<<we’ve already="" established="" that="" global="" rankings="" are="" worthless="" for="" making="" decisions="" at="" the="" undergraduate="" level.="">></we’ve>
It’s not a debating society. I don’t know who “we” are. But I haven’t decided that and I have a student at Berkeley who chose UCB over Duke. I’m just trying to help the OP.
the top engineering schools in the country are MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, Carnegie Mellon.
duke, harvard are not peer schools in engineering.
that being said… engineers imo don’t care whether you came from a vanity school… all they care about is your github code so for the poster don’t worry about engineering rep.
@preppedparent So you would attend the University of Iowa over Dartmouth? Good to know.
Your student is in the minority (68:32 in favor of Duke).
81% of students admitted to both schools choose Duke according to this article in the NY Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/04/upshot/college-picks.html?mtrref=www.google.com#s=6
My student could see the potential in UCB. She got a Regents as an OOS student so got 4 year guaranteed housing, and priority registration. She wanted to attend UCB’s business school, and got in. Haas is ranked second by USNWR tied with MIT and only second to Wharton. She wanted to be near Silicon Valley for internships in entrepreneurship which she did, and she wanted to be on the West Coast and near San Francisco. Iowa and Dartmouth have nothing to do with it. But yeh, we’re proud she’s a golden bear, and not afraid to say it. Choose UCB. Lots of opportunities. Couldn’t find a finer UNDERGRAD experience.
@JenniferClint : That is why I didn’t like (and agree with) how Noncreativity1 presented a ranking where there’s only about a dozen or so schools which separate Berkeley from Duke. We could be nitpicking league tables just to win in an argument, when in fact, there is very little that separates between them, unlike in engineering where Berkeley is considered part of the “holy trinity”, standing alongside MIT and Stanford. And, for the record, I did not present those rankings to tell anyone on here that Berkeley is superior to Duke for banking/finance, but to disprove anyone who claims Berkeley would be a terrible training ground and feeder school to banking/finance.
I agree Duke is a fantastic school, as a whole. In the same way that I agree Yale, for instance, is an amazing school, in general. But those schools have weaknesses and engineering happens to be the worst of them. Coincidentally, engineering happens to be Berkeley’s one of its strongest departments, and Berkeley – its name – is highly reputable, not only in America but throughout the whole universe. Duke, though good as a whole, doesn’t enjoy such grandiose reputation as Berkeley’s, specially in the tech universe. In fact, for many, many serious and highly dedicated, extremely talented engineering aspirants, Duke is not on their radar.
If we’re talking about WS, I agree Duke has more presence there. But we’re not talking about WS, are we?
@JenniferClint : I think you needed to know that most, if not all, engineering students at Cal are not as gaga as Duke students are about winning Rhodes. What they care more about is how to become the next Elon Musk or how to become a successful startup founder, if not to work for those giant tech companies in the Bay Area and make six-figure salary (excluding bonus) as just entrants. That doesn’t make Berkeley engineering inferior to Duke simply because the school doesn’t have the same culture as Duke’s. And, btw, what is Oxford engineering compared to Berkeley’s!
@preppedparent It was probably worth mentioning that she is a Regents scholar. That definitely changes the equation.
This is pure ignorance. I’m sorry that I had to say that.
Here’s why.
Berkeley weighs HS GPAs more than it does standardized test scores, while Duke does the reverse. One can take SATs twice and submit the highest scores – we call that, super-scoring. Duke is notoriously known to have been employing that tactic.
Now, if you can show me any data that says Duke has a higher SAT score than Berkeley College of Engineering, I will concede.
1). Duke as a university tends to care very little about standardized test scores (look at Duke med, Fuqua, etc.) so claiming that Duke is “notorious” for doing that tells me that you are misinformed. Also, it would be prudent to refrain from making assertions that you cannot back up.
2). Standardized test scores are probably more informative than GPAs because they are STANDARDIZED.
3). Do you really think that Duke’s GPA range is lower than Berkeley’s? Seems highly improbable but I can’t find data on Duke’s GPA range.
This is another pure ignorance. Please do your research.
Admit Rate
19.7% - CA Resident
22.1% - OOS
8.8% - International
Avg. GPA Admit
3.91 - CA Resident
3.92 - OOS
3.93 - International
Avg. SAT Admit
1334 - CA Resident
1449 - OOS
1455 - International
The funding cuts are very real.
http://www.latimes.com/local/education/higher-ed/la-me-uc-global-rankings-20180228-story.html
“UC faculty leaders said the results confirm their fears that the university’s excellence would decline without greater state investment. The state share of costs per student dropped from $14,690 in 1996 to $7,160 in 2017, according to UC data. The university has made up some of the difference by hiking tuition and increasing the number of out-of-state students, who pay more, but both efforts have sparked opposition.”
Along with the elimination of financial aid for incoming out-of-state students, the university is increasing nonresident tuition by 8 percent in the next year and projecting to enroll an additional 1,200 nonresident undergraduates.
Out-of-state students make up a significant portion of students on the university’s flagship campus — roughly 35 percent of UC Berkeley’s incoming students were nonresidents in 2014.
Abril raised concerns about the effects of cutting out-of-state financial aid on campus diversity.
“You’ll be creating a pipeline for that percentage of students to be entirely socioeconomically homogeneous,” he said. “You’ll lose most of the students who would ever consider coming here who are low income and out of state.”
Berkeley has been having funding cuts for 30 years… and have heard this argument before over the past 3 decades… … yet Berkeley had the 4th most nobels of any university in the world since 2000.
2010-2018:
Berkeley: 2011: Perlmutter (Physics) + 2013: Schekman (Physiology or Medicine)
Duke: 2012: Lefkowitz (Chemistry) + 2015: Modrich (Chemistry)
^ Regular rank faculty members who received their Nobels while they were at the university in question. Pretty evenly matched in the recent past.
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lists/universities.html
The top students at both schools, Nobel laureates and Rhodes scholars are equally brilliant but unique in their areas of expertise. This is like arguing over what’s a better movie The Godfather or Shape of Water. Who’s better the 2016 Patriots or the 1987 49ers maybe a better example It’s not an intellectual exercise but is loaded with emotion and subjective analysis.
Berkeley is elite and especially in STEM. But it’s big it’s public, in California, urban and it’s a known also for its political activism. Fact
Duke is also elite. Well known in everything but engineering and CS. Private, traditional college town and campus feel and known for a more preppy and sporty overall vibe. Fact
Two great choices. But choices they are. Either will lead to unlimited opportunity and a lifetime of pride. Fact
OP. Good luck. You can always flip a coin. And more than once if you don’t like the results 
Both great schools. Nothing remains to be said. Good luck to the OP!
^
Indeed. This thread has run its course.