Duke vs. Berkeley?

College Search & Selection
221

<p>Smarter students choose Duke lol</p>

<p>All these Berkeley alums are coming out in full force because they still like to prentend Berkeley is where the best students go for undergrad...unfortunately, Berkeley is not the great undergrad it used to be. Duke is completely superior. Sorry.</p>

<p>National Recognition - Duke is widely acknowledged as the better undergrad by US News, Newsweek, the Carnegie Rankings, Wall Street Journal...I mean cmon, if you don't think Duke is better than Cal you are pretty in-the-dark about colleges.
International recognition? Duke is ranked 11th in THES, Cal ranked 8th. This is a ranking for grad programs anyways. So Cal doesn't win by alot despite everyone pretending it has a huge international edge. Global companies prefer recruiting Duke grads anyways.
Want to go to school with smarter people? Duke by a long shot. Not even close. Everyone who applied to Duke and Berkeley probably had Berkeley as a safety if they got into Duke.
More opportunities? You make your own opportunities in college. But Duke has many more undergrad scholarship winners than Cal over the past decade, despite it being much smaller.
Interested in grad school? Duke sends a much much higher proportion of students to top law schools.</p>

<p>Bottom line: If you pretend Berkeley is as good as Duke, good for you. You obviously are living in the 1970s. Duke is clearly superior today. It doesn't even matter, since most of the people saying Berkeley is a good school are probably Duke rejects anyways as thats the only reason why someone would pretend Berkeley is as good.</p>

<p>Anyways, I think this thread should be locked up by now. Its basically me presenting facts, and Vangie and KyleDavid saying facts don't matter.</p>

<p>A list of schools definetely better than Berkeley for undergrad:
Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, MIT, CIT, Duke, Dartmouth, Penn, Brown, Columbia, Northwestern, UChicago, Georgetown, JHU.</p>

<p>If you get into one of the above schools, if you have any valid info at all, you would pick them over Berkeley without a second thought.</p>

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<p>OMG i'm a california resident...noooo i should be complimenting ucb...ucb owns because as a california resident i actually have a greater chance in gaining admission to grad school there unlike duke, must look towards my future prospects which is more possible to be connected w/ ucb than duke...ucb owns, duke down all the way...=D</p>

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<p>lol thethoughtprocess, your ignorance pleases me.</p>

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<p>thethoughtprocess i want to add a bit more to that list, i believe alot of liberal arts colleges are also better like harvey mudd, pomona, etc, not just only the top ranked lac and many universities are also better like cornell and rice
lol i also claim South Harmon Institute of Technology as better than ucb =D yes...this thread needs to be locked...ok my last comment was a joke just for fun =D hehe</p>

225

<p>I got a question. Is this whole "the top 25%/6000 of the student body is as good as/better than XYZ school's" argument only applicable to any public against private XYZ? Can we use the same argument for Cornell vs Princeton? If not, why not? :)</p>

226

<p>
[quote]
Bottom line: If you pretend Berkeley is as good as Duke, good for you. You obviously are living in the 1970s. Duke is clearly superior today. It doesn't even matter, since most of the people saying Berkeley is a good school are probably Duke rejects anyways as thats the only reason why someone would pretend Berkeley is as good.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>EVERYONE SAYS BERKELEY IS A GOOD SCHOOL (I don't think anyone can deny this even if u love duke with a passion, you can't reject this, berkeley is a good school). hmm I say berkeley is a good school, I wasn't a duke reject, in fact I REJECTED Duke to go to maryland grad. Don't generalize.</p>

227

<p>i don;t think he ever said ucb undergrad was bad, he just said overall duke is better for undergrad</p>

228

<p>Berkeley is a good school, Duke is much better</p>

<p>kyledavid...I'm the one searching for facts and data to prove my point...you are the one saying "oh, evidence means nothing, I just think UCB is really awesome and must be as good as Duke because I think it is"
Good luck recommended a backup school over a school like Duke to a high school senior accepted to both, considering Duke has above a 75% crossadmit percentage with every school except HYPSM Dartmouth Columbia Brown Penn Chicago NU and Georgetown (based on data made public by the Duke office of admissions).</p>

<p>chaoses, I'm not talking about grad school at all and never have been so I think your comments are irrelevant</p>

229

<p>Duke might be better in terms of SAT, average quality of its admitted college students.</p>

<p>But Berkeley is clearly better in the quality of almost all its individual programs (check out USNEWS graduate school ranking, NRC ranking). Berkeley's faculty has a reputation that rivals schools such as Harvard, Stanford, and MIT. Berkeley's faculty has won much more prestigious rewards and memberships in national academies. In fact, only 4 schools have more than 200 members in USA national academies. They are Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and Berkeley, in that order.</p>

230

<p>search in
<a href="http://www.nasonline.org/site/Dir?sid=1011&view=basic&pg=srch%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nasonline.org/site/Dir?sid=1011&view=basic&pg=srch&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Math: Berkeley (8 members), Duke (0)
Physics: Berkeley (17), Duke (0)
Chemistry: Berkeley (18), Duke (1)
Applied math: Berkeley (7), Duke (1)
genetics: Berkeley (3), Duke (1)
biochemistry: Berkeley (9), Duke (4)</p>

<p>In fact, Berkeley has more NAS members in Math, Physics, and Chemistry than any other university in US. So in terms of faculty reputation, Berkeley wins, hands down.</p>

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<p>Datalook, apparently you don't understand the difference between grad and undergrad. Grad school is about doing research with big name professors. However, the professors at Duke are doing a better job giving their students a better job giving their students opportunities to win top scholarships in undergrad research (ie Fullbright and Goldwater scholarships, where Duke is among the best in the nation, slightly behind HYPSM). They are also doing a good job getting this kids shipped off to top professional schools. Duke is much more undergrad focused than Berkeley, which has massive grad programs.</p>

<p>I've already addressed the similar argument made by people saying Berkeley has more Nobel prize winners affiliated with it. Berkeley has massive grad programs whereas Duke does not. This would explain any disparity in NAS. Being in NAS doesn't make you a better undergrad professor - in fact, it gives you more of an excuse not to care about undergrads if anything.</p>

<p>Berkeley is still a top 15 or top 20 school. Again, the list of undergrads definetely better than Berkeley include: HYPSM, Dartmouth, Duke, Brown, Columbia, Penn, Georgetown, JHU, Chicago, NU and this doesn't include LACs.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Duke might be better in terms of SAT, average quality of its admitted college students.</p>

<p>But Berkeley is clearly better in the quality of almost all its individual programs

[/quote]

Your point being...?</p>

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<p>datalook, you are looking at grad experience...and it would not make sense if all the bright students go to duke when ucb offers a clearly better experience</p>

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<p>UNDERGRAD program is a lot more than awards won by senior faculty.</p>

<p>Here are some FACTS about UNDERGRADS:
1. Duke UNDERGRAD teams had consistently placed in the top-5 in Putnam Math Competition despite the fact no math faculty is NAS member.<br>
2. According to 2005 med school placement stats, Duke's UNDERGRADS (graduating seniors) had an astonishing 89% admit rate while Berkeley UNDERGRADS had 62%. Some may argue that's simply because Duke's undergrads were of higher caliber to being with. But stats also show Berkeley undergrads somehow need significantly HIGHER GPAs on average to get accepted into any med school than Duke's in spite of Berkeley's perceived grade deflation. Duke's admits had average GPA of 3.53 while Berkeley's admits had average GPA of about 3.74 (calculated based on the tabulated data using midpoint for each GPA range). </p>

<p><a href="http://www.aas.duke.edu/trinity/prehealth/appendix/2005HPACAnnualReport.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.aas.duke.edu/trinity/prehealth/appendix/2005HPACAnnualReport.pdf&lt;/a>
<a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/2005seniors.stm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/2005seniors.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Why Duke undergrads had done better in those two even after taking the difference in student caliber into account? One of the possible and likely reasons is Duke administration devotes more resources for their undergrads. According to Sakky, Berkeley doesn't even have a premed advising committee. Things like this wont' show up in the faculty reputation (grad department) rankings or NAS/Nobel..etc numbers that seem to be thrown around repeatedly on this thread.</p>

<p>There's no question Berkeley name and graduate prgorams are more well-known internationally. But using that as the only argument for its UNDERGRADS program is very weak in my opinion.</p>

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<p>Sam lee:
you cannot compare the 3.53 w/ ucb's because that 3.53 includes alumnai's also and by looking at the comment next to duke
<a href="http://www.collegejournal.com/special/top50feeder.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.collegejournal.com/special/top50feeder.pdf&lt;/a>
so yea...BUT...just looking at senior grads, not alumn.
Accepted Seniors 3.63(Cum) 3.53(Sci) 33.2(mcat)
is extremely similar to jhu's undergrad accepted med school applicant pool also
Average science GPA of 3.51
Average nonscience GPA of 3.66
MCAT average of 29.7 (9.6 verbal, 9.9
physical sciences, 10.2 biological sciences, and a
P writing sample)
to destroy the rumor that jhu has deflation lol:
average class gpa=3.4-3.5 for sci/humanities
average class gpa=3.3-3.4 for engineering
sorry i don;t have cummulative gpa data for jhu
so overall, duke is still doing extremely well in med school acceptances =D
not sure about the average class gpa for duke but if it has inflation and it is still doing so well then yea...duke really owns =D lol
i think op did not have intention to go to med school b/c ucb is impossible for that...they have basically almost no advising system
edited</p>

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<p>I actually meant to use 3.63. That was a typo. I try my best to compare the equivalents (same years stats and same group). :) </p>

<p>Regarding jhu's data, may I point out that there is circumstantial evidence (published article) that shows jhu <em>discourages</em> applicants with low stats to apply too boost its overall admit rate? I have never heard of anything of this sort happening at Duke. So you may not be comparing the equivalents. :p</p>

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<p>i am providing the stats of admitted students. We are comparing stats of admitted students
edit: i never mentioned jhu's percentage of acceptance which is not accurate b/c it is not an accurate way to compare/contrast
edit: however, i do believe duke provides a kinder/nicer environment than jhu =D baltimore is not as nice a place as duke's vicinity =D</p>

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<p>Hey, don't hate on Baltimore. It's better than Durham. :p</p>

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<p>Isn't JHU's med school acceptance rate (ie accepted divided by applied) the highest in the country?</p>

<p>I've heard that and seen that in their admissions brochure, but I haven't seen any data on it.</p>

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<p>yes but somehow the myth above exists...there really is just a list of requirements which they give you at the beginning and you just follow it then you get a rec, eg: you must complete prereq courses for med school and volunteer in a clinic things like that O.o
edit: i mean if that was what lee was saying then yes, the school does not give recs out to people who did not complete the prereqs for med school O.o but yea...</p>