While the full ride programs at both Duke and Emory are fantastic opportunities, I have to disagree with the assertion in post #12 about the chances for AB Duke Scholars getting a Rhodes Scholarship being higher than for students at Stanford or Harvard.
I don’t believe that’s consistent with the data on Rhodes winners, which I’ll show below . . . with the caveat that I don’t think chances of getting a Rhodes are even worth thinking about when picking a college. There are 32 US winners a year and chances of winning are so low (even at the very top colleges) that I don’t think it’s worth a second thought when picking a college.
Here are the top schools for numbers of Rhodes winners from 2001 to 2014, in rank order. These are the only schools in double digits.
Harvard 52
Yale 34
Stanford 28
Princeton 22
West Point 19
Chicago 15
Annapolis 14
Duke 12
MIT 12
Brown 11
15*13 = 195 (or thereabouts depending on fluctuating yield) AB Duke scholars have graduated in those 13 years.
1700*13 = 22,100 (") Harvard students have graduated in the same time period.
Assuming 1/2 of Duke’s winners are ABs (not a bad assumption to make) and 3/4 of all ABs apply for a Rhodes (in reality, it’s probably less than 3/4th of the AB class):
Success rate = 6/98 = 6.1%
Assuming the top 15% of Harvard students apply:
Success rate = 52/3315 = 1.56%
Let’s be generous to Harvard. Let’s say that only the creme de la creme (the top 10%) apply:
Success rate = 52/2210 = 2.35%
So an AB is 3 times more likely to win a Rhodes than a Harvard student who graduates summa/magna cum laude!
@NerdyChica, you may be right, but there’s a lot of speculation built into that analysis unless you happen to know how many AB Duke winners have applied and won and how many apply from other schools. I was operating from the fact I know, which is that there are far more winners from the schools at the top of that list than there are from Duke.
Again just an aside, as for even the very top students the chances of winning are so low that IMO it’s not worth considering in choice of college.
^ All my assumptions were being incredibly generous to Harvard though. I tried to minimize the number of Harvard applicants (in actuality, I wouldn’t be surprised if half the class applied!) and maximize the number of ABs (some ABs may not be interested in pursuing a graduate degree in the UK).
At the end of the day, the real numbers are impossible to obtain but I think my analysis gives people a good idea of the relative success rates.
Your final point about choosing colleges based on a variety of factors is well taken.
full ride at emory is tough to beat… at the end of the day… forget about the money though and visit each school… talk to students and choose based on that. worry about the money later. Stanford IMO will give you opportunities in Silicon Valley that Emory won’t.
on the topic of Rhodes… Stanford is a launching a 700 million dollar scholarship program that will be 2x as large and 3x more funding than Rhodes at arguably a better university than Oxford.
I never claimed that Penn draws A LOT of students from HYPSM, but it draws at least comparable numbers to Duke without any merit scholarships. The point I was trying to make is that I doubt that the number of students who accept the AB scholarship over HYPSM and who actually do not need the financial aid, is significant. I could be wrong of course but this data is not available so who knows.
In this article posted by someone above, the wording is rather vague on the matter. Also the article rather conflates the idea of not requesting aid and actually basing the decision of attending purely on the university quality rather than monetary value, which can be two very different things . A person can come from a solid middle, maybe upper-middle class background and thus afford to pay the full price for college so they haven’t applied for aid. However $250,000+ is a lot of money for a middle, low-end upper middle class family especially if there is more than 1 kid. So while they can afford the full price, when given the opportunity of full ride at a top school like Duke, choosing Duke becomes a very attractive alternative to HYPSM primarily due to monetary value.
Man there sure was a lot of AB Duke talk for a question asking about full ride Emory and dishing out 70K per year for Stanford. Good choice. That’s where I’m heading. The only thing I would add is that Stanford is very generous with aid so you guys must be doing pretty well. Congrats!!
Congrats! my only piece of advice is hit the ground running at Stanford…the quarter system flies by so hit the books hard day 1 and don’t load up on too many classes esp because you’re going to be acclimating to a new environment. doing all the freshman activities and being… well … a freshman:)
and Mom… advise against a car freshman or sophomore year. everyone in the dorm will want to use it and it’s a distraction.