New article on MSN.com-"Is the Ivy League Worth It?"

<p>Everybody always seems to dislike Cornell, man.</p>

<p>AERA is huge. It's got papers from all over the field of education; higher ed is just one division, and a smallish one overall.</p>

<p>Columbiahopeful,</p>

<p>Anecdotal evidence with a sample of size of three people means nothing. Some colleges even have high school preferences, let alone regional preferences. Penn is a NE heavy school but Duke has exactly the same access to top jobs and its grad placement is superior to Penn's. All the top firms (finance and consulting) travel.</p>

<p>Cornell has fewer grad students (by percentage) than at least one of the colleges which were cited earlier as being "undergrduate-focused."</p>

<p>Slipper, you are allowing one ranking (Wall Street journal) to determine that Duke has better placement. I think that is probably not the smartest move. Because then according to that, New College of Florida is a better school than U Michigan and Tufts is probably not even worth 30 K to attend.</p>

<p>They are absolutely the same. For every argument in favor of Penn there is retort in favor of Duke. Choose for fit.</p>

<p>I definitely agree! I visited Penn & Duke before my senior year and found myself loving Duke and thinking Penn was alright (would have definitely put an app in for Penn if I didn't get into Duke ED...).</p>

<p>However, there are people who fall in love with Penn and aren't too fond of Duke as well..
The only truly annoying people are those who find Duke to be a much better fit but are strongly considering Penn just because it is an "Ivy".</p>

<p>Duke definitely has a much more active campus life than Penn.. but Penn's got Philadelphia. I personally think that Duke students, more as a whole, truly enjoy their experience as a Blue Devil while many Penn students have the "stepping stone" mentality. </p>

<p>Penn is more elitist than Duke, mostly because of Wharton. If you definitely want to go into business.. I'd say definitely Penn. If you want to be a doctor, Duke is probably the better choice. Otherwise, it's all based on what you like better.. city life or campus life. </p>

<p>As for what school is more difficult to get into.. I know of people who get into Penn but were rejected by Duke.. as shocking as that may sound for some here!</p>

<p>I will confess... Wharton and Huntsman are HARDER to get into than Duke but everything else is about on par with Duke when it comes to difficulty of admission.</p>

<p>As for the SAT score ranges.. from being on CC and life experience.. Duke will often reject people with "low-for-Duke" SAT scores who are Valedictorians and hold strong EC's, but will accept the person with the 1600, a top 5% rank with few EC's. However, this isn't always true either.. just from what I see.</p>

<p>
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“The top per capita producers of Ph.D.s in this country are in fact smaller colleges, most notably, the likes of Reed, Swarthmore, Caltech, Harvey Mudd, and Grinnell, Emory, Bates, Northwestern, and Morehouse”

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<p>I am just about ready to stop reading this after seeing Northwestern described as a "smaller college".. it has more undergrads than most of the Ivies.</p>

<p>I believe the article is referring to "Reed, Swarthmore, Caltech, Harvey Mudd" in one category as the "smaller colleges" (that's why there's an "and") and "Grinnell, Emory, Bates, Northwestern, and Morehouse" in another, although I'm not sure why its divided that way, as Bates and Grinnell are both small...</p>

<p>^That's what I was thinking.. it's kind of strange.</p>

<p>I knew this one guy who went to a public university and took this class on Ezra Pound. Said it was absolutely the best--that he even read and understood all the footnotes. Opened windows of understanding he had never before contemplated. Someone made the mistake of saying one of the top tier Ivies (I forget which) had the most highly regarded Ezra Pound scholars in the world. The guy freaked. Totally blew his confidence. Now he can't tell Pound from Yeats.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/09/17/weekinreview/20060917_LEONHARDT_CHART.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/09/17/weekinreview/20060917_LEONHARDT_CHART.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>lol how odd that they would single out Penn and Duke. they must be reading our discussion.</p>

<p>
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Only from a personal point of view…I didn’t send my kid to college to get a job….I sent her to get an education….

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<p>Well, you might have done so. But believe me, PLENTY of other parents sent their kids to college in order for them to get a good job. Given how expensive college is, it's an entirely rational response to worry about marketability.</p>

<p>Just consider this thought exercise. What if we lived in a world where a college education gave no advantage in the job market - that college graduates got the exact same types of jobs that high school graduates got. Be honest - what do you think would happen? I think we would have to agree that in such a world, very few people would go to college. Come on, you know it's true. Maybe you would still send your kid to college if you lived in such a world. But I think we would have to agree that most parents wouldn't.</p>

<p>columbiahopeful, we've seen that - its not real data, its hypothetical data that is based on the RP study. Its based on high school surveys (probably NE prep or the like) by students which were taken several years ago. It is hypothetical data - and the researchers admit that its far from a accurate gauge using the data they gathered. Its not actual data and shouldn't be cited as such.</p>

<p>Duke, Penn, Dartmouth, Brown, and Columbia all split applicants evenly with each other - though with small fluctuations year to year. This is actual information released by Duke's undergrad admissions office and is public record - and is not contested by any other school. </p>

<p>If you compare the quality of the students who enroll at each institution, you'll find that Penn, Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia and Duke are all near identical in terms of student caliber - including SATs, class rank, feeding rates into top professional programs, national merit scholars, etc. I posted this comparison a little earlier in this thread.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Its based on high school surveys (probably NE prep or the like) by students which were taken several years ago. It is hypothetical data - and the researchers admit that its far from a accurate gauge using the data they gathered. Its not actual data and shouldn't be cited as such.

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</p>

<p>Yes, it is not 'actual' data, but rather just a hypothetical model. But we should also be clear about why the model was created. The reason is precisely because the "actual" data is incomplete in the sense that it doesn't reveal true preferences - as stated by many others here in CC, much of people's preferences are expressed in the applicattion step, in other words, the choice of applying or not applying to a particular school in the first place. If you never even apply to a school, then you will never even have the chance to be part of the cross-admit pool in the first place. Put another way, when Duke discusses its cross-admit data with respect to School X, that dataset, by definition, only deals with those students who applied (and got admitted to) both Duke and X, and says nothing about what the preferences are of students who never applied to both schools, or did, but only got into one of the 2. </p>

<p>The model attempts to deal with precisely this problem. Now, you can argue about whether the authors constructed a successful model (although I should point out that they use mainstream modeling techniques that have been used by other authors in other papers). But at least they're trying to create a model to deal with the problem of 'missing preferences'. I know of no other recent paper that attempts to do this.</p>

<p>I wonder how Duke (or any school) gathers cross-admit data. I know that for students who decline the admission, there is often a question on the response form asking where he/she chooses to attend. But for students who choose to matriculate, how does Duke find out what other schools are turned down in its favor?</p>

<p>Sakky, The authors themselves say that its not a complete model - but just the basis of how a better model could be created.</p>

<p>Cornell and Duke both released such data - must be fairly confident to do that, and must be accurate since other schools didn't challenge their results.</p>

<p>Of course, I think all of the above is a moot point - I think the best way to measure school strength is how talented/strong the students who enroll are. It makes it easier to compare schools when looking at the students who enroll, rather than students who hypothetically might have applied or something.</p>

<p>
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Sakky, The authors themselves say that its not a complete model - but just the basis of how a better model could be created.

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<p>Of course it's not a complete model! But at least it's a model with a theoretical justification. After all, what's the theoretical justification for the methodology of, say, USNews? Why are faculty resources in USNews worth 20% (or whatever is the weighting), as opposed to some other weighting? It's completely arbitrary. At least the RP model is * not arbitrary * but rather is based on accepted methodologies with a theoretical justification. USNews and other rankings have * no theoretical justification * for their methodology. </p>

<p>Yet nobody seems to complain that USNews is not a 'complete model'. Nobody complains about Gournman or Shanghai Jiao Tong or THES or any of the other rankings out there. Yet when RP is brought up, people begin quibbling that the model isn't complete. What's up with that? </p>

<p>
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Cornell and Duke both released such data - must be fairly confident to do that, and must be accurate since other schools didn't challenge their results.

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<p>I don't think anybody disputes the accuracy of the data. The dispute seems to be that the data is incomplete - that a lot of people's preferences are not included in "cross-admits", simply because a lot of people won't apply to both schools (and if they do, most won't get into both).</p>

<p>I know when I sent my reply card to Duke I had to write in 8 other schools I applied to and what the decision was. They note their that this is to simply gather statistical data. I am pretty sure that is how they were able to base their numbers (and which is why they are confident enough to actually released it in public)</p>