several concerns about Emory..(Must read for prospective students)

Colleges and Universities A-Z Emory University
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So I got accepted RD to Emory University and applied with an intended major of Neuroscience and pre-med. However, I have since had a change of heart and will not be doing pre-med, so i’ll likely not be going anyways, but I think this info would be useful for prospective applicants anyways…

First, I’m not exactly sure what Emory is known for? Most top schools have a “specialty” major or area which attracts top students eager to pursue those fields (e.g. MIT for tech, Penn for business, etc) What about Emory? I always thought Emory was strong in premed (cuz i applied obviously) but as i research more, ive heard from several sources that Emory has a 50% acceptance rate to medical school. 50%… that is CRAZY LOW… just think about it for a second… firstly, emory would attract some of the most ambitious pre-med students in the country to come… a good portion would be weeded out early on or have a change of heart (like me) and drop out. and on top of that, only 1/2 would get accepted to med school. absolutely ridiculous. I wouldn’t even be able to show my face to my parents after spending close to 70K bucks x 4 years of tuition only not to be accepted to med school… For some perspective, I read somewhere that Bowdoin, a top liberal arts college, has a 86% acceptance to med school. that sounds much more positive…

Secondly, I talked with some students at Emory when I visited last year. While it was clear that many enjoyed it there, some said that they knew people who only planned on going to Emory for a year and transferring to a more prestigious university. That shows in their relatively low freshman retention rate compared to other universities near its rank. this bothers me a lot for some reason… i wouldn’t want to go to a school where many students intend on transferring somewhere better…

on a similar note, the yield rate at Emory is also, not surprisingly, significantly lower than its peer schools. on their site, Emory claims to have a 27% yield rate. In comparison, Brown has a 60% yield rate and Duke has a 48% yield rate, both SIGNIFICANTLY higher. Even Tufts, which is ranked lower than Emory, has a 41% yield rate. Isn’t this fishy?

What more, Emory is known to LIE about their statistics by submitting their Accepted students’ test score ranges rather than enrolled. Why? cuz the top students don’t choose to enroll at Emory, thus their enrolled test scores would be significantly lower…And of course, this is all to keep their ranking high… Ridiculous that a school would cheat their way to keep their rankings…

Overall, I am pretty frustrated with Emory for all this they’ve done… and it works out well. students are tricked by its high ranking and go there cuz HS students (and their parents) mostly care about prestige, only then do they realize Emory is not for them and drop out - or face reality when they don’t get accepted to med school. its all a trap - and for 70K bucks a year… harldy worth it…

I apoligize for the negative tone, but it really bugs me when schools cheat the rankings… again, i wasn’t gonna go to emory anyways before i found all this out - but I hope prospective students considering Emory would at least take this into account when deciding where to go to college.

feel free to msg me if u have any questions or whatever

Thanks.

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@Bop : Emory is one of the places that ADMITTED lying in 2012, all the way back in 2012. Do not be naive and pretend that others did/do not.

Also, you didn’t do your research if you believe Emory is just a health sciences school. It is strong in many of the social sciences, super strong in business, and even humanities such as English (it is EXTREMELY well known for the creative writing program)

50%, actually more like 54% which is beyond the national average and decent considering that Emory basically allows everyone to apply regardless of their stats (for those with competitive applications, 3.5 and 30 equivalent, like 80% or more get in somewhere each year). The percentages at the end typically represent various filters such as screening (even if screening includes subtle discouragements from the pre-health office) which Emory does not do. Even if the application is not competitive, a student can apply and many do. Emory has like 300+ first time applicants and 400 overall apply each year which, bluntly, is saturation. You are going to see diminished returns with that many (like some peer schools have nowhere near as much applicants). Even places with a n ultra elite medical center and reputation for pre-med see these diminished returns such as JHU which see about a 63-65% success rate. Numbers could also reflect students, especially ones near the top, not applying broadly enough as was the case at Chicago years ago and they had to have the pre-health office there take a more active role in steering students to apply more broadly. Emory’s is more like a free for all where, again, anyone can try to apply.

Yield rate is not fishy (you compare us to a top 10 like Duke or a near top 10 like Dartmouth, all D-1 schools BTW. Gee, I wonder what many students like that Emory does not offer? Hmmm, can’t think of it). WUSTL puts up similar numbers. Also, lower yield happens when your admissions is not “focused” enough. Emory admits a lot higher percentage of students in comparison to peers. Other schools admit a lot less from the get go and likely have better predictive capabilities so can have a more refined yield protection strategy. Emory does yield protection, but it is nowhere near as good other places at doing it. Yield and admissions and app. numbers are very much a product of practices by the admissions office (data analytics) and marketing efforts which Emory has never been great at. The better you are at selling a certain focal point or hyping up your school, the better the yield, app. numbers, and admit (I guess better is lower, though not from ethics standpoint IMHO). Most schools that really want to look good on paper in terms of these input numbers can easily change strategy in the admissions office to do so. Many schools have done it and it has been written about. In addition, other schools throw more money at top scoring applicants. Emory tends to help as much as it can with lower socioeconomic status applicants which I think is great, but many will have lower scores than more wealthy families (that end up just average for Emory income and in a grey area financial aid wise). If you do not buy these students with aid packages comparable to peers, your yield will suffer.

As for quality, Emory has always done well versus many peers here when you talk about post-grad accomplishments which means that the students it yields, even if the score range is lower than peers, are very good at contributing well enough to society to get the attention of the orgs giving the huge post-grad opps (Fulbright is one Emory does very well with). Also, last year there were 2 schools in the top 25 that failed to get a Rhodes Scholar. Emory was not one of them which is impressive since it is not a D-1 school (D-1 schools tend to have an edge. Typically they like high achieving students who are also athletic but we had a non-athletic candidate win anyway. It is as rare at Emory as it is for the 2 that got shut out, but the fact that it happened for the “lower tier school” that you put in question speaks volumes). Emory also keeps up with near peers in terms of Goldwater awards for example.

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What is fishy is how Emory performs as well as many near peers but has “worse” inputs (Emory still places better than many near peers when you talk about access to elite Big 3 professional schools for example). How and why is that happening? Why aren’t all the places with rosier stats on paper for input faring much better? I don’t know why Emory does well (okay I have an idea), but I am just glad that it is.

Either way, avoid buying into the admissions arms race Kool-aid. I tell parents and students to do this. Go to departmental websites in your areas of interest at a school and figure out what type of research and internship opps they offer. This gives an idea of how much money and resources each department has for the undergraduates. Emory has many departmental level research fellowships (outside of STEM) and I think it has contributed to making students more competitive for great post-grad. outcomes and awards. And this is actually a component that they are stronger at today than when I went (and far stronger than certain near peers in it). It also encourages much more interdisciplinary scholarship which is great.

In addition, Emory became a part of the AAU in 1995. This, I believe is the latest among its near peers (at least the private ones). Of course its reputation will lag. It was really only relevant to the elite undergraduate education scene when it joined that cohort of schools. All of this plus growing pains of becoming a research university will reflect in things like admissions and desirability. Emory is newb. That is the problem. It will take a while for its input metrics to look as good on paper as peers.

Also, what is the point of warning prospective students without offering any analysis or ideas of your claims? If anything, your superficial take or analysis on these issues could indeed be the perceptions of many others already and could indeed explain the yield you speak of (as in they worry about those things instead of what they should be worried about when deciding, but that is a whole different issue altogether and even I was prone to it when selecting). Like you, they were not coming anyway and no one can get them to consider less superficial factors. They don’t need to hear it or see it again if they already wanted to believe that or had those thoughts. Students seriously considering coming likely already know this stuff and consider other factors that make them fit or not. Those are not among them (it is also sad if you think your personal plight through pre-health is dependent upon the performance of others. An allusion to the success rate suggests this. Pre-health or preparation for any post-grad opportunity is supposed to be a very personal thing. Again, Emory cannot control if you have a competitive application for medical school or whether you choose to apply with a less competitive application or not. These are primarily up to the individual. The number could reflect many students being very hard-headed or pressured into pursuing pre-health, but this is not out of the norm. Students who want to go to medical school and have competitive apps get in. Period!).

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@bernie12 It wasn’t just 2012. I believe they’ve been doing it for many years and was only caught doing it in 2012. What’s even more hilarious is that on their website for Freshman Stats, they STILL publish the ADMITTED first year class rather than attending. Very sneaky of them… They didn’t truly learn their lesson about lying it seems… just found a way around it…

Do you have proof that Emory is one of the few schools that let anyone apply to med school? I always assumed thats the case for all schools… Seeing that Emory is one of the top schools for pre-med, i doubt there will be any bad students applying to med school so 54% is still a scary number… plz give some examples of schools that deny people from applying, cuz that sounds quite unrealistic…

As i pointed out, Tufts is lower ranked than Emory and also D3, so theres no excuses there. 41% vs 27%. I’ve done my research as both skls were on my list and they are similar in many many ways. So what makes Tufts more popular than Emory, despite being lower ranked?

Again, I’m not trying to hate on Emory - I’m just trying to get prospective students some points to consider and let them decide what to believe - cuz if i were them, i’d have loved to know this stuff before i enrolled.

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@Bop: But you are not being helpful. You offer no analysis of numbers. There do not need to be excuses. Tufts and many other places are very well-known for intense yield protection strategies. It is that simple. Admissions offices use different selection schemes. Duke is ranked in the top 10 (wow, seems students going to private schools love higher ranks), Dartmouth is an Ivy (premium on even lower Ivies), Tufts is known to be unique in certain areas so is kind of a niche school. Emory is ranked 20 and competing with privates with higher rank, D-1 sports, and better marketing schemes. It isn’t going to get as much excitement as other schools due to those things. Pandering has effects. Again, some schools turned their admissions office around almost too quickly. Like a decade ago, people would have been asking the same questions you ask to Chicago despite the fact that everyone knew it had really strong academics. Since like 2008 (or a little later), they appointed a new admissions dean and app. numbers suddenly shot up and they looked very shiny input wise. They were not the only school to do this. Basically, if you look a certain way on paper you can use many sketchy methods to fix it. Also, the financial aid issue since like 2011 and on is well known. Tufts is not a peer of Emory. it is a comparable level private school, but administrators at Emory do not consider it a peer and do not use it as a benchmark institution. Relative to actual peers and cross-admits, they found that financial aid was a huge deal breaker (I have posted about this several times) and it explains why they now have the scholarship initiative. The need-based aid sources at Emory are currently too stretched (actually going toward lower SES students. There was an article about elites and SES demographics and indeed, Emory had some of the highest % of actual low SES students). However, let us be real. The majority of a student body at an elite private will not be low SES. You have to do what you need to do to pull higher SES students who have a lot of money versus government definition of middle-class, but who cannot afford the sticker price of these schools. Schools with better yields have traditionally been more popular and now offer more competitive aid packages (they allocate like 5x more toward aid than Emory does).

As for stats: They admitted to the lying in 2012 and they had been doing it a while before. It ended then and they have this thing called an academic profile that reports the enrolled numbers. Even when Emory was reporting padded numbers, they lagged the other institutions by quite a bit (including places that had not changed to the “stats sensitive” admissions protocol) which is why it had little effect on the rank.

Also, “bad” is relative. Uncompetitive applicants DO apply to medical school all the time. The national admit rate is 46%. The competitive ranges are 3.5 GPA and 30 equivalent on MCAT (I personally think, that for some STEM majors, 3.5 is high and things well below 3.5 should be considered). Plenty of people apply below this nationally and even at Emory which had a table that breaks it down. It is well known that many schools have the committee letter system and you can steer students and discourage students through the pre-health advising system. Emory does very little in the way to do that. And AGAIN, for those above the threshold I said, 80-90% are admitted. This quite a bit of evidence that many uncompetitive applicants apply. 300-400 applicants per year is a bit too much. You will have many with uncompetitive applications and many who simply do not apply broadly enough. STEM majors grade substantially lower than non, so the amount of STEM majors will and the STEM discipline and the grading difficulty will effect this number (like at Emory, chemistry majors are extremely abundant. Has like the most amount of chemistry majors among private peers. Chemistry is also a much lower grading STEM major. Tons of chemistry majors are pre-health. Now what happens when these folks try to apply directly to med. school with less than competitive stats? Same could even be said for NBB).

To emphasize how stats sensitive medical schools are in certain ranges (mainly up to 3.85. There and up, they don’t make much distinctions, at least not most places) as opposed to considering rigor and things like that, it was found that MIT students had no edge on Duke students. Most admits were basically at a 3.72-3.73 for both schools. So they didn’t care that the STEM curriculum at MIT is far more rigorous than average. If this is the case, then applying below the competitive ranges will do damage.

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@Bop – So, where ARE you going?

To be honest, your note sounds like it was written by someone with an ax to grind, i.e., someone who didn’t get admitted.

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@Bop

Your “I believe” statements about what Emory has or has not done in the past completely lack factual foundation but I think you already know that.

Publishing admitted student stats that’s noted prominently as such is hardly a crime. That’s called being honest.

And then you have schools like Tufts that publish admissions stats WITHOUT telling you whether they’re for admittees or enrollees:
http://admissions.tufts.edu/apply/enrolled-student-profile/

How is Tufts being more honest for intentionally obscuring that signifier that you yourself find all important?

Schools that provide a pre med committee letter screen out their own less qualified applicants by refusing to provide a letter to less than qualified applicants. Such applicants who can’t receive a committee letter can still apply but if they do, they are doomed to be rejected. So they don’t apply until they can bring themselves up to a point where their school’s premed committee will support them. Such schools can ensure very high medical school acceptance rates by providing such committee letters only to those who are well qualified for medical school application.

Your statement that only good premed applicants apply from Emory is very math-challenged. Many premed courses are curved so that only a small fraction get A’s (not unusual among elite schools). Others have exams that are written so that only a small fraction score above 90 on average and are able to get As. By definition, not everyone will survive the gauntlet of premed classes with a sterling GPA. The same goes for all highly selective schools. A lot of people get weeded out. Emory doesn’t have such a system in place.

There is no “premed” major BTW.

Strong majors at Emory include: biology, NBB, chemistry, business, English, creative writing, QSS, interdisciplinary studies and judging from the number of students receiving postgraduate fellows, political science and math.

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Also, by engaging this. It is a waste of time. Those who were not interested in Emory because of these concerns likely do not want an analysis. They wanted a reason to write it off and had their minds made up from the beginning. Most students seriously considering know this stuff already. All schools have weaknesses. Emory’s just happen to show in these particular areas and, fortunately, since that SAT stuff, is a bit more transparent with presenting this data. Students more thorough or more interested will find other reasons to attend. Like a true pre-med is not going to worry about that rate but more so how they can put together a competitive application or keep a strong GPA without sacrificing MCAT performance. I consider 400+ applicants a scary number (as well as business being the top major a scary thing). How about you?

But seriously asking why an Ivy League is known for something (it is a freaking Ivy League. High stats applicants are so biased towards them that they will essentially overlook other strong schools in the area) and Emory is not? And then you cite how Penn is known for Business (this may offend some in their college of arts and sciences). Apparently Emory isn’t (despite it being the most subscribed to option among undergraduate here)? Really? Yes, just pre-health. That is all everyone interested in Emory knows about. I will remember that one.

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@Bop

I agree with @AsleepAtTheWheel.

@Bop, you don’t sound like someone who was admitted to Emory - quite the contrary.

It makes no sense for someone who’s admitted to but has already declined to attend Emory (because they decided before even starting college, but after they applied to colleges, not to try for medical school) to spend over an hour posting a diatribe trashing a school about issues that they somehow learned only AFTER they had decided not to attend for reasons unrelated to criticisms of Emory.

You decided not to be premed and not to attend Emory as a result, THEN you spent countless hours researching Emory to dig up what negatives you could? Very fishy.

@Bop, I doubt you were admitted to Tufts either. Or Duke. Or Brown.

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Yeesh now I understand why people call CC a toxic site… just filled with helicopter parents who attack others and defend their/their kid’s school no matter what…
Yield protect strategies? That’s something every top school, including Emory does. I can absolutely guarantee it. Otherwise their acceptance rate would be much higher. I don’t believe any of this marketing garbage either. Clearly any school who has a history of cheating the rankings must have some marketing tricks up their sleeves.

@AsleepAtTheWheel I’ve already been accepted to Rice, Northeastern, UW, and Georgia Tech for CS, so theres no reason for me to have an ax to grind at Emory, which, even if I can transfer majors to CS, is no competition for any of the 4 for CS. However, I do have an ax to grind about cheaters - in college rankings and life in general, thus my negative tone.

@bernie12 You can’t assume that prospective students don’t want to know this information. For me, I would want every single bit of information available about my schools to best be able to compare all my options.

@BiffBrown I looked into Emory for a bit just like every school I get accepted to and I found the info, quite easily. No need to call me a **** here. I doubt you have a life

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@Bop

And there’s this post from December 27, 2016, wherein @Bop indicates that he’d want to study computer science at Emory and is worried that Emory caters too much to premeds. LOL. So what’s your cover story again for posting your original post? Because you changed your mind about being premed at the last second? LOL.

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/20182173#Comment_20182173

And then you admit in your most recent post that you applied to schools with strong CS programs.

@Bop, how ironic that you’d complain about dishonesty and cheating. It’s obvious you didn’t get into Emory.

With every post you make, it becomes ever more clear that Emory was right to turn you down.

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@BiffBrown Dawg, whats so funny about it? I never said I wanted to study CS at Emory, I was just asking how it is. Not even sure what accusations ur making now, but u seem to be getting a good internet laugh out of it - as i said many times, the primary reason for this post is to help prospective students get info that i wish i had when applying. its not about me anymore.

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@Bop Your cover story’s changing again.

And you can’t explain why you haven’t posted on other schools’ boards where you were admitted and decided not to attend. After all, you can only attend one school right?

Where are all your other public service announcements? LOL.

You’re not even clever enough to concoct a plausible cover story for your obvious tro… ing.

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@BiffBrown Well, as of lately, I have been using another site for college advice and news that I will definitely not mention here as I do not want it poisoned by toxic people like u. And seeing people like u remind me why i stopped posting on CC in the first place :slight_smile: Obviously, your attacks on me is of no use to future students, so if u want, attack me via private messaging

It is a significant improvement over College Confidential and is almost non-existent of toxic helicopter parents. hope this rant has been some use for u guys!

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What in the hell is happening?!

@Bop: I didn’t say that they don’t want to know it. I said that most already know it and it is so obviously accessible. Are you talking about your information or mines? Do you mean, “you can’t assume that prospective students don’t want to see shallow, superficial, and clearly cherrypicked pieces of information”? Well, you’d be right. Many seem fairly comfortable settling with that level of insight. Shame on them, shame on us, and shame on you for whatever this is.

But regardless, I never said that. Nice spin and cover stories though. I’m sorry but that rebuttal and all this BS has been denied. I am hoping whoever PMs you, you know a person who isn’t going to Emory and has no vested interest or interest at all in presenting a sensible picture of Emory or anything for that matter, gets the nuance and evidence they need about you know, me and @BiffBrown and @AsleepAtTheWheel 's child’s school. I’m sure you have more access to information that would explain the stuff you said than any of us ever will. Good luck to you and those folks! Wonder who can provide them with access to the full strategic plan, any of the administrative minutes documents? I can! All 3 of us (me, @AsleepAtTheWheel , @BiffBrown). How about you? Provide them with all of the surface level information that they can find on the internet themselves lol. I am sure they will learn a lot.

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@bernie12 @Bop got rejected from Emory and decided to waste his evening posting trash about the school.

Emory admissions chose wisely here.

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@bernie12 I’m glad ur at least trying to be meaningful rather than attack me endlessly like @BiffBrown . You are actually right in most of what you said, but I feel prospective students may benefit from an opinion of someone who’s in a similar situation. I hope admins can close this post for comments. I think all the points have been already made clear.

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@Bop : I think the question is what situation is that? It is so unclear lol. I doubt many have such strange situations where a very sudden change in career plans leads them not only to completely overlook, but to trash a very specific school haha. A rational person (or truthful) would evaluate the weaknesses of all of their options and maybe criticize them. There is much to criticize about pre-health and even STEM education, or education in general at all research universities, even elite schools (including some that you mentioned). You picked a very specific school. I await similar posts in all of the other forums. I look forward to reading your critiques of the other perfect top 20 and peer institutions (fyi: http://provost.emory.edu/news-events/news/2014/april/benchmark-schools.html . These are our peers. Even before this change. Tufts was never included. This change mainly had removal of the much more aspirational peers where there was no overlap in mission or programmatic strengths and institutional character) Perhaps you can go borrow from and plagiarize from some of my own posts (I’ve done such critiques and comparisons before). They are not intellectual property. Anything will make you seem more sensible than you do now.

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It is strange indeed, but I want to make it clear that I didn’t make this post with the intention of trashing Emory. Up until recently, I was almost certain I want to do pre-med so stuff like schools’ medical school acceptances are very useful information to consider. I felt that since this wasn’t applicable to me anymore, I felt I could at least help others become aware of these stats and help them make their decision. I haven’t criticized other schools yet because I haven’t found anything notable to criticize, let alone make a post about it.

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MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Closing thread. I think we’ve exhausted the conversation.