<p>Atomic, did you apply to Duke?</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."</p>
<p>Where is this written? I'd like to read it. I hope it’s not the revealed preference rankings. :)</p>
<p>Yes, I did. Back when I applied I was fairly ignorant of colleges. I want to be an engineer and I applied to Uchicago for god's sake! (they don't offer engineering lol). I only knew that I wanted to go into science in general, and my guidance counselor told me to apply because it was good for the sciences. Inbetween the time I applied to my schools and I got the results, I realized I couldn't really go to places like Duke, boston college, Uchicago, tufts anyway because they weren't as strong in engineering as what I wanted. I got denied from Duke, but I don't hold it against them or anything since I wouldn't have gone anyway. I still love MIT and stanford and got denied by both.</p>
<p>i like the revealed preference ranking.</p>
<p>I do not believe that ratings alone play into decisions by students. All ratings need to be looked at carefully. Duke is a small school, has a very good class-size, and student-faculty ratio, and it is very good in the field of billogy. The US news rankings probably considers all of these and more.</p>
<p>All schools have issues in some form. When I visited Cornell, I was told of stabbing incident relating to a minority student. I read somewhere that Stanford had a similar incident some years back. The colleges are looking for diversity, and with it comes unforeseen issues.</p>
<p>My son visited both Cornell and Duke, and he selected Duke. I would like him to go to Cornell, but I still supported his decision. </p>
<p>Irrespective of the ratings, MIT has to be a better school than Duke.</p>
<p>Cheers!</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>what I mean is how does duke's engineering and/or bio/chem/hard sciences stack up to places like the 8 Ivies. The same holds for the other departments such as the humanities, business, etc.</p>
<p>How do you define "stack up"? Are you looking for rankings in various departments? If so, I do not think such "rankings" exist for undergraduate programs. People (parents and students) on this board have tried to manipulate unrelated data (such as number of graduates in a field who go on to get PHD's, etc.) to define the quality of undergraduate programs at various institutions. This is often done to support their favorite school(s). </p>
<p>Without a quantitative measuring system or reference, you will get many subjective (often biased) opinions. Even with a defined system or ranking, you will get many subjective biased opinions. :) </p>
<p>You will also get people complaining about any rankings that do exist if they don't agree with the ranking of a particular school or schools. USNews is a perfect example.......look at how much discussion it generates.</p>
<p>atomicfusion - There aren't enough merit scholarships given for it to have a significant impact on the non-HYPSM cross-admits. Like I said before, MIT and Stanford certainly deserve to be ranked above Duke, and I would add Columbia as well, but I have never heard a strong argument for why Brown, Dartmouth, etc are objectively better (and I'm sorry, but your anecdote certainly doesn't change that). IMO they are peers.</p>
<p>"but I have never heard a strong argument for why Brown, Dartmouth, etc are objectively better"</p>
<p>-And why are the schools you named "objectively" better?</p>
<p>Stronger student bodies, better reputations, and stronger faculty. Combined, that's a solid case for why they should be ranked higher when evaluating the overall strength of a university.</p>
<p>I doubt you actually disagree; rather, I'm guessing you just made that post to be confrontational. In that case, my part of this exchange is done, unless you would like to pretend to be so out of touch as to believe that Duke is better than MIT and Stanford.</p>
<p>I’m not trying to be confrontational. Everything you listed is, however, subjective. I just wanted to know why you believed there is objective evidence making the schools you listed better than Duke.</p>
<p>If you truly believe the three things I listed are all that subjective, then make an honest argument for why Duke is stronger than HYPSM in those areas. If you can't, then maybe they're not quite as subjective as you think.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t even know where to begin to quantify “better reputations, and stronger faculty”. Also, you said nothing about Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. You said MIT, Stanford, and Columbia.</p>
<p>In my post I said that I would consider caltech, MIT, stanford, columbia, brown, and <em>possibly</em> dartmouth better. I consider Dartmouth to be about equal with Duke. Brown only slightly edges Duke out in my opinion. But, the point remains that 4 schools should be ranked higher than Duke and are not.</p>
<p>Also, I think that the scholarships would affect the preference percentages. If say Duke gives out only 100 scholarships (I have no idea how many, but this is just a guess), then these would be to kids who probably got into HYP. I don't think there are many kids who would chose Duke over HYPMS if they weren't offered merit aid from Duke.</p>
<p>
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I wouldn’t even know where to begin to quantify “better reputations, and stronger faculty”.
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<p>Alright then, make an argument for why Duke has a stronger student body.</p>
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Also, you said nothing about Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. You said MIT, Stanford, and Columbia.
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<p>HYP is appropriately ranked above Duke in US News, hence they were not part of the original discussion about Duke being overranked.</p>
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But, the point remains that 4 schools should be ranked higher than Duke and are not.
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<p>Why Brown? You still haven't offered anything besides your anecdotal evidence for why it definitely deserves to be ranked higher.</p>
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If say Duke gives out only 100 scholarships (I have no idea how many, but this is just a guess),
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</p>
<p>Duke only gives out 20-25 pure merit scholarships. The majority of merit scholarships are actually limited to NC residents and underrepresented minorities. In my experience, most recepients of those were not really at the very top of the applicant pool.</p>
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Then these would be to kids who probably got into HYP. I don't think there are many kids who would chose Duke over HYPMS if they weren't offered merit aid from Duke.
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<p>Hence why I said non-HYPSM cross-admits.</p>
<p>CC is being ridiculously slow for me, so I'm out for now. BTW kk, 'stronger faculty' is not nearly as hard to quantify as you think. If you care that much, look at things like awards and research grants.</p>
<p>atomicfusion -- why do you feel that brown slightly edges out duke? or dartmouth for that matter? is it that they're affiliated with the ivy league, or not? (again, not attacking. just curious. i actually chose duke over both of those places because for what i'm studying, i felt that duke was a 'better' school, and even without bringing up intended majors, my hs teachers and counselors felt that barring the ivy league title, duke was a better place. again, they had subjective reasonings behind their choices, but oh well. it's hard to come up with definitive reasonings as to why one of these schools is better than the next). as i've said, i'm completely unfamiliar with the us news rankings -- i thought mit and stanford were higher than duke on the list? they should be, at least. i'm not really certain about columbia. and i'm definitely not certain about schools like caltech that i know absolutely nothing about. </p>
<p>your duke merit scholarship anecdote doesn't really provide a full picture. it's funny-- some of the smartest kids at duke i know (we're talking within the top 5 of their class year) who were vals/sals at TOP high schools were not so much as semi-finalists in these competitions. they were not invited to participate in "duke up close" -- the program that supposedly invites the top 200 applicants to visit and compete for scholarships -- yet they're clearly within the top 30 undergraduates currently at duke. they got into HYPS (none are engineering types, so there's no MIT data), got no merit aid, no financial aid, and still chose duke. it's surprising how many people at duke fall into this category. in fact, the duke students i know who did get scholarships were not accepted to HYPSM and in knowing some, it boggles my mind as to why they're paying nothing and i'm paying everything.</p>
<p>The acceptance rate for Brown for the class of 2010 was 14%. Duke's was 21%.</p>
<p>The yield for Brown was 58-60% (different sources). Duke's was 42%.</p>
<p>I know that acceptance rates and yield are not everything, but this is just a good place to start. These are just some admission statistics for the class of 2010. I'll probably add to this later.</p>
<p>By the way, some yield rates for the class of 2010:</p>
<p>Harvard: 79%</p>
<p>Yale: 69%</p>
<p>Stanford: 68%</p>
<p>Princeton: 68%</p>
<p>Penn: 62%</p>
<p>Columbia: 61%</p>
<p>Brown: 58%</p>
<p>Notre Dame: 56%</p>
<p>UVa: 54%</p>
<p>Georgetown: 52%</p>
<p>Dartmouth: 51%</p>
<p>Cornell: 49%</p>
<p>Swarthmore: 43%</p>
<p>Duke: 42%</p>
<p>JHU: 28%</p>
<p>If you want to look at yields, subtract the amount of students a school admits under Early Decision. Columbia 61% Yield? Please. More like 45% of the class admitted under ED…. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>True, but Duke also has Early Decision.</p>