<p>Regular Americans overall think of Duke as nothing more than a sports school. Many also confuse Notre Dame with a cathedral or even movie. Other schools with overall poor name recognition</p>
<p>UPenn. Is it the school which had Paterno and Sandusky?
Brown. What?
Princeton. Publishes Princeton Review.
Dartmouth, it’s a city somewhere.
William and Mary, which must be in Great Britain.
Columbia, it’s in DC right?
Georgetown is a town.</p>
<p>
Sports announcers and newscasters have spread the gospel of Duke being a top-ranked academic school during basketball games so its name resonates more amongst Americans located all over the country. Also, its the best university in its region of the country which bumps its lay prestige as well. Finally, no one can mistake Duke for another school like Penn or Cornell-there is no other university that is well known with “Duke” in its name.</p>
<p>“Regular Americans overall think of Duke as nothing more than a sports school.”</p>
<p>I just thought was worth repeating. :-)</p>
<p>I am not sure what is more pathetic: </p>
<ol>
<li>The fact that people honored the moronic OP with a reply, or </li>
<li>That people thought it was worth reviving.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>I am inclined to pick 2. The OP did not know any better, while 2 includes all the usual suspects.</p>
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<p>I think of Duke as a sort of ‘executive university,’ famous for putting its graduates into high-earning business and law positions, but not paraticularly academic ones. </p>
<p>For example, why is it that no Duke alumnus had won the Nobel prize until 2012? My guess is that it isn’t a defect in the quality of Duke’s students, I think that the majority of its students are just interested in other things. </p>
<p>[Duke’s</a> First Nobel Laureate | Duke Today](<a href=“http://today.duke.edu/2012/10/dukenobel]Duke’s”>Duke's First Nobel Laureate | Duke Today)</p>
<p>I do agree with you on being the best university in the region and name recognition however.</p>
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</p>
<p>after rereading Duke’s alumni Wikipedia page, I retract this statement since it’s too strong. </p>
<p>[List</a> of Duke University people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Duke_University_people]List”>List of Duke University people - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Rather, I should have said that I most associate it with putting its grads into top business and law positions, although it has a number in prestigious positions in academe as well. (I still think the Nobel prize thing is puzzling though.)</p>
<p>Having NYU on there is a joke when there are schools like Cal and UCLA that are much more prestigious.</p>
<p>
Are you referring to Duke undergraduates? 4 Duke alums have won the Nobel Prize so far. They are…</p>
<ol>
<li>Brian Kobilka (Post-Doc.: 1984-1989): 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry</li>
<li>Hans Dehmelt (Post-Doc.: 1952-1955): 1989 Nobel Laureate in Physics</li>
<li>Robert Coleman Richardson (Ph. D 1966): 1996 Nobel Laureate in Physics</li>
<li>Charles Townes (A.M. 1937): 1964 Nobel Laureate in Physics</li>
</ol>
<p>Its true that no Duke undergrad alum has yet to win this coveted prize but keep in mind that for someone to be up for Nobel recognition now, he/she would likely be in their 50s or 60s in terms of age and thus would have gotten their bachelors degree back in the 1970s or early 1980s. Duke was considered just a good regional school than and not a elite national university like it is today.</p>
<p>Its interesting to note that Stanford, with its world-class academics and reputation as a top 5 American university, has only produced 1 Nobel Prize winning undergraduate: Dudley R. Herschbach (Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry-1986).</p>
<p>“The only schools that have nationwide recognition among semi-educated America aka the Middle Class is Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT.”</p>
<p>That’s about it…</p>
<p>Bubbles,
</p>
<p>:confused:
Oregon State and Washington State?!</p>
<p>It’s odd that Berkeley doesn’t get much love in the states(or in this thread) but is very well known worldwide.</p>
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<p>That it interesting. Perhaps the reason that public schools do better is simply because their class size is significantly larger. Berkeley has +10 Nobel prize undergraduates and I think UCLA and Michigan each have around 6.</p>
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<p>Ironically, some of these already have international reputations that are even higher than their reputations within the US. Outside of the US, institutional prestige is focused on faculty quality, resources, and program rankings rather than on undergraduate selectivity and SAT score averages. Schools like Wisconsin and UT-Austin have very strong faculty across a broad range of academic disciplines and perform well in international rankings that focus more on academic reputation. They already rank better than schools like Notre Dame, Vandy, Emory, USC, and even less research intensive Ivies like Brown. International academics and graduate students are well aware of their strengths so it’s not really accurate to say they won’t become international names anytime soon.</p>
<p>By international name, I mean that it has a broad enough influence to be known by at least the mid-level management of most large companies. </p>
<p>Such influence takes time to develop. While UTA might be training great alumni now, its prominence has been much more recent than more established names such as Berkeley or UCLA.</p>
<p>
Berkeley gets tons of love here in Cali. I would imagine that it wouldn’t get as much attention outside of CA as similarly ranked private schools simply because it is a public school (i.e., its main purpose is to serve in-state students, OOS tuition is much higher, etc). From employers, people in academia, and prospective grad students I think it gets plenty of love. :)</p>
<p>goldenboy8784,</p>
<p>Post-docs are more like temp researchers, not students. That said, it’s so silly to me that some of you would try to rank schools based on how many undergrads get Nobel. Be honest guys; do you really think couple classes one took as undergrads would lead them to Nobel?</p>
<p>One poster questioned “what’s wrong with Duke” because it got only 1 undergrad vs 6 from UCLA. If one considers the number of years in the history of the schools and the number of students that had graduated, there’s really no statistically significant difference - the likelihood some kid in the Class of 2017 at either school would be a future Nobel winner is the same and is zero!</p>
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</p>
<p>It should seem silly, given that no one here did that.</p>
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</p>
<p>William Sharpe said he learned how to think like an economist due to an advisor he had at UCLA. Glen Seaborg thanked another professor at UCLA for inspiring him. </p>
<p>[Nobel</a> Laureates | UCLA](<a href=“http://www.ucla.edu/about/awards-and-honors/alumni-and-students/nobel-laureates]Nobel”>http://www.ucla.edu/about/awards-and-honors/alumni-and-students/nobel-laureates)</p>
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<p>As far as I can tell, you’re referring to me, and I certainly didn’t question that. What I did was make an observation*, which Goldenboy responded and provided insightful commentary on. I’m not sure why you feel the need to exaggerate things.</p>
<p>*the observation was actually a misobsevation. Duke has zero undergraduate alums. The article I read gave me the impression that ‘Duke’s first Nobel laureate’ did his undergraduate work there, but he was actually just a professor there I think. So Duke still has zero undergraduate laureate alums.</p>
<p>^I will leave it to others what your motivation of bringing up Nobel really is. Using quotes from UCLA website obviously for marketing purpose is really a great way to prove the link. What about all these other Nobel winners that never acknowledge anything from their colleges?</p>
<p>You did try to use it to generalize Duke, calling it “executive” school. You were essentially saying Duke is less intellectual and more preprofessional. What is the track record of UCLA undergrads winning prestigous scholarships like Rhdoes, etc. when compared to Duke? I think these awards have much more direct relationship to the undergrads than Nobel; but I still never think I can make a generalization out of these awards.</p>
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</p>
<p>I retracted that statement noting that it came off as too strong. I was wrong, and I admitted it before anyone else pointed it out.</p>
<p>Duke students do give me the impression of, in general, being more pre-professional. That belief was based on the amount of CEOs an other executives listed on Duke’s people page on Wikipedia, in addition to the median earnings of lawyers who are alumni of Duke. I don’t see what’s wrong with generalizing schools. Would anyone object to my stating that Chicago students are more academically oriented (i.e. with regard to academia,) in general, than Duke students? Or Georgetown students more oriented towards politics than Duke students? It’s a generalization, it doesn’t apply to everyone, and it’s one which I admitted was too strong, which is why I retracted and modified my original statement.</p>
<p>Goldenboy gave insightful commentary noting that Stanford had only graduated one nobel prize undergrad alum. I know that UCLA has graduated 6, Michigan has 6 I think, Berkeley has around 10 and CUNY has around 12 I think. So, while Duke’s students not being academically inclined could be one reason why they have no undergrad Nobel laureates undergraduates, another could be (and probably is) that private universities generally have a smaller alumni base and as a result, are less likely to have their undergrads win the prize (in addition to factoring that Duke was a regional university until the 80s. I don’t know that for sure, but I trust Goldenboy on that point.)</p>
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<p>Is it really in dispute why I brought the point up? I brought it up to support a particular point, which is why the statement in question was preceded by 'For example… '</p>
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<p>There both criterions for prestige. But I think Rhodes is gamed, unlike the Nobel prize. Rhodes disproportionately favors Harvard and Yale students if memory serves.</p>
<p>It’s pretty well-established that UChicago is more intellectual than most places and that GT is known for attracting students aspiring to enter politics due to its location and SFS.</p>
<p>PhD per capita is a FAR BETTER measure of the academic inclination of the student body and we already have those data. Why bother with this Nobel winners and try to make a big leap and stretch out of virtually nothing? These Nobel winners went to colleges like 30-40 years ago and their mentors are all retired by now, if not dead. If anything, prestigious fellowships in the last, say, 10 years would be much better choice to stretch. You may want to make some observation with those data. At the very least, one may be able to say something about the support schools provide in winning those fellowships, which is relevant to perspective students seeking advice on CC.</p>
<p>Having lived in LA for a few years, I never heard of people saying they want to go to UCLA because it’s intellectual. It’s considered the second best public in CA behind Berkeley. Many in-state students go there for the value; I heard some people prefer it over Berkeley because Berkeley is perceived as more academically intense with more competitive atmosphere. It’s the complete opposite of LACs in terms of class size and faculty:students ratio. I’d think the academically inclinded would value those and that’s probably why LACs tend to be more intellectual.</p>