left out so many top schools that it’s terribly skewed.</p>
<p>SAT scores and grades aren't everything. My friend had a 1600 and was valedictorian, thus he was accepted to Duke. But, the ivy league expects more than just scores and grades. They want stellar ECs and he didn't have those, so he was denied at all the ivy league schools he applied to.</p>
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Also, facts about Duke when students choose - between 45-55 percent of students accepted to one of Brown, Columbia, Penn, or Dartmouth choose Duke, 20-25% of students accepted to one of HYPSM choose Duke, and 70-80% of those accepted to Duke and one of the Cornell, NU, and JHU choose Duke. Thats coming from the Dukenews site so its as accurate as the site itself.
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<p>You're forgetting that Duke offers merit aid, while HYPSM and the rest of the ivies don't.</p>
<p>You should really look at threads where people say where they've been accepted to. You'll see that in a lot of cases the ones who got into Duke got waitlisted or denied at the schools I mentioned.</p>
<p>I'm not denying that Duke is a good school. But is it good enough to be ranked 5th? No. Therefore it is overrated, which was my original point.</p>