<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>Actually that .1 difference makes a difference. Don’t let the overall undergraduate ranking of a University cloud your judgment. The overall ranking is a ranking of undergraduate “experience” as opposed to academic quality of the University hence why USNWR came up with a separate list of how academics judge a University. That .1 difference could easily mean a difference of how much research is produced in a given year and how much money is poured into such research – factors that may influence the most academic high school seniors in choosing a college. The list came out to show that if one wants to go to college for purely academic reasons it wouldn’t make sense to attend Columbia over Berkeley or Dartmouth over JHU. Right now Duke along with JHU and Harvard sits atop a list of schools with the most research funding. That could mean more opportunity for undergraduates students to immerse themselves in research. I think that’s where the .1 difference comes in. </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>
<p>Please just be quiet because you have not a single clue what you’re talking about. I’ve observed your post on here for a long time now and you seem fond of jumping at every opportunity you get to sham a Duke alum/student/affiliate. If anything it reveals your own insecurity than anything else… No one is saying Penn is a worse school or that Duke is better than every other school out there. But I call facts as I see it whether it makes Duke look spectacular or not.</p>
<p>Your post is even more interesting because Duke students actually have a reputation for being laid back and far less cutthroat/competitive than their peers at other top 15 schools.</p>
<p>Next time worry about Northwestern.</p>
<p>Beyphy, excellent post and I actually have met the guy in the article.</p>
<p>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?"</p>
<p>Thanks again for all the info, I just wish this stayed more on topic instead of turning into a battle of which school is better. Thanks to the insight I’ve gotten, I have chosen that Duke is a better fit for me. I have visited the university twice and never once came across a single member who goes out of his way to boast about the school; everyone is exceptionally laid back in my opinion, if anything. I think we can suffice it to say that both Duke, Penn, etc are all great schools for the right people.</p>
Sorry, but this is utter nonsense, and demonstrates a total lack of knowledge and understanding of how the overall US News ranking is calculated, what US News’ Peer Assessment is, how it’s put together, what it represents, and what any .1 change represents on a year-to-year basis. For starters, you ought to try reading the Peer Assessment survey description on the page to which you, yourself linked:</p>
<p>Absolutely nothing about overall research or research funding is asked in the Peer Assessment survey.</p>
<p>And speaking of which, if you examine the annual research expenditures and funding of the top schools–say, those with a Peer Assessment of 4.4-4.9–you’ll find virtually NO correlation between annual research budgets and Peer Assessment. The relative sizes of research budgets and funding vary from year to year, but nobody with any common sense believes that the relative academic reputations of the top schools also vary from year to year. Again, that’s just plain silly. :rolleyes:</p>
That’s the bottom line and, as I said at the beginning of this thread, it’s really a matter of personal preference and fit.</p>
<p>Academically–including academic reputation among employers, grad schools, etc.–these two schools are equivalent (as are most of the other top schools), and you can’t go wrong either way.</p>
<p>This is pretty speculative. It’s pretty doubtful that college officials pay such fine detail to the small fluctuations in research, awards, etc. And outside of a few big-name prestigious prizes, how likely is it for college officials to be up to date on the activity of other universities? Do college officials and Michigan know what’s going on at Vanderbilt right now? Do those at UCLA know what’s going on in Chicago? Seems pretty doubtful to me.</p>
<p>But even if they did, such a small fluctuation is research would be unlikely to boost a university from strong to distinguished, or vice-versa. I doubt officials think along the lines of ‘i think Penn got less research this year. It’s just strong this year. Let’s see if it can be distinguished next year again.’</p>
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<p>Glad your first-hand experience differs from PG’s observations. Best of luck on gaining admittance to Duke!</p>
<p>Congratulations on your decision jt! If admitted to Duke, I know you’ll enjoy your time there. I certainly did. You must update us once you receive your results.</p>
I agree with this 100%, as all of my posts in this thread–and everywhere else on CC for the last 6-plus years–clearly indicate. And I’d also note that only the proponents of Duke (including yourself, incidentally) made claims in this thread that one of these two schools is more selective than, or has a better academic reputation than, the other, despite the lack of any real evidence or statistically significant basis for such claims. So not exactly a “flame war between schools.” :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Of course. That’s obvious. That’s why you can tell a lot about the character of the proponents of each school. A confident person like 45 Percenter can say – they are both great, it comes down to personal preference, either choice would be terrific. A unconfident, aggressive, I-gotta-show-everyone-we’re-good-yes-we-are makes a big deal over minute differences in rankings and tries to portray one school as superior. It is my observation that there are a lot of Duke boosters who engage in the latter and it’s relatively rare for them to answer these queries with the kind of expansive, hey-it’s-all-good thinking. Anyway, pot, kettle, black – you’ve done that yourself, alicejohnson.</p>
<p>They probably know enough to circle a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 next to a University’s name in rating if its academic programs are “distinguished” (5) or “marginal” (1). NOTE: Only a handful of schools can have “distinguished” academic programs. If too many are “distinguished” then they lose their distinction.</p>
Problem is, the results are derived by averaging the circles drawn by 446 presidents, provosts, and deans of admissions (or someone they delegate to complete the survey)–as per US News for the 2013 ranking (53% of the “842 top college officials” who were surveyed)–at a wide variety of institutions around the country, and based on the following rather nebulous criteria:</p>
<p>The point being that, yes, in a general sense, the Peer Assessment gives us a rough estimation of the relative academic reputations of schools. But to conclude that one school has a better overall academic reputation than another school simply because the other school has an average US News Peer Assessment 0.1 point–or even 0.2 or 0.3 point–below the first school in a particular year’s survey, is kind of frivolous and silly, don’t you think? Especially once you get below, say, the 4.7 level. ;)</p>
<p>It’s based on “what I heard and believe to be true,” not real knowledge. You’re right. What university president / provost / whatever REALLY knows what’s going on at other universities to any significant extent? They don’t. It’s all anecdata. My friend now teaches at Vanderbilt, so it’s gotta be good. I met someone from Duke and I really liked him, I bet it’s a good program. Blah blah blah. Is anyone <em>really</em> “evaluating” Harvard, or just circling a high school because it’s Harvard and it’s gotta be good?</p>
<p>To be fair, if for purely academic reasons I probably wouldn’t attend Duke over JHU and Berkeley. </p>
<p>I’d say the .1 difference that you undervalue so much really falls in line with the perceptions people have of schools. I also don’t think it’s as rough of an estimation as you think. Think about how many 5’s Penn would have to garner by college officials in order to score a 4.5 like Duke did. Or how many 5’s Duke would have to garner in order to score a 4.7 like Berkeley did.</p>
<p>Seriously ask yourself this: if you were attending college for purely academics would you attend Penn and Duke over Berkeley?</p>
<p>And I certainly don’t think the evaluation process is as shallow as pizzagirl puts it. The vast majority of college officials have probably taught at another school (probably in the same league as the current one) before filling out such a survey. And it’s not difficult to get a sense of just how academic a school is through various literature.</p>
<p>Please remember that some college officials opt to not fill out the surveys. It’s not as if everyone who has half-knowledge on peer schools are choosing to participate in the assessment.</p>