<p>[Incoming</a> Class Profile - Penn Admissions](<a href=“http://www.admissions.upenn.edu/apply/incoming-class-profile]Incoming”>http://www.admissions.upenn.edu/apply/incoming-class-profile)</p>
<p><a href=“http://admissions.duke.edu/images/uploads/process/Class2016Profile.pdf[/url]”>http://admissions.duke.edu/images/uploads/process/Class2016Profile.pdf</a> (Don’t think Duke published 2017 yet).</p>
<p>Their 25-75% ile standardized test scores seem quite close.</p>
<p>^ Keep in mind that the 25%-75% range published on Penn’s web site is for students actually ENROLLED, whereas Duke publishes on its web site the range for students who were ACCEPTED. But if you compare the ranges for the enrolled students at both schools (e.g., on the College Board site), they are still quite close like you said. :)</p>
<p>Academic reputation is very close but if you want to split hairs, I would say Penn. Penn is ranked higher across the major three professional schools (med/law/biz) and seems to be ranked higher in more fields, by a small margin though if I am not mistaken.</p>
<p>As 45 Percenter pointed out, Duke is one of those schools that show test scores for accepted students but geographical distribution for enrolled students on their published materials. It’s confusing, if not misleading, especially with misleading title like “Class of 20xx Profile”. Even well-educated people can be misled if they read it too quickly.</p>
<p>Honestly, the tiny discrepancies in ranking etc don’t matter at all. Duke and Penn are basically the same. It mostly comes down to personal preference. But if you can’t choose, why don’t you apply to both RD and go from there?</p>
<p>Also, I wonder if the stats for UPenn student scores etc are also skewed? Since they include students from all colleges, including Wharton (which I would assume would have higher overall test scores)?</p>
<p>^ No–the test scores for Penn’s College of Arts and Sciences are quite comparable (when they have been released to, e.g., The Daily Pennsylvanian). If anything, the CR and Writing scores are actually a bit HIGHER in the College, whereas the Math scores would be a bit higher in Wharton and Engineering (not surprisingly).</p>
<p>And despite the impression you might get here on CC, Penn’s College is comparable in every way (national ranking of departments, SATs, high school GPAs, selectivity,etc.) to schools like Duke, Brown, Columbia, etc., and many students choose Penn’s College over those very schools. As anyone familiar with Penn knows, there is A LOT more to Penn–and its academic excellence and reputation–than just Wharton. :rolleyes:</p>
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<p>Well, duh. And in Philadelphia, Penn has a better name than Duke. It always comes down to regions. So many people on CC make the mistake of believing that perceptions in their little corner of the world are national perceptions. That’s true whether your corner is Nowheresville, Idaho or Manhattan.</p>
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<p>Duke has a higher than expected percentage of NC’ians because their applicant pool is going to be more skewed to NC. Please don’t confuse horizontals (what % of their class is from a given state) with verticals (what % of those from a given state are accepted). Duke could have 20% of its freshman class from NC or 80% of its freshman class from NC – and you still wouldn’t know whether they give “preference” to people from NC or whether that simply reflects the make-up of the applicant pool. This mistake is made time and time again on CC.</p>
<p>^ There is a known preference at Duke for North Carolinians. From what I have read, it points to some kind of an endowment agreement with BN Duke to assign a certain percent of seats in state but can’t find links.</p>
<p>That does not mean they are admitting 50% of applicants from NC but it is much better than what Duke admits from the national pool of applicants as a percentage of applicants.</p>
<p>Could Duke’s preference for NCers be due to legacies? If I recall correctly, until the 80s or so, Duke was a fairly regional university. And there’s a strong correlation between being a legacy and being admitted to a given university.</p>
<p>What university prior to the 1980’s wasn’t a regional university, drawing most of its people from its home region? BTW, of all of the top 20 universities, Duke is the one that is alone in having a higher index from another region (Northeast) than its own region (Southeast), per analysis bclintonk and I did on census data.</p>
<p>Yes, when I went to Duke the admissions department said they are required to admit a certain amount of NC residents (I think 10% of Duke’s students must be from NC). But, of course, it’s still tough to get in, no matter where you live.</p>
<p>Every college has preference for in-staters (if only a tiny bit).</p>
<p>It was much higher about 4 years ago (15% in 2009 admission cycle). </p>
<p>So that profile is slowly or rather rapidly changing.</p>
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<p>That may be, but for a private school, the % of people coming from that state may or may not mean that there is “preference” given to people from that state. </p>
<p>Saying that (for example) “20% of College A’s students are from that state” is a completely meaningless number. It could be that 10% of College A’s applicant pool was from that state, they favor students from that state, and therefore the home state is represented twice as heavily as it would be by chance. Or, it could be that 40% of College A’s applicant pool was from that state, they decided deliberately to dis-favor students from that state, and therefore the home state is represented only half as heavily as it would be by chance. I am just tired of seeing this “statistic” touted as meaningful on CC without the corresponding “what was the applicant pool like”?</p>
<p>“^ Penn’s academic reputation is NOT lower than Duke’s, at least among those who are well-informed.”</p>
<p>Actually UPenn DOES have a lower academic reputation than Duke – and I’d say college officials are pretty well-informed.</p>
<p>[Which</a> Universities Are Ranked Highest by College Officials? - Morse Code: Inside the College Rankings (usnews.com)](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2013/02/28/which-universities-are-ranked-highest-by-college-officials]Which”>http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2013/02/28/which-universities-are-ranked-highest-by-college-officials)</p>
<p>Duke: 4.5
UPenn: 4.4</p>
<p>But the OP has made his/her choice so it doesn’t even matter.</p>
<p>And I’m an alumni interviewer so I can confirm alicejohnson’s assertion that Duke isn’t ‘required’ to admit a certain proportion of applicants from NC</p>
<p>^ The US News Peer Assessment for both Penn and Duke changes a bit from year to year. Some years, Penn is at 4.5 and Duke is at 4.4, and vice versa. I wouldn’t use a .1 difference in that in a given year to conclude that one school’s academic reputation is better than another’s.</p>
<p>More significantly, Penn’s academic programs and departments–including liberal arts departments, professional schools, etc.–are ranked overall as high as, if not higher than, Duke’s in such highly respected rankings as those of the National Research Council (NRC), etc.</p>
<p>But to conclude based on a .1 point difference in PA ranking by US News in one particular year that one school’s academic reputation is better than another’s is, quite frankly, silly. For example, do you also believe that for undergraduate education, the general academic reputations of Johns Hopkins and Cornell are better than Duke’s, just because they happened to score .1 point higher in the PA survey than Duke this year? I kind of doubt that you do. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>On CC, I observe that there are a lot of Duke boosters who are very concerned with “proving” Duke’s worth, making a big fuss out of rankings,being the kind of people who would care about a 0.1 difference, etc. it says something about the character and personality of the school – this aggressive self-promotion and highly competitive-with-others nature --and you should think long and hard whether you want to spend 4 years with people who are so anxious about proving their status, versus people who are expansive and don’t need to be competitive.</p>
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<p>I think it says more about the character and personalities that are drawn to CC rather than the character of Duke’s student body. I can think of at least a dozen universities on CC, including both of ours, who have alumni that can be described as such. It is in no way representative of either university’s student body at large. </p>
<p>I don’t think this Duke alumnus cares much about ‘proving Duke’s worth’:</p>
<p>[I</a> live in a van down by Duke University - Salon.com](<a href=“http://www.salon.com/2009/12/07/living_in_a_van/]I”>http://www.salon.com/2009/12/07/living_in_a_van/)</p>
<p>nor do i think such a description is accurate of a highly-respected CC Duke alumnus that I shall not name.</p>
<p>I think it’d be good to take some advice from our friend Mark Twain: All generalizations are false, including this one. ;)</p>
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[cough . . . warblersrule . . . cough]</p>
<p>Who said that??? :p</p>
<p>One of my favorite CC posters.</p>