Emory vs Duke vs Vanderbilt

Colleges and Universities A-Z Emory University
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<p>Financial aid isn't a determining factor. But I toured Emory and loved the campus as the location (I think it was just being right outside of Atlanta) but I felt the school spirit was a little lacking. However, having the CDC on campus was positive. I'm going to the Duke Blue Devil Days in 2 weeks but I'm not touring Vanderbilt. I think I would like the city of Nashville but it just isn't possible to get there before the deadline to tour. One factor however is that Duke has the major in which I am highly interested in, being Evolutionary Anthropology while the other two do not. Also I was wondering if "Brand" name connotations would be a factor later as I plan to apply to medical school with Duke being the best followed by Emory possibly? I was just wondering what do you all think as far as the social scene goes for Duke and your opinions on my options.</p>

<p>I also would do track and field at Emory but I would have to walk on to continue to at Duke, i was wondering if anyone could attest to the difficulty of this.</p>

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<p>honestly… Duke. however, Emory’s medicine/bio is amazingly good too</p>

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<p>If you were going to do pre-med, I’d pick Emory; however you stated only Duke has your major which is pretty important. The environment at both schools is completely different though. You should visit both and see which one fits you better, they’re both amazing schools. I’ve visited Duke and briefly Emory and liked Emory’s environment a lot better. Duke might be better for you since you can find your major there.</p>

4

<p>Duke actually offers and is world-renowned for the area of study you are considering (Evolutionary Anthropology) so I think this is a pretty easy decision. Duke owns and operates its own Lemur Center which is the largest base of these creatures outside of Madagascar. Duke also has its own Marine Laboratory off the coast of North Carolina.</p>

5

<p>Emory also has a evolution and behavior concentration within its anthropology major, as well as the Yerkes Primate Institute. Furthermore, Emory offers quite a few opportunities to study disease epidemiology, probably more than Duke, which might be of relevance to a bio-anthro major. Emory also offers quite a few opportunities for studying the ecology of various places (not sure why that’s relevant, but goldenboy talked about Duke’s Marine Laboratory).</p>

<p>As far as name recognition goes, Emory is well known in the medical community, partly owing to its affiliation with the CDC. I’m from the West, and when I told my doctors and a UCI bio professor that I’d be going to Emory, they talked about how great it was.</p>

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<p>True I really liked the aspect of having the CDC on campus for research purposes.</p>

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<p>I go with Duke because it is much more prestigious and you can still research at the CDC even if you go to Duke. </p>

<p>Emory has no advantage over Duke. </p>

<p>I mean do you really think you want to research while you are at school?<br>
Even if you do get an internship at the CDC it is most likely going to be in the summer anyway.</p>

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<p>I don’t think choosing on prestige affords much of an advantage in this case (I mean, they are pre-med. They just need a place where they can get a decent GPA/not be weeded out and good science teaching. All 3 have it, and Emory has much smaller sections for the intro. weedouts which can be very helpful. It’s possible that we also have better teachers for such classes as they have mostly the best teachers on lecture track teaching them) , especially for the educational experience. Don’t be so shallow. The only time I would truly factor that in is if HPYSMC were in that list (because these places offer unusually solid opps. in the sciences both in and out of the classroom whereas the 3 the OP mentions are likely to be somewhat similar). In addition, this thread is outdated. And I knew of friends that interned at the CDC during the year, just saying…</p>

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<p>I’m not saying you can not intern in the year. I am jst saying interning in the year may mess up your schedule or make life difficult. Still, bernie is right. All three are good choices, just that Duke is the best among the three.</p>

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<p>i have toured all three. The campuses of Vanderbilt and Duke are much more active, and there seems to be more of a community feel. I cant say much for what you are planning on majoring in, but when it comes to the college environment and student life, it is hard to find it as vibrant as Duke and Vanderbilt while maintaining such academic standards. Some people just care about the academics, but i personally want the entire experience. I am going to have a hard time choosing between those two if i am fortunate enough to get into both.</p>

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<p>good job shel04, </p>

<p>i completely agree, there seems to be no love for emory, even at emory.</p>

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<p>The love for Emory doesn’t manifest itself in rabid school spirit like at some of our other private schools. It comes across in a general pride of going there and experiencing academic excellence. Except during finals week, a student has to try to be bored at Emory given the amazing amount of club activities, cultural events, parties, etc that go on. To say that people don’t love going to Emory is just foolish and wrong. Yes there are some, but is it the entire student body or even close to that number? No way.</p>

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<p>I’m not surprised that Fwu… says that as it seems to be mainly him that has no love for Emory as indicated by his posts lol. The other two campuses (I’ve been to them before) don’t seem much more active if you ask me. I think people have preconceived notions of how schools are supposed to be and then make the profile fit when they visit. For example, if they expect Emory to be less vibrant than the other two because there is no D-1 and they wanted D-1, they’ll already be touring the school with a negative opinion. And even if the campus is quite vibrant, they’ll ignore it or overlook it because they’ve ultimately already made up their minds and are going through motions by visiting such a place. And then, it also depends on the day you visit a school. It is very possible to visit some schools on a day where a lot of stuff is happening and others on a very normal day. I don’t buy the whole “I can tell Emory is less vibrant because I visited for a day” argument. It’s full of crap. 1 day doesn’t paint a good picture (also, what if a person visited one school during finals week and the others before it. We don’t know the context of their visits). </p>

<p>As for Duke and Vanderbilt being so much different from other schools…please…Many other schools (even top ones) have exactly that same type of environment (Notre Dame Definitely), but with much more intellectual vitality thrown into the mix (and intellectual vitality does not usually manifest itself as “rah rah”, but it can sometimes). The difference is, that the types of people saying that about those two don’t necessarily value a high level of intellectual vitality (beyond completing coursework) on campus and would rather trade it for a sports fervor and the “work hard play hard” type of place (which suggests the two remain separate by the way). Some places have all 3 (Stanford for example). But some people really value the “state school” type of atmosphere with smart people, better profs., and harder courses. People view the “college experience” as what has often been portrayed in the media and films that often depict state U’s. Again, many expect elite privates to be like those places with “smarter” people and more oppurtunities.</p>

<p>Academics and general receptiveness to rigor: I was curious one day to actually see how teaching was viewed by students at other elites and looked at and compared Emory and Vanderbilt mainly for science classes (I used ratemyprofessor.com). What is interesting is that it seemed as if Emory raters seemed more receptive or less negative about having a more difficult professor whereas a very challenging professor at Vanderbilt was often torn apart even if they may have been decent at teaching. If they were somewhat challenging, they expected lots of guidance on how to take the tests. For example, one orgo. teacher was somewhat challenging, but it was okay because she had a good “classpack”, like some sort of semester long review pack for the class. We don’t have this for such classes and nor do students expect it, yet a teacher like Weinschenk, Soria, or Gallivan who is likely to be significantly harder than any chem. prof. anywhere gets very good ratings. The same pattern can be seen in biology and gen. chem. I’m betting that we either have better teachers for those classes or that our students in such classes are less whiny than I thought, or at least less whiny than those. Student reviews of teachers can actually tell a lot about the academic environment at a school. That’s the type of stuff I would concern myself. Unless it’s an engineering school, I would be pretty confident of my ability to have “fun”.</p>

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<p>Whenhen i think you support my point considering you left emory for oklahoma?</p>

<p>And bernie the public perception of emory is not quite positive. Urban dictionary, although may not be credible or professional, does make my point. </p>

<p>Anyway of the three, I would rank 1. Duke (by far), 2. Vandy 3. Emory. Emory has been going through alot of trouble lately- the department cuts, lying about their scores, and the wagner’s racist comments.</p>

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<p>Actually I don’t. I left Emory because it doesn’t offer my major (geology) or any analogue. I still have a ton of Emory pride.</p>

<p>Also, the scores issue and Wagner’s comments have been debated ad naseum. Quite frankly those issues are fairly minor, particularly because of the corrective actions that Emory instituted after it admitted that it lied about its posted stats. I do agree about the cuts. Very disappointing, but that doesn’t change the fact that Emory is an excellent institution. I’m sorry you haven’t had the best experience but your experience isn’t the norm.</p>

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<p>Is public perception reality or does it ever relate to the quality of your education moreso than an ethical shortcoming? Should we say the same about Harvard and its cheating scandals (also remember the Larry Summers episode)? What about Duke after its Lacrosse scandal. Yale after its sexual assault protests? Places like Berkeley have been having serious financial issues. Be real here, seriously. The Virginia issues. You are ranking based upon public perception and prestige and not actual quality. I certainly would not rank Vandy better in terms of quality. It would be tied. Maybe Duke…, but still. Public Perception can vary dramatically with whatever is happening at the institution at the time. When Harvard goes through an awkward moment, no one is as naive as say, you, to discount it as an excellent institution. Crap happens. Top institutions aren’t impervious to bad patches or awkward moments that lead to bad perception from the public. I would honestly say that someone who can’t see this is probably too stuck up or naive to do so. Again, they live in a fantasy land of what a top school is supposed to be. Honestly, I don’t imagine Wagner’s remarks as degrading the in class experience of many students. Nor does the public perception of his remarks. Please feel free to tell me when the current public perception of the university caused your good professors to stop teaching well, or campus organizations to close down, or your grades to go down. I mean, surprisingly, it didn’t even cause us to get less applications. Other than the departmental closings, it appears Emory is fine. And although that is very disappointing and annoying, elite institutions have a way of making it work. Emory is really no exception.</p>

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<p>Loyalty and faithfulness to one’s alma mater is to be commended. However, to say one can cheat because others also cheat is not only frowned on but also laughed at. </p>

<p>Now let us first be on the same page. The suspects in the Duke case were all innocent.
Emory is no Ivy League. Emory can not be compared to an Ivy League. That is reality and public perception. </p>

<p>Public perception is important and does relate to quality. If people think one school is good, they will apply to it. Professors also see that and famous scholars will flock there. Emory’s endowment is huge. They have plenty of money, yet their rank is low relative to their financial strength. Therefore Emory has the money to be an Ivy League caliber school. They can hire UChicago econ professors. But UChicago (yes I know it is not an Ivy League but it is Ivy League material) econ professors will not go to Emory. </p>

<p>Furthermore those scandals of other schools were made by students. Remember some may even be teenagers. President Wagner has NO excuse. He has a PhD so surely he must be a smart man with some knowledge and common sense? Yet he showed his stupidity in making that comment. If this is what Emory has to offer in it professors, then Emory should not even be ranked in the top 20. </p>

<p>Give a few more years and Emory will fall out of even the top 30’s. Emory has been falling in the past years and it will not get better unless they get rid of that incompetent president who believes the 3/5 compromise was a good thing. Not to alsp mention he is cutting the econ department while at the same time enlarging the religion department LOL???</p>

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<p>Innocent or not, it was indeed a scandal that called attention to some issues of campus culture at Duke. Also, Interesting how you choose to just brush off issues that show similarities with mistakes made at the Ivy Leagues by virtue of Emory not being an Ivy . You didn’t address the Larry Summers issue (maybe you don’t know about it. Go look it up). That was administrative issues at Harvard. The Virginia episode was based upon administrative issues. </p>

<p>Emory is not enlarging the RELIGION the department (even if it was, that is a pretty darned good program. I’ve taken classes in it). That is the THEOLOGY SCHOOL which is a separate entity from the college. Just like the medical school, it functions independently and likely has its own endowment and donor base. Also, falling out of top 30, that won’t happen primarily because of the class sizes, endowment and SAT scores (this is why the top 20-25 is mostly populated by private schools). Emory will generally be a top 20-25 school. The school isn’t falling moreso than being corrected to where it should be in my opinion. Anywhere between 17-25 makes sense to me. And if you want to see not living up to potential. What about places like Vanderbilt whose incoming class statistics have skyrocketed (as in beyond higher ranked institutions), but have their rank stay the same (as in USNWR does not care enough about the difference to boost them far beyond their current rank)? Emory’s SAT’s are essentially stagnant and we are at least able to hold our position. One could argue that it may be admissions that prevents us from being at a higher rank. Emory already has very solid scholars (some pretty well known scholars in the humanities and social sciences, and very prominent faculty members in the sciences) for its current private peer group (ND, Vandy, Rice) when you think about it. Often the key to attracting and retaining the best scholars is paying them well. </p>

<p>Emory clearly has more talent than expected in that arena which would explain why so many Ivies and other top 10-15 institutions actually come and attempt to poach our faculty members away. This is not as common in our immediate peer group. Most of the people that get poach away are poached away because they are being offered a better position with more money. They aren’t leaving or deciding not to come because “Emory is less than X”. These are adults you are talking about here. They want good pay and a solid support system. They are not like graduating high school students that mainly go by the grapevine and shallow perceptions of prestige, so you ought to throw that notion away now. Unfortunately, your analysis of how students choose is not nuanced enough either. We all know, for example, that graduating HS students that are talented will want to go to an Ivy or selective institution. We also know that Ivies have a halo effect where all of them are perceived as better than non-Ivies (even if 2-3 of them are not). We also know that many HS students considering the pre-professions (especially pre-med) often look for prestigious schools that are perceived to the most fun and where they can easily earn high grades (which explains the numerous threads on this site that ask how much grade inflation/deflation do various schools have). Many criteria which have nothing to do with the academic quality of a school. As for the halo effect of Ivies; think about it like this. Most of those apps. are not remotely qualified to go to one. People just randomly apply. </p>

<p>Do we really need a bunch of people who we wouldn’t bother admitting apply (it would be much better to have less, get good people to apply, admit, and then enroll the best among them. That’s what Emory needs to work on. Not simply getting a bunch of apps)? Some of the popularity of certain schools is a figment of pop culture and marketing moreso than perceptions of quality. You can also do things such as make your app. easier (Chicago going to Common App. for example, and some schools not necessarily requiring much supplementary stuff. Some schools having "pre-apps). Some people apply to schools because they received a brochure, said “sounds good”, checked out the application requirement and determined it was easy, so went for it, even if they may not have much interest. </p>

<p>As for how it could be doing better, I know several ways and agree it could be spending money better, but let’s not try to pretend that it is inferior in the categories you mention to its nearest private peers because it simply is not. For example, the number of national academy members (in whatever field) is essentially identical. The robustness of the research scene is essentially identical. We likely have a much stronger and more prominent scene in terms of the humanities (due to people like Salman Rushdie, Trethaway, and a hot English Department. Also, the well-known rare books collections and the attention it attracts certainly gets us some notoriety) whereas the “near peers” have a more robust engineering scene. Despite differences in incoming SAT scores, I noticed that the number of national awards such as Fulbright, Truman, Goldwater, etc. was basically identical to these peers. An inferior institution cannot claim this. Something about Emory or its environment causes a gap to close in student achievement in terms of these national honors. One would likely predict that Emory students be less accomplished because of the admissions differences, but it is not the case and it is outcome that matters. Emory can mainly benefit from better marketing and administrative leadership. The quality of the academics and environment is not much different from the near peers.</p>

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<p>I would NEVER, EVER, EVER put the Theology school above an Economics department. </p>

<p>I think it is time to see reality, as you have put it. The reality is theology, no matter how “moral” or “good” it is, does not make money. A theology degree is worthless unless you want to be a pastor, which does not pay well unless you are at some huge evangelical church. </p>

<p>Emory’s economics program is a joke. Everyone familiar with is knows it. What Emory SHOULD be doing is cutting aid to the Theology school and increase funding/finding a way to make its econ program better. Which top school does not have an economics program? Emory basically said, “what the H—, our econ program sucks. We might as well get rid of it.” </p>

<p>Is that how a top 20-25 school act? If so, then American education is a joke. </p>

<p>Again, I would like to argue that public perception and prestige is important. That is why the Ivy League have high quality education. People believe it is good so people go there. I can not say the same about Phoenix University or some other online colleges. They too, can be argued, they give “quality” education.</p>

<p>But what exactly is “quality?” </p>

<p>“Quality” can not be measured. But prestige and public perception does. </p>

<p>Very few people outside of Georgia has ever heard of Emory. When you ask if people has heard of Emory in Virginia, they say “Emory and Henry?” Only the doctors have heard of it, thanks mostly to the CDC.</p>

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<p>Very few people outside of the midwest have heard of WashU (or even Chicago or NU for that matter) and they do extremely well academically with even USNWR agreeing that they are better than some Ivies. You are going based upon naivete again. This argument is poor at best. Again, it is not their public perception that “causes” them to have a great education. Many places were actually “discovered” and already had a great education. Many of the liberal arts colleges which are amazing don’t have the highest level of prestige among the general public but you can’t claim that they don’t give an absolutely phenomenal education. Also, places like MIT don’t get lots of apps like Ivies, but it’s doing very well (obviously). Aside from this. It is obvious, as seen with grade inflation, that schools that suddenly get a lot of apps and good students don’t suddenly decide to educate better, make their programs more interesting and rigorous, or anything like that. Often, they instead try to get the “nicest campus and amenities” to house these new smarter people and attract more applicants. So more apps don’t= institution providing better education. Many people have actually argued (it’s been discussed a lot in academia among educators) that elite education, in general, may not be as good as it was because of the popularity wars so to speak. </p>

<p>And I actually do think that American education at the UG level is quite a joke (in terms of rigor and seriousness. For example, Oxbridge, University College London, Imperial College London are likely way more intense than the top US institutions at the undergrad. level and are more comparable to places like the engineering schools in terms of rigor. One difference is that they’re non-engineering institutions have managed to keep even their social science and humanities departments relatively intense whereas the US schools , at least research U’s fail to do this in general. Also, their pre-university education is generally more rigorous and specialized than ours so they can expect more from students at University) compared to many institutions abroad. </p>

<p>Also, I keep telling you this. The theology school is separate from the college (I feel like Laney Graduate School is essentially inextricably tied to the college. Also I think Laney, since Emory is fairly new among our Research 1 peers, is also quite young and is small. Many of the professional schools likely precede it). It already is extremely established as a professional school and is actually one of the schools that put Emory on the map (as in, it was the first to ever have a ranking in league with the Ivy counterparts. I ranked in league with Ivy divinity schools and we still have one of the largest theology libraries/collections in the US). The Theology School has a legacy that you neither know about nor understand. There are videos on Emory’s youtube channel that apparently explain its role in Emory’s development and gaining prestige in the 90s through the eyes of the university president that basically layed the groundwork for Emory becoming a research U. The point is, the theology school was always excellent. Can the econ. dept. claim that? I don’t agree with cutting its grad. program, but again, you are comparing two entities that are inherently disconnected. It’s not like the University said “well we believe we’ll put this money into the theology school instead”. They had already been planning to expand theology WAY before talks of cutting any depts arrived (one part of it was added during my freshman year). The school was/is essentially self-sustainable because of its legacy. It’s a dept that gets a lot of support in and out of the university. Now I’ll say that one way to solve this problem of program cuts would be to at least give the depts to be affected a grace period to try to get raise their own funds or save themselves. That makes sense. However, again, some depts not affected already had their support base or plans already in the works before this came about (like chemistry can have one chemistry donate like 1/10 of the necessary funds to build an expansion. This is called self-sustainable). The place is similar to the b-school (which may actually be the problem for the econ. dept here) in terms of legacy.</p>