The Case For…D U K E !!

College Search & Selection
481

<p>“The fact is that while Duke students have an 85% acceptance rate to med schools, only 75% of Cornell students get admission to med schools and that number was only 68%. Also, consider the fact that Cornell has far more grade deflation than Duke. As a premed, it’s imperative that you maintain a top GPA in your core science classes. It’s easier to do that in Duke than Cornell. In addition to all of this, Duke has better medical advising and research opportunities than Cornell. Does Cornell even have a medical hospital? It certainly can’t compare with the world-famous Duke Medical Center. Duke students have a very easy time getting shadowing and research opportunities at the hospital center and this makes their application to med schools stronger. Besides the MCAT and GPA, med schools also look closely at research/shadowing experience at hospitals as evidence of interest in the medical profession. There are only a handful of schools in the country that can compare to Duke for pre-med. Cornell isn’t certainly one of them.”</p>

<p>EAD, most of your assumptions are incorrect. First of all, grade deflation at Cornell is, for the most part (Engineering and Physics being the notable exceptions) a thing of the past. Yes, Cornell is academically intense and demanding, but grading has been adjusted for the most part. Secondly, Cornell has vast research opportunities, particularly in the sciences. Thirdly, Cornell has a Medical center. Cornell and Columbia co-operate the New York Presbytrerian Hospital, one of the US’ top 5 hospitals. </p>

<p>[New</a> York Presbyterian Hospital - Top NYC Doctors, Comprehensive Medical Care](<a href=“http://www.nyp.org/]New”>http://www.nyp.org/)</p>

<p>[NewYork-Presbyterian</a> Hospital - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewYork-Presbyterian_Hospital]NewYork-Presbyterian”>NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>And yes, Cornell undergrads are welcome (even encouraged) to conduct summmer internships at the hopsital in NYC. Most premeds probably spend a summer or two shadowing doctors.</p>

<p>“As far as law school goes, it is basically all a numbers game. It’s all about grades and the LSAT. There is a clear discrepancy between the scores in the CR section of the SAT between Duke and Cornell students. This will translate to a higher future LSAT score for Duke students because they are smarter students upon entering college and receive a more undergraduate-focused education than their Cornell peers, as evidenced by the disparity in faculty resources between the two schools. Cornell probably also has grade deflation in the humanities as well. Also, there was a year in Harvard Law school when Duke was the 3rd most represented school, ahead of Princeton and Stanford. Even the WSJ feeder survey confirms the conclusion that more Duke grads get into the top law schools than Cornell grads.”</p>

<p>EAD, you are confusing two separate issues. You need to differentiate between what I am saying and what you seem to understand. Perhaps I am not being clear. What I am saying is that student X will have the same opportunities and chances for success and eventually, upon graduation, will be equally recognized where he/she attends Cornell or Duke (or any other elite university). The Peer Assessment score clearly indicates that Cornell and Duke are equally respected in academe. Do you really think that adcoms at graduate schools are going to differentiate between students applying from Cornell and students applying from Duke when the rest of the acsdemic world does not seem to differentiate between those two universities? The 85% admission rate into Medical school Duke vs 75% at Cornell requires some looking into. How many students with sub 3.2 GPAs and sub 25 MCATs are still encouraged to apply to Medical school from Cornell and from Duke? What is the acceptance rate into Medical school from Cornell and from Duke for students applying with identical GPAs and MCAT scores? Is there a significant discrepency? If you look closely, I am pretty sure you will not see much of a difference.</p>

<p>“It is clear that there is a difference in the opportunities offered by these two schools. Again, only data and facts support my reasoning. You are free to ignore my substantiated claims and then rely on your instinct or whatever.”</p>

<p>I am relying on data too. But like I said, I look into the data. Perhaps you should too. Raw data is not telling in these cases.</p>

482

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[NRC</a> Rankings in Each of 41 Areas](<a href=“http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41.html#area38]NRC”>http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41.html#area38)
ENGLISH
Duke: 6
Cornell: 7</p>

<p>HISTORY
Duke: 15
Cornell: 12</p>

<p>POLITICAL SCIENCE
Duke: 14
Cornell: 15</p>

<p>It’s amazing Duke is even close to Cornell in these areas when you consider how much bigger Cornell’s graduate programs are in these areas and how much large its research productivity is. Regardless, these numbers aren’t important because they don’t address the quality of the teaching at the schools in these majors. Duke is recognized for its “Teaching Excellence” according to Hawkette while Cornell isn’t.</p>

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It makes sense if you stop imagining that the Ivies and Duke have a lot of application overlap. While there is some because of the similar educational qualities of the school, the fact remains that Duke is in a whole other part of the country and has to compete with Vandy, Wake Forest, UNC, etc. as well. A lot of scholarship recipients at these schools will turn down Duke. These same people wouldn’t have applied to places like Penn, Columbia and Dartmouth because they are interested in staying in the South and applied to schools just in that region and took the best offer. UNC steals a lot of Duke admits as well because of its cheap tuition and fun college-town atmosphere.</p>

<p>So, among the select group of applicants who are admitted to Duke, Penn, Columbia and Dartmouth, 40-60% choose Duke. These schools are Duke’s true selectivity peers. Overall yield has nothing to do with it. Do you understand?</p>

483

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<p>EAD// so what you’re suggesting is, for whatever reasons including scholarship or whatever, Duke is losing hugely in cross-admit battles against Vandy and Wake Forest. </p>

<p>well, you are the one who’s suggesting these schools might be winning in cross-admit battles against Duke anyway. and that margin has to be pretty huge if you really want to explain how overall yield rate difference betweent those 4 ivies and Duke ended up by 20%.</p>

<p>i will give you a hint; one data is from an e-mail to the editor of a journal with stats build up by voluntary response, and other data is <em>official</em> yield data that is published. that director guy even used acronym HYPSM in his e-mail. who knows if he’s one of the posters here in this exact thread.</p>

484

<p>I don’t understand why we are still arguing about self-reported cross-admit data. Self-reported data is clearly flawed. Seriously how is this Duke data any different from the NYT article about revealed preferences? It absolutely is not! If you Duke students think the NYT data is flawed, then the data from your admissions director must be flawed as well. Both sources share the same flaws of being self-reported data. Hence, they should not be used in making an argument about which school students prefer. Otherwise, the NYT article provides valid data and serves as a counterexample to all of your arguments about cross admit battles.</p>

485

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<p>I still love how we are quoting a reputation survey from US News a couple years ago as the end all be all of teaching quality. </p>

<p>I wonder how much of Duke’s ranking in English was a function of Stanley Fish.</p>

<p>We’re sure as hell going to have a lot of fun once those new NRC numbers come out, won’t we?</p>

486

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<p>Well, the NY Times article was grounded in an academic exercise from a fixed data set that attempted to control for a whole bunch of different factors.</p>

487

<p>“Well, the NY Times article was grounded in an academic exercise from a fixed data set that attempted to control for a whole bunch of different factors.”</p>

<p>Well then the NY times article is more credible and all cross admit arguments should be based off of that article, not the less credible data provided by the Duke admissions director.</p>

488

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<p>I don’t know if I agree with that either, there are some problems with Hoxby’s framework in that it fails to consider the schools a student didn’t apply to. And the data is close to 10 years old.</p>

489

<p>it was from a freaking e-mail message to begin with, and that director guy was using acronyms like HYPSM in his e-mail. wow, such an official data. we should seriously believe him since he’s so cool like that.</p>

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490

<p>“I don’t know if I agree with that either, there are some problems with Hoxby’s framework in that it fails to consider the schools a student didn’t apply to. And the data is close to 10 years old.”</p>

<p>The bottom line is that both sources of data (NYT article and Duke admissions director) are seriously flawed. Most inferences made from either source have so far not been valid. Any future inferences made from the data must be taken with a grain of salt, considering these tremendous flaws.</p>

491

<p>According to revealed preferences studies done:</p>

<p>College preferences, cross admit ranking</p>

<p>1.Harvard
2.Yale
3.Stanford
4.Cal Tech
5.MIT
6.Princeton
7.Brown
8.Columbia
9.Amherst
10.Dartmouth
11.Wellesley
12.U Penn
13.U Notre Dame
14.Swarthmore
15.Cornell
16.Georgetown
17.Rice
18.Williams
19.Duke
20.U Virginia </p>

<p>It is interesting to see that this study corresponds very well with the actual yield percentage of each school. Also, within Ivy league, after HYP, believe it or not Brown gets the most cross admits. This is, btw, also confirmed in the wikipedia page on Brown.</p>

492

<p>He’s the Duke Admissions Director. You think you know something that he doesn’t? If he OPENLY said that Duke enrolls 75-90% of the cross admits between JHU, Northwestern and Cornell, then he would get in a lot of trouble if that information was false. He would immediately be fired or face severe precussions. He might have access to some special information that we don’t have. Maybe all the admissions offices secretly corroborate with each other and establish complete cross admit data. The Admissions Director is the definitive authority on this subject. You can’t really challenge him.</p>

<p>Also xjis, do you not understand that Duke has to compete with Vandy, Wake, UNC, Rice, etc. as well? Many of these schools are cheaper and cross admits will often get scholarships to those other schools and thus Duke suffers. In addition, Duke has to compete with HYP and the top Ivies as well. State schools have high yields because most people just enroll there because it is a good deal in-state. North Carolina has freakin UNC in it. It’s a great school as well and is a lot cheaper for cross admits, not to mention that most North Carolinians hate Duke. Duke’s true fanbase might be in New York City or something. If, Columbia and Cornell had to compete with a quality, cheap state school in NY, then their yield would plummet as well. It’s not a difficult concept.</p>

493

<p>i think most of us answered most of your re-stated points anyway so i will answer just the following which actually seems to be the new argument here:</p>

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<p>the same exact things can be said about any of the lower-ranked ivies and other top-ranked universities and they (columbia, brown, upenn, dartmouth) still have yield rates WAY higher than Duke. </p>

<p>you can’t possibly explain the 20% yield difference by coming up with UNC alone. </p>

<p>And are you seriously suggesting that Duke is winning 3/4 cross-admits against Cornell and Northwestern, but would lose about as much, if not more cross-admits to Vandy, Wake, and Rice? so their scholarship would take away almost 3/4 of Duke’s cross-admits? wow, Duke must be really unappealing to those students for the money then.</p>

494

<p>He doesn’t have access to information we don’t. Cornell doesn’t know what other schools I applied to, and the schools I turned down don’t know I’m going to Cornell. How could they possibly compare notes? And who cares that he’s the director of admissions? He’s not God. He can make mistakes, and I highly doubt he would face “severe precussions” for giving incorrect data that no one has accurate numbers for.</p>

495

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<p>I was trying to say that earlier in nicer words, but it is probably most true in such stark terms.</p>

<p>Southern kids are probably less concerned with going to prestigious schools than kids from the northeast, which explains why they would go to their state schools with nice full scholarships more often</p>

496

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<p>That statement is naive. Unless you have served on Duke’s admissions committee very recently, you cannot state you know its innerworkings. Have you ever been on ANY admissions committee?</p>

497

<p>EAD, if this data were valid, it would undoubtedly be OFFICIALLY published on the Duke admissions website. Is it OFFICIALLY published? No. Please tell me why this data is not OFFICIALLY published; It would do wonders for Duke’s applications and yield if the data provided were true and officially published. Hence, I truly question the veracity of the data. We have already stated and shown that both this and the NYT article are flawed and should not be used for further arguments, as flawed data sources usually lead to fallacious conclusions. </p>

<p>As has been said:
“The bottom line is that both sources of data (NYT article and Duke admissions director) are seriously flawed. Most inferences made from either source have so far not been valid. Any future inferences made from the data must be taken with a grain of salt, considering these tremendous flaws.”</p>

<p>Hence, your arguments based on the flawed data that the admissions director provided should be taken with a grain of salt.</p>

498

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<p>goblue10nis //The truth is, he doesn’t. why else do you think Princeton adComs had to hack Yale admission database and humiliate themselves nationally by being caught?</p>

<p>If princeton adcoms didn’t know which other schools its applicants applied to, im willing to bet my money Duke adcoms wouldn’t know more.</p>

499

<p>“why else do you think Princeton adComs had to hack Yale admission database and humiliate themselves by being caught?”</p>

<p>I was going to refute this but I now realize its not even worth the effort.</p>

500

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<p>well, i wasn’t expecting you to refute it from the first place since these made national news already.</p>