<p>To LFWB dad, </p>
<p>not to be even more of a snit, but the maxim is, "academic politics are so nasty because so little is at stake" meaning the infighting and jockeying for recognition and primacy in the particular kettle of our colleges and universities. </p>
<p>Academic arguments are so fierce, if they are about real issues rather than the strawmen here, because they actually do matter.</p>
<p>by the way, the aphorism is more accurately stated as "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue -- that is why academic politics are so bitter." </p>
<p>Although it is widely attributed to Henry Kissinger, the statement is not his. It was made by Wallace S. Sayre, a professor at Columbia, as quoted in the Yale Dictionary of Quotations.</p>
<p>News flash: the University of Michigan is NOT an underrated school. Where is this coming from?</p>
<p>collegeboard.com:</p>
<p>% of entering students in top 10% in HS
Columbia: 86%
Duke: 87%
Chicago: 79%</p>
<p>OK...so there really is no difference between Columbia and Duke, Brand is right. There is a difference with Chicago. Keep in mind that Duke also has Division 1 A sports, whereas the other two don't. I'm not sure how big a role that might play. So its even more impressive Duke has similar/more students in top 10%.</p>
<p>Maybe I was a little harsh on Chicago, but I hate when people say Chicago (undergrad) is better than Duke's...since Duke's students are a bit stronger. Its just that so many posters assume that since Chicago has a reputation for hardcore academics and a stale social life, it also has more talented students. But thats just not true when looking at facts.</p>
<p><a href="http://apps.collegeboard.com/%5B/url%5D">http://apps.collegeboard.com/</a></p>
<p>Oh, and Michigan is completely overrated on this forum (by atleast a few posters), its students are nowhere near the caliber of HYPSM, Columbia, Duke, Penn, Chicago, Brown, Dartmouth, but people keep insinuating they are....</p>
<p>And since I've learned something from kk (i guess everyone else knew it) - that US News ranks colleges overall, not just undergrad programs - I have new qualms. :D</p>
<p>Overrated: Princeton, Dartmouth, WUSTL (sorry)
Underrated: Berkeley, Chicago, Northwestern.</p>
<p>thethoughtprocess -</p>
<p>I dunno. I got the high school top 10% information from USNews, but it seems the info is often outdated (as is that from Collegeboard.com) I guess it just goes to show how subjective and random the data can be sometimes. </p>
<p>I guess I would agree that Duke is at least as good if not better than Chicago on the undergrad level, but now that I've learned that USNews *refers to universities as a whole<a href="and%20not%20merely%20undergrad">/i</a> I don't believe Duke should be above Chicago. I mean, you're comparing a school with a top 5 business, law, economics program (UChi) to a school with a top 10 med program. Duke's law and business programs are good as well, but not considered to be on par with Chicago's, which is up there with HYSC. Is there anything else that Duke excels at on the graduate level that I'm missing?</p>
<p>"I guess I would agree that Duke is at least as good if not better than Chicago on the undergrad level"</p>
<p>The student/faculty ratio at Chicago is 4:1 (though the PrincetonReview maintains it's 6:1), and the student/faculty ratio at Duke is 11:1.</p>
<p>According to the PrincetonReview, most classes at Chicago have between two and nine students, while most classes at Duke have between ten and nineteen students.</p>
<p>All of the undergraduate classes at Chicago are taught by professors, while some of the lower-level classes at Duke are taught by TAs.</p>
<p>thethoughtprocess keeps stressing that the average SAT score is a few points higher at Duke. That reminds me of my favorite statistic...</p>
<p>The University of Chicago is assiciated with seventy-nine Nobel laureates; Duke University is associated with four.</p>
<p>This site is for kids applying to college/kids in undergrad</p>
<p>So the focus of this discussion should be undergrad, I'm pretty sure US News is geared towards high schoolers going into college in their overall rankings. The entire University is ranked seperately for its grad programs etc. The ranking that has Duke 8th is full of factors that relate to undergrad strength, besides Peer Assessment which reflects grad school strength.</p>
<p>Anyways, I'm not sure how many high schoolers looking to go to the best undergrad possible care about how many Nobel prize laureates came out of a PhD program at Chicago. That simply doesn't matter at the undergrad. </p>
<p>What matters is the strength/talent of the student body, which relates to how much those schools are recruited at, as well as how successful the undergrad is at placing its students into top professional programs/grad schools. </p>
<p>So, for strength of undergrad student body, Duke has a leg up on Chicago. Same with placement.</p>
<p>Now, if this discussion was about doctorial programs in Economics, I would immediately admit that Chicago is the better choice than Duke...however, since we are talking undergrad...</p>
<p>"Oh, and Michigan is completely overrated on this forum (by atleast a few posters), its students are nowhere near the caliber of HYPSM, Columbia, Duke, Penn, Chicago, Brown, Dartmouth, but people keep insinuating they are...."</p>
<p>There seems to be a fetish here for evaluating a college based on the quality of the STUDENTS. Isn't the quality of the FACULTY a better indication of the quality of a school? Michigan's faculty is VERY strong.</p>
<p>Michigans faculty is very strong; for publishing and research. Doesnt mean they are good instructers or even teach many undergrad classes. Faculty that wants to to teach go to the Davidsons and Amhersts of the world. Researchers go to the Michigans and Berkelys.</p>
<p>Question is, which is more important to a 19 year old and his parents footing the bill?</p>
<p>I'm not going to say U-M is overrated -- it's one of the very best public Us in this country, no doubt; but it's certainly not underrated: that is, a school that's ignored in terms of academics. And certainly not on this board. In fact, it's consistently one of the most talked about schools on the cc board.... I might add, to a degree, U-M's undergrad rep is carried by its strong grad schools.</p>
<p>"There seems to be a fetish here for evaluating a college based on the quality of the STUDENTS. Isn't the quality of the FACULTY a better indication of the quality of a school?"</p>
<p>TG, your posts generally makes sense but... Any school can have the best faculty in the world, but they still won't turn a bunch of average Joe's (Jane's) into Einsteins. There has to be a balance. If two institutions have strong faculties, but one has a stronger student body, then that institution will in general be regarded as better.</p>
<p>Coming out of grad school most of the best prefer the research schools. That's just the way it is. Many large school profs even did stints at some of the top LAC schools. But they wanted more challenges and resources.</p>
<p>ahh chicagoscholar beat me to it. but ill give a slightly more comprehensive list and let people draw their own conclusions (note: university affiliation doesn't restrict to ph.d. many of these were undergrads, professors of undergrads, etc.)</p>
<p>nobel prize winners by university affiliation: </p>
<p>columbia: 81, chicago:79.....cornell:40....northwestern:28, nyu:23......penn:18......duke:4, brown:3.....wustl: not listed. 0?</p>
<p>for all the other stats provided they were mostly within the margin of error or very close. the margin of error on sat's is what, 30 points? well, i think 79 is definitively more impressive than 4.</p>
<p>thethoughtprocess:</p>
<p>You seem to think students should consider Chicago only for graduate studies in economics. But you know that our undergraduate economics degree is one of the most valuable degrees in the country. That's why the program includes nearly five hundred undergraduate majors, many of whom do research with the faculty. We also have a top-ranked math program with the hardest undergraduate math class in the nation, and the professors have received awards for undergraduate teaching. The sociology department is ranked first in the nation, and students who major in sociology work with the faculty on research projects. We also have highly regarded undergraduate programs in physics, linguistics, anthropology, chemistry, English literature, history, political science, and statistics.</p>
<p>Of course nothing I say will change your opinion of the school. You think parties and athletic teams make a good college. I just hope that someday people will recognize what the University of Chicago represents.</p>
<p>Yeah, Chicago has many Nobel prize winners, too bad Nobel prize winners has nothing to do with how good a schools undergrad is. Well, I'm sure there is some correlation...or something.</p>
<p>ChicagoScholar, I'm just saying that just because Duke has "parties" and "athletic teams" and a more alcohol-infused social scene...that doesn't make Duke students less intelligent than Chicago students. Nor does it make Duke less succesful at having its students go onto top jobs and grad programs.</p>
<p>The opposite is true when looking it many indicators (that are present day, not a gauge of the past 100 years like Nobel prize winners). Like SAT scores, National Merit Scholars, feeding rates into top professional schools, percent of student at top of the graduating class...all these things illustrate that Duke students are indeed stronger than Chicago students at atleast a marginal level - and at the undergrad level, and today. In contrast, Nobel Prize winners show how good Chicago has been over the past 100 years, and reflects its graduate research, not its undergrad. Or maybe its undergrad. Or maybe both. "Affiliation" is a vague term but since it doesn't matter its not worth discussing.</p>
<p>In all...constantly saying that Chicago has more nobel prize affiliations than Duke is "resting on your laurels" in many ways - the present day indicators of student strength show clearly that Duke undergrads are as talented or more talented than Chicago undergrads. Nobel prizes are about history, not about current day. Talking about Nobel prize affiliations should not be on any thread discussing present day quality of undergrads, or atleast should be mentioned sparingly, rather than the sole tenet of an argument that school A is better than school B.</p>
<p>You also say that I think that "parties" and "athletic teams" make a good school, as if thats not a good perspective on things. I'm here to say Duke's academics are as good as Chicago's (I mean...Duke does send a higher proportion to top law /biz/med schools so they must teach their kids something...) and that life at Duke is mutlifaceted - you'll have some drinking, some studying, but in a good balance rather than too much of one like Chicago is usually stereotyped as having.</p>
<p>i think you misunderstand what makes a school "good." it's not the students that go there, it's the education and experience that they receive. Obviously schools that are the best at this tend to attract the best students. So of course chicago and duke both attract good students, but the fact that duke attracts (so you say) better students doesn't make it a better school. correlation does not imply causation.</p>
<p>If duke's students are so great, why aren't they making up some ground in, say, nobel prizes. The fact of the matter is, the university of chicago simply gives its students a much better education. Most duke students would whine and cry if they had to put up with chicago's core curriculum i think. Instead they have a much less structured plan of study and let themselves become one-dimensional in their academics. Chicago produces far more well-rounded scholars who have done much more for the world. </p>
<p>continuing the nobel prize argument, the schools at the top of that list of nobel prize winners are all very good. The schools at the bottom, not so much. I think it's pretty clear that a strong correlation exists between quality of school and nobel prize winners. What i'm saying is that if a school has a lot of nobel prize winners, it tends to be quite good. If it has very few, it tends to be not as good as those with 20 times more.</p>
<p>Duke students are stronger empirically, that is pretty clear. However, you are saying that the fact that Duke students are stronger doesn't make it better than Chicago...rather, its the education and experience that they receive that makes Chicago for some reason a better school than Duke.</p>
<p>Fair enough to take that perspective. Considering Duke sends more students to top law, business, and medical schools than Chicago might reflect Duke's education is as good or better than Chicago's. Thats one possible measure. Speaking of the "experience" factor, it also seems Duke's alumni tend to give more back to Duke than Chicago alumnis tend to. Duke also has top sports (ie Bball) that make the Duke experience great, whereas you mostly hear sob stories about Chicago. That might just be me stereotyping...but the stereotypes of Duke make it seem alot more fun than Chicago.</p>
<p>You say that Duke students would whine if they were forced to go to Chicago and face the core curriculum. I don't understand this argument...it was made clear that Duke students have stronger scores and grades than Chicago students, so wouldn't they have the same aptitude to deal with the same workload as Chicago students? </p>
<p>In all, you say that having more nobel prize laureates makes a school better. Clearly, then Chicago would be "better' than Duke at undergrad - since we are talking about undergrad. But this isn't the case. Duke is attracting slightly more top students than Chicago (ie Merit Scholars, slightly more future Rhodes scholars, Marshall scholars, higher scores all around etc.) today, on a year to year basis. Its sending its students to better professional schools as well, so they are getting stronger students in and on a similar note sending them to stronger grad programs. Chicago might be better than Duke when looking at their entire histories, but what is important is right now. Times are changing.</p>
<p>"Michigans faculty is very strong; for publishing and research. Doesnt mean they are good instructers or even teach many undergrad classes. Faculty that wants to to teach go to the Davidsons and Amhersts of the world. Researchers go to the Michigans and Berkelys."</p>
<p>There would seem to be trade-offs in both directions...i.e., something to be said for both world-class researchers as profs at bigger universities and excellent teachers as profs at smaller universities. I don't think one way or the other is necessarily the best for all people or all subjects. To further complicate matters, there's no guarentee that the great researcher at the bigger U. is going to be a bad teacher, and no guarantee that the prof at the small college is going to be a good teacher. My personal preference (for academics and social life) is the medium-sized university, ranging between Dartmouth-sized on the small end and Virginia-sized on the large end. Although sometimes when you shoot for the best of both worlds, you end up with the worst of both worlds.</p>
<p>"Any school can have the best faculty in the world, but they still won't turn a bunch of average Joe's (Jane's) into Einsteins."</p>
<p>I'm not sure if the test of a teacher is how many superstars he produces...more like how much improvement there is. Also, if a place like Brown has, say 5,000 undergrads, I think the top 5,000 students at a Berkeley or a Michigan would be approximately comparable. Now you are going to say that the remaining 20,000 undergrads who aren't Brown caliber are going to drag everybody down to their level. To which I respond, "I don't know."</p>
<p>
[quote]
Considering Duke sends more students to top law, business, and medical schools than Chicago
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Do you have any evidence for this besides the WSJ article? J/w.</p>