Please Help! Intl Applicant: Duke Robertson vs Stanford/Wharton vs Oxford

Colleges and Universities A-Z Duke University
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<p>"It is funny that you should bring this up, because Duke possesses the largest campus in the entire US. 8610 acres to be precise. How much do you think that is worth? I don’t know, but it’s probably not chump change. "</p>

<p>Oh dear. You don’t really understand the notion of being a landholder, do you? When I mention that Oxford (together with Cambridge) is one of the biggest landowners in the UK, I do not mean that they have a large campus, ROLF. In that sense, the campus of Columbia worth a way more than that of Duke – a way smaller but happen to be in Manhattan, instead of Durham, NC. Partially because of their medieval roots, the colleges of Oxford University own land all across the UK, what provide a steady source of income. Selling land could also boost finances – four years ago Exeter College of Oxford University sold a part of its land for some 90 million pounds. Again, Oxford and Cambridge and medieval universities, and as such, they both own a great variety of things that not counted as being parts of the endowment. And no, I’m not talking about gorgeous medieval buildings and parks, LOL</p>

<p>BTW, we are talking about 2011 endowment figures for Oxford and 2012 for Duke – a bit unbalanced comparison. Also, it all goes down to pound-dollar exchange rates.</p>

<p>Anyways, the endowment of Columbia is $ 7.654 billion, and it has some 27,000 students. Still, it’s one of the very best universities in the world, while Duke hardly makes it to the best 30. Of course, people in the US tend not to care with world rankings…but wait a minute! US News consistently ranks Columbia higher than Duke! How can this be?!</p>

<p>As regards selectivity, you, again, fail to understand the situation. The best minds in the UK (and a rapidly increasing number of EU students too - surprising or not, Oxbridge are more international in their undergraduate student bodiees than most American universities) could choose between two universities, whereas in the US there’s at least five equal choices – not to mention that the gap between, say, UCL and Cambridge is a way larger than the gap between Columbia and Harvard. Also, in the US you can apply to an unlimited number of universities, whereas it’s a maximum number of five in the UK. Self-selectivity is extremely important. If students in the US would only be allowed to apply to five universities, I hope you agree that acceptance rates would be a way higher – simply because people would think twice before applying to, say, Duke, if they don’t have a steady chance to get in. </p>

<p>BTW, Indian Institute of Technologies accept about 1% of their applicants. Clearly they are a way more selective than Harvard or Stanford. Would you say that they have higher quality student bodies than Harvard and Stanford? I don’t think so…</p>

<p>There are many “up and coming” American universities, but Duke hardly poses a danger to the status of Oxford and Cambridge. Be as it may, assumptions to the contrary notwithstanding, I don’t really enjoy bashing Duke. It’s a university I very much like, and the Triangle area is a great place to live. But this doesn’t challenge the fact that Duke is not on pair with Oxford. In terms of money it’s catching up. In terms of student body and, to a lesser degree, research, Oxford is a way ahead. Again, this doesn’t diminish the achievements of Duke.</p>

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<p>@GAILFORCE - great, yet another tired case of having to explain Oxbridge. First off, you do know that both Oxford and Cambridge are public schools that get most of their money from the government (not endowments), right? And you do know that even with that being said their endowments are second only to the super-privates in the U.S. (Harvard, Yale, etc.)? This is not to mention the land point that GeraldM raised.</p>

<p>As far as admission rates go, you’re just misinformed. Take all the UK’s University applicants and restrict them to just 5 chances each. Then for those willing to risk 20% on a shot at Oxford or Cambridge, go ahead and cut that number in half since you can’t apply to both. Then do in-person interviews with the remaining (all extremely outstanding) candidates. Then reject over 80% of those people. The remainder will be the people who get into Oxbridge.</p>

<p>So the obvious conclusion from this is (of course) that Duke is far more selective. Maybe that’s why so many people choose Oxford and Cambridge as their “safety” schools when reaching for Duke. :slight_smile: <strong>Sorry I couldn’t help myself from sarcasm</strong></p>

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<p>“are public schools that get most of their money from the government (not endowments)”</p>

<p>Ehh, actually its not true. Endowment contribution is significant, and government grants only cover about a third of the operation budget. Indeed, research grants are also significant, but top American private research universities (among them Duke) also receive hundreds of millions of dollars of federal research grants. The best ones, Harvard, Stanford, etc receive about half a billion/year.</p>

<p>Also, by statue Oxford and Cambridge are private universities that receive a part of their funding from the government. If you would compare the statues of, say, Oxford with that of UC Berkeley, or with European universities, you would find that there are massive differences between them, and the status of Oxbridge is a way closer to that of the private US universities. In a sense, since their foundation Oxford and Cambridge were private universities, with own posessions – government funding (to cover at least part of the expenses of undergraduate education and research) only came to the picture in the late 19th century. This is one of the reason why Oxford and Cambridge are the only non-American schools to command a wealth comparable with the top American schools. But it would be pointless to argue over their status, after all, even the younger of the two, Cambridge, is about 600 years older than the first American public schools (not counting William and Mary + Rutgers, pre-colonial private universities that became public only about a hundred years ago)</p>

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<p>“pre-colonial” - colonial</p>

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<p>Didn’t realize it was so much, thanks for the clarification GeraldM.</p>

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<p>I’m a student from the UK and have many many friends who go to Oxford. I am also currently working in a large IB which I realize is a different field to management consulting but the people who work in these fields have similar qualities in that they are all high achievers. From my experiences and listening to others’ experiences, I reckon you’re in a fantastic position wherever you go. The people I work with are from a range of different universities, mostly from top tier universities globally. I know this may seem like a rather mundane and simple answer, but go to whichever school you think you will fit the most and thrive the most. I think Oxford and Stanford are great for business/management/Economics related fields in particular but mind you the opportunities for research at undergraduate level are certainly not as open nor plentiful at Oxford as it may be at US colleges. If you are academically passionate and wish to pursue a fully gratifying wide curriculum, I fear Oxford may not be for you. Also, the fact that the course is only 3 years long at Oxford may in fact stand as a negative point for you. The alumni system is also much more close-knit at US colleges which you may deem as an important factor when you are trying to get experience at highly competitive consulting firms as a student.</p>

<p>However, Oxford and Cambridge do have an air of prestige that exudes from their unique environment and collegiate systems that no other universities can follow. If you wish to solely focus on your studies, you are free to do so as many will be similarly doing so, and the fact that you don’t have to take classes in other subjects that you have no interest in whilst specializing in your field of Economics and Management may appeal to you much more. You will obviously know that the tutorial system is also fantastic - sure, it does put some additional pressure on you but if you enjoyed your interviews at Oxford, that should be no problem. Do take into account that every college also has its separate atmosphere to the university as a whole - some will be extremely relaxed whilst others you will feel are quite relentless. Wrapping up, I return to my original view that wherever you go, you seem ambitious and are clearly very smart, so you will have no problem going into consulting as long as you maintain your best throughout your undergraduate studies, gain a lot of work experience along the way, and also keep in mind that no matter how accomplished you are academically or experience-wise, any company wants a likeable and sociable employee!</p>

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<p>I fully agree with the above poster. As regards world rankings, I would say the most reputable is the oldest one, the Shanghai Ranking, aka ARWU, based on academic performance only – Oxford ranks 9th, Duke 36th. The Times and, to a lesser extent, the QS are extremely biased towards British universities: it’s perhaps sufficient to recall that according to the TIMES World Rankings, Imperial College London is #8 with Chicago coming as 9, Yale as 11, Columbia 14, and so on. A joke, really. University College London ranks 17, Cornell 18, Northwestern 19, Duke 23… Most interestingly, the TIMES Reputation Rankings puts Oxford 4th in the world, Duke 31. </p>

<p>Anyways, Chicago is most certainly on pair with HYP in humanities and economics. It also has one of the best student bodies in the US.</p>

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<p>

In terms of sheer math and science ability, yes the IITs have stronger student bodies “on average” than Stanford for sure and most likely Harvard. IIT grads aren’t as well-rounded, sociable, creative, and entrepreneurial as alums of the top American universities however.</p>

<p>

I’m afraid you are mistaken here.</p>

<p><a href=“http://mup.asu.edu/research2011.pdf[/url]”>http://mup.asu.edu/research2011.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
Scroll down to page 16 and you will see that Duke gets more research funding than Stanford and Harvard.
Duke: $805, 021
Stanford: $704,183
Harvard: $462,193</p>

<p>JHU is the only private school that gets more research funding than Duke.</p>

<p>

On a per student basis, Duke is wealthier than Columbia. If you factor in the grants that The Duke Endowment (a separate organization that supports Duke and other schools in the Carolinas through a generous gift a century back from James B. Duke) gives the university to finance its construction and operations, Duke is far wealther than Columbia.</p>

<p>[Leiter</a> Reports: A Philosophy Blog: Per Student Value of University Endowments…or the rich are even richer than you thought!](<a href=“http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/07/per-student-value-of-university-endowmentsor-the-rich-are-even-richer-than-you-thought.html]Leiter”>http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/07/per-student-value-of-university-endowmentsor-the-rich-are-even-richer-than-you-thought.html)</p>

<p>

This is a blanket statement with no evidence to support it. Duke’s undergraduate student body is very accomplished and only HYPS really exceed it here in the U.S.</p>

<p>National Merit Scholars
<a href=“http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
Harvard: 268
Yale: 206
Stanford: 195
Princeton: 181
MIT: 160
UPenn: 117
Duke: 112
Columbia: 91
Berkeley: 90 (far larger class size though)</p>

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<p>I hate to jump into the middle of a flame war/p!ssfest here but I feel compelled to point a few things out:</p>

<p>1) That research number quoted for Harvard is undoubtedly not accurate. Harvard as just the stand alone institution no doubt pulled in $400 million and change. However, Harvard, especially their medical school is closely associated with Mass General, Brigham, Boston Children’s, Dana-Farber, Beth Israel Deaconess, the Broad, etc. The hospitals are considered teaching hospitals of Harvard Med School, their doctors are Harvard faculty, and they also host graduate students from Harvard. It is likely that their research funding was not included in “Harvard” which is how most governmental accounting is done. </p>

<p>In fact: just looking at NIH funding data for FY2009:</p>

<p>Harvard Med School: $196 million
Harvard Sch of Pub Health: $110 million
Harvard University: $56 million
Dana-Farber: $128 million
Mass General: $5 million
Broad Institute: $69 million
Brigham: $271 million
Beth Israel Deaconess: $5 million
Boston Children’s: $96 million</p>

<p>Rough total: $936 million in NIH grants in FY2009 alone</p>

<p>Now I realize that probably not all of that is for research (there are probably some training grants for graduate students in there somewhere). However, the NIH does primarily fund biomedical research and training. In addition to all that you have other sources of funding for non-biomedical research like NSF, DoD, DoE, etc along with private sector funding. So that number for Harvard quoted above is no doubt not the whole picture. </p>

<p>2) For FY2010, according to Duke’s own press release, Duke’s total research expenditures totaled $983 million. For comparison, using Oxford’s data from 2009-2010, total research expenditures were 68% of total expenditures of £885 million which is a little over £600 million. Using an exchange rate of £1 to $1.60, that comes out to be about $960 million. Given that Duke’s student body is 2/3 the size of Oxford (undergrad and grad combined). I’d say that saying Oxford is “way ahead” may be a bit premature. </p>

<p>Anyhow, as a future Oxbridge grad student and former Duke undergrad, I think both places are great. Different environment, different style, different history, different opportunities. But it does irk me a bit when people starts throwing numbers or assertions about research strengths and such out there without a proper frame of reference or context.</p>

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<p>Why are we even talking about Chicago? The OP has nothing to do with it.
As far as the ARWU is concerned, it is focused almost exclusively on graduate excellence. Are you really going to say that the University of Colorado at Boulder is better than Duke, Dartmouth and Brown at educating undergraduates (or grad students for that matter)? Because if you are, you’re just an unreasonable ■■■■■, and I’m not going to waste my “breath” on you. As a rule of thumb, large graduate schools = high international ranking. Paradoxically, schools that are ranked highly in these surveys of research excellence are less likely to focus their attention on undergraduates.
It is far more prudent to focus on measures that take an institution’s size into account. Duke excels when it comes to things like research productivity on a per capita basis (the faculty is actually the 4th most productive in the nation behind only Harvard, Stanford and MIT). Total research output is completely irrelevant to our discussion. Schools that are small and have an undergraduate focus are penalized needlessly in these “rankings” when in fact, they provide students with an atmosphere that is most conducive to learning.</p>

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<p>

Source please?</p>

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<p>

[A</a> Tool to Assess Faculty Scholarly Productivity | Duke Today](<a href=“http://today.duke.edu/2012/10/fspi]A”>A Tool to Assess Faculty Scholarly Productivity | Duke Today)
FSPI’s latest data, which comes from 2010, ranks Duke faculty in fourth place in overall faculty productivity behind Harvard, Stanford and MIT. While overall rankings aren’t the main purpose of the data, the fact that Duke faculty in every discipline continued to score one standard deviation above the average does give evidence to the broad strength of Duke faculty, Lange said.</p>

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<p>You’re right, apart from one thing; the expenditure of Oxford for 2010. The quoted £885 million is the central University’s expenditure, excluding the 38 colleges and the 6 private halls. Oxbridge is incredibly stupid when it comes to providing the general public with data as official figures only contain information on University finances, and it’s up to you to find the missing data on the individual college websites. All in all, the annual expenditure of a college ranges from £10 to £30 million, and the total University’s around £1.5 billion. (Though these figures are without the hospitals - it’s very much like the case of harvard: public hospitals staffed by Oxford faculty, grad students, etc.)</p>

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<p>It’s been quite hard to find any good numbers for the colleges and Nuffield</p>

<ul>
<li><p>The largest college at Oxford (St. Catherine’s) spent £7 million on “teaching and research” while Christchurch spent £13 million. No breakdowns of “teaching” vs. “research”</p></li>
<li><p>NuffieldHealth’s financial statements do not mention the word “research” period. </p></li>
</ul>

<p>But I would stand by my belief that Duke is on par with Oxford in terms of research.</p>

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<p>I think it’s better to carve out the research dollars that go into bio/medical research which is by far the most expensive (as much as over 90% of the research totals, depending on the schools). Schools with large and top-ranked medical schools are going to do very well regardless of how well they perform in their non-medical/bio fields.</p>

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<p>There are a few problems with isolating biomedical research funding:</p>

<p>1) Some schools like Harvard and Oxford have many tightly integrated affiliates like their teaching hospitals that compete for funds as separate entities and others like Duke do not. It’s difficult to know all these affiliates</p>

<p>2) There are many sources of funding, the main one in the US is the NIH whose extramural funding is around $25 billion a year I think. I don’t know about the UK but my impression is that their funding mechanisms are a lot less centralized than in the US. Regardless there are multitude of other sources private, government, and industry. </p>

<p>3) What exactly constitutes biomedical research. Almost anything in any science department could potentially qualify from chemistry research into contrast agents for MRI to engineering research into the design of neuro-prostheses to basic genomic profiling of cancer. Knowing what to look at is problematic</p>

<p>4) For those reasons most statistics do not break it down into biomedical research and other research.</p>

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<p>Haha well i didnt expect a debate like that to emerge, but just as an update:

  • Turns out i didnt get the Robertson Scholarship, but it worked out fine because i’ve decided on Oxford. The reasoning for that being the singular focus on economics/management, which i know i would pursue regardless of the uni.
  • Turns out, however, that my best mate from Sydney got the Robertson tho hahaha, so i’ve passed this thread on to him.</p>
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<p>Im not sure if i’m entitled to contribute, but from what i gather:

  • Duke Robertson (not just duke) is more selective than oxford EM. I think robertson is like sub 0.5%, and EM is 2% for internationals. But i think thats fairly negligible.
  • Research wise i think duke undergrads would get more opportunity than oxford undergrads.
  • location wise, i think oxford is just the most beautiful college town, with convenient proximity to london (relatively).
  • education wise, i think the tutorial system is amazingly useful. That said (if i understand it) duke robertsons get special access to professors and stuff so they can probs recreate that system to some extent.
  • resource-wise, robertson is unparalleled. Not just academically, but especially in terms of leadership development and social entrepreneurship.
  • prestige-wise, Oxford’s more dynamic anywhere in the world except the US, especially in asia. </p>

<p>What happened to the discussion of Wharton or Stanford tho?</p>

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<p>The robertson is awarded to approximately 30 individuals out of an applicant pool of 32,000. Now that is selective!</p>

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<p>So excited over here. Daughter going to either UNC Chapel Hill or Duke as a Robertson scholar. Big change from Sydney…big opportunities. Lots of parents US road trips!</p>