<p>Not even 30,000, as about ten percent, at Duke and the other schools, is international. </p>
<p>But to my point above, yield should go up as acceptance rates go down, so the premise of this post is wrong.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think it is more like 3.4 million high school graduates. So the top 3% is 100,000. That makes sense, since the NMSC recognizes around 50,000 as in the top 3% of PSAT takers.</p>
<p>Most students at “elite” schools took the PSAT, so if you are in the top 3% of PSAT takers you have roughly a 60% chance of getting in an “elite” school if all PSAT takers apply to elite schools. But only a fraction of them do, so actually the odds are pretty good.</p>
<p>The opinion of many is that the very best go to HYPSM which is hardly the case. You can replicate any of these schools 1,500 or so classes many times over with students with as high or higher gpa’s and test scores. You can go to a good large state school and find 1,500 incoming students with scores as high or higher then the elite schools. Too many want to pound their chest versus just feeling fortunate.</p>
<p>Duke is doing fine. No worries.</p>
<p>Last year’s yield rates:
81% Harvard (SCEA)
74% Stanford (SCEA)
70% MIT (EA)
69% Yale (SCEA)
67% Princeton (SCEA)
63% Penn (ED)
57% Columbia (ED)
56% Brown (ED)
55% UChicago (EA)
53% Cornell (ED)
50% Dartmouth (ED)
43% Northwestern (ED)
42% Duke (ED)
41% Caltech (EA)
38% Johns Hopkins (ED)</p>
<p>duke’s should be up higher this year</p>
<p>These things go in waves; Duke will be fine and has always been considered among the best universities in the country. I remember when I applied to colleges, UChicago had a 50%+ acceptance rate and people thought it was second tier…wow, have things changed in a hurry and now high schoolers seem to think UChicago is the greatest ever. Clearly, UChicago was not second tier even when it had a 60% acceptance rate; it simply had a very self-selecting applicant pool. Brown only fairly recently was able to be need-blind to all its applicants and has done fairly poorly (relatively speaking) at growing its endowment (it still wasn’t need blind to transfers as of a few years ago). Penn has “risen” since the mid 90s; it’s not a recent phenomena. Duke is one of the most consistent schools with regards to research output and rankings/reputation, considered among the top 10 universities in most criteria since the late 80s. Yearly fluctuations don’t indicate much of a trend.</p>
<p>With regards to yield, Duke is somewhat unique in that they’re the only top private school that is in a state with a very top public school (except for Stanford, but there are more than enough applicants in California to fill it up). The state of North Carolina supplies the second most applicants to Duke (California being #1), and Duke also gives them a slight boost in admission; I’m sure nearly all of them also apply to UNC for in-state tuition, so when faced with the decision, they may opt to go to a top 30 school and save all that money. Duke’s applicants most applied to schools are also Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford, so it’s hard to compete with those. A school like Dartmouth probably has significant overlap with LACs, so it’s a bit easier to win cross battles with those. In addition, Duke doesn’t practice yield protection like some schools (e.g. WashU) - they don’t consider likelihood to attend or track phone calls, visits to gauge interest. They simply admit the what they think will give them the best class.</p>
<p>Duke is improving in almost every facet and will continue to be seen as one of the top universities in the country for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>Mandoggy, no offense, but a few of those numbers are completely bogus. Chicago’s yield last year was 47% not 55%.</p>
<p>[Class</a> of ?17 yield above 50 percent ? The Chicago Maroon](<a href=“Laureate discusses themes in contemporary poetry – Chicago Maroon”>Laureate discusses themes in contemporary poetry – Chicago Maroon)</p>
<p>It’s 55% for UChic. I might have gotten some of this year’s numbers.</p>
<p>Maybe Duke should hold out the carrot of merit aid, like Stanford & JHopkins do.</p>
<p>Stanford does not have merit aid.</p>
<p>As far as I know the following in top 20 do:</p>
<p>Chicago
Duke
WashU
JHU
Rice
Vanderbilt
Emory</p>
<p>“Merit aid” is a mushy topic. If a school gives our athletic scholarships, should this be considered merit aid? If a school directs students to alumni in their hometown for scholarhsips, should this be considered merit aid?</p>
<p>Stanford, Notre Dame and Northwestern claim to not provide merit aid, yet use both of these practices to attract students who would otherwise choose different schools.</p>
<p>I think Duke needs to be most worried about Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt is probably Duke’s best peer school in terms of overall undergraduate experience. approx 1700 freshman, nice weather down south, D1 athletics, less intelectual more party/fun/laid back. In fact, when I toured Duke, I was told that Vandy was the school that Duke had the most cross admits and cross applicants with. Duke may be the better academic school but not by much. Duke, i fear is kind of stagnant, but Vandy is a hot school right now. They are popular and they have some advantages over us including Nashville > Durham. I think Vanderbilt is Dukes greatest threat to Southern dominance.</p>
<p>You’re comparing Duke to Vanderbilt?? That’s the problem. Rather than competing with HYP, Duke’s own students are content to compete with schools like Vandy. Absolutely tragic. Duke definitely does not have the most cross admits with Vanderbilt. Don’t pull data out of a hat lol. Also, in case you haven’t noticed, Duke’s not looking for Southern dominance. It’s looking to be counted among the best universities in the world. Open your eyes and look at the big picture for once.
I’m sorry I’m being harsh, but people like you are emblematic of the larger problems plaguing Duke. The school desperately needs to revert back to Terry Sanford’s concept of ‘outrageous ambition’ if it wants to keep up with its true peers.</p>
<p>“If a school directs students to alumni in their hometown for scholarhsips”</p>
<p>Can you explain this? I have never heard of it.</p>
<p>Division I athletic scholarships are dictated by the division a school plays in. It is not considered merit aid. Ivy league chooses not to provide athletic scholarships and as a whole, they are not that good in sports. Stanford, Duke and Notre Dame on the other hand have some major money making sports and the athletic scholarships they hand out to the recruited athletes is tantamount to child labor when one equates the revenue generated vs the cost of the scholarships.</p>
<ol>
<li> Many elite U’s that do not offer merit aid use more “need aid” to bring in upper mid class students and have scholarship women golfers who can’t break 90 but graduated with a 4.0 and 2300 SAT or offer a tuba player a stipend for playing in the band.</li>
<li> redraider has a point about Vanderbilt being hot now. Under their new chancellor they are undergoing a renaissance. Check out their site about their freshman class the past few years. Their merit aid is probably stealing students from HYPS.</li>
<li> The idea Duke needs to worry about other elite schools yield is silly. Yield will go up and down but all the above U’s will be fine.</li>
</ol>
<p>I’m not worried about duke. Personally, I chose duke over Hopkins for class of 2017. </p>
<p>I met 3 other girls at Hopkins who also got into duke, Dartmouth, and penn. Of those 3 girls, 2 are going with me to duke and 1 chose penn. </p>
<p>On the admitted students page, we have quite a couple kids who chose duke over Harvard and Stanford. Lots of people chose duke over Vanderbilt, jhu, penn, dartmouth, ga tech, uc Berkeley, and the like.</p>
<p>Oh! And I have to add Hopkins gave me a $10 k merit scholarship that I turned down for duke</p>
<p>Curveyteen: Your passion is commendable, but – in addition to the many valid points already raised – let me mention one more.</p>
<p>Undergraduate school at Duke is on a phenomenal trajectory (during the last decades: student quality has steadily and substantially increased; applicant numbers are now approximate 32K for slightly more than 1,700 places; faculty stature, research and recognition are at an all-time high; and a tremendous number of superb applicants – who would truly excel at Duke – are annually denied simply due to class size). Moreover, performance in Duke’s undergraduate programs continues to be outstanding (example include professional school admission rates and numbers of Goldwater, Fulbright, Rhodes, Churchill, and similar scholars).</p>
<p>Yet, with all this said, undergraduate education is only one small – critical, to be sure, but small – facet of Duke. The professional schools (including law, medicine, business, public policy, and so forth) are ceaselessly growing in reputation, faculty research, and graduate compensation. Similarly, the Medical Center (both its clinical and it’s research components) is performing wonderfully. We now yearly bestow appreciably more advanced than bachelors degrees.</p>
<p>In sum, Duke’s prestige and credibility – and its financial strengths – rapidly continue to improve. Given the foregoing, I rather doubt if minor turbulence in any single undergraduate admissions metric (such as yield) would be perceived as meaningful or troublesome.</p>
<p>Furthermore, in the long-term (and top tier universities operate for multiple centuries) what really counts is the significant contributions made by a university’s faculty and alumni in their lengthy careers, not a percent or two in some arcane statistic when kids are seventeen or eighteen years old.</p>
<p>
Improving is always good. Improving at a moderate rate simply means a college keeps up with its peers, however, all of whom are also improving. If it improves at a comparatively slow rate, it can actually lose ground. If a college wants to improve its name brand (i.e. where it stands relative to other colleges), it must improve faster than the competition. Duke hasn’t done that. Perhaps it doesn’t consider it important to do so, which is a perfectly reasonable view when you’re already a great university. Some of the other top universities, such as Chicago and USC, do consider it important.</p>
<p>Glancing over the USNWR rankings for the last decade, law has hovered around the #11 spot, business has hovered around the #12 spot after a sharp drop in 2003, the undergrad rank has slipped from the 4-5 range to the 8-10 range, and medicine has hovered around the #6 slot, with a dip in the last two years. </p>
<p>2003: undergrad and medicine are top 5, business is #6
2013: no programs in the top 5, undergrad and medicine are top 10
US News - College
2003 - #4
2004 - #5
2005 - #5
2006 - #5
2007 - #8
2008 - #8
2009 - #8
2010 - #10
2011 - #9
2012 - #10
2013 - #8
2014 - ??</p>
<p>US News - Business
2003 - #6
2004 - #7
2005 - #11
2006 - #11
2007 - #11
2008 - #12
2009 - #14
2010 - #12
2011 - #14
2012 - #12
2013 - #12
2014 - #11</p>
<p>US News - Law
2003 - #12
2004 - #12
2005 - #10
2006 - #11
2007 - #11
2008 - #10
2009 - #12
2010 - #10
2011 - #11
2012 - #11
2013 - #11
2014 - #11</p>
<p>US News - Medicine
2003 - #5
2004 - #4
2005 - #4
2006 - #6
2007 - #6
2008 - #8
2009 - #6
2010 - #6
2011 - #6
2012 - #5
2013 - #9
2014 - #8
</p>
<p>As I said before, Duke is an awesome university with lots to offer, and nobody should be losing sleep over where it’s being ranked. I don’t see it improving relative to its peers, however – at best it’s keeping pace. </p>
<p>About 70% of RD admits turn Duke down. In contrast, 45%, 52%, and 53% of RD admits at Chicago, Penn, and Brown (respectively) turn down their spots. Columbia is also in the 50-55% range. Duke has a lot of room to improve.</p>
<p>
One could counter the UNC statement by noting that Duke is widely considered the best college in the South, which contains 25% (without Texas) or 33% (with Texas) of the US population. That boosts both its yield and application numbers considerably. There is more competition among colleges in the Northeast (many excellent private LACs and universities) and arguably the Midwest (many strong public flagships). Like Duke, Stanford benefits from its status and location – it utterly dominates the UCs for cross-admits, and Caltech and the Claremonts are too small to provide much competition. </p>
<p>As for the second claim, I don’t see any reason to believe that Duke has larger overlaps with Harvard, Princeton, Yale, et al than Brown, Penn, Chicago, or other universities do.</p>
<p>Great post warblersrule. I definitely think Duke’s admissions office (and arguably the university as a whole) is getting complacent. Starting this thread was my way of telling Duke’s stakeholders that they need to wake up and smell the coffee before it’s too late.
I think that bringing President Brodhead in from Yale was a bad idea. He appears to be a great professor but not a gifted administrator. I doubt that Yale ever needed to do much to improve its name brand. Duke on the other hand never reached the point where its success became self perpetuating (like Stanford for example). The school was close in the 90s and early 2000s, but never quite managed to make the jump. A change in leadership is in order (IMHO).</p>
<p>As far as Duke having a greater overlap with HYP is concerned, it could be because a lot of talented Southerners seem to apply only to HYP and Duke (among the elite). A large portion of them are probably admitted to one of the big three and invariably choose to attend.</p>
<p>All this talk of Duke’s low yield is premature. We should do pretty well this year. I’m actually expecting a significant increase. If the yield falls below 47% or thereabouts this year, then we might have some legitimate cause for concern. At the end of the day, the comparatively low yield did not prevent me from picking Duke over Princeton, a member of the exalted ‘big three’.
It is also important to take into account the fact that Duke has not had to resort to drawing students from the wait-list in this cycle (at least not significantly). That in itself bodes well for yield.</p>