<p>I don't know mascuile, but most people here are concerned about undergrad, though grad programs at Duke are good as well - however, looking at your past comments, what I notice is a lack of facts and an abundance of terribly misinformed generalizations. </p>
<p>Now, here I go, comparing Duke to some of its peer schools on a number of rankings, statistics, etc. and also compare it to William and Mary, and explain why these are useful in making your vargue, generalized arguments seem useles:</p>
<p>Rank on US News - culmination of alumni giving, selectivity, and financial strengths - oft subject to manipulation but somewhat useful and by far the most popular rankings:
1-3) Harvard, Princeton, Yale usually
7) Penn
8) Duke
9) Columbia
9) Dartmouth
I don't know where W and M is, but not in the top 25.</p>
<p>Rank on THES - this, like US News, attempts to gauge undergrad quality of all international schools - again, this is undergrad, not grad, otherwise Chicago and Columbia would surely be higher:
1) Harvard
2) Yale
11) Duke
14) Cornell
17) Chicago
19) Columbia
(W and M is not in the top 30)
Again, this is an undergrad ranking, not grad ranking.</p>
<p>Average SAT scores - a somewhat good measure of selectivity
Harvard 1410 - 1580
Yale 1400 - 1580
Duke 1370 - 1540
Dartmouth 1360 - 1540
Columbia 1340 - 1530
Penn 1360 - 1520
Cornell 1290 - 1480
William and Mary - 1260 - 1440
Hey look, WM is over a 100 points lower then most of Duke's peer schools - take it for what its worth.</p>
<p>Peer Assesment - What top academics think of schools, this is often skewed towards top grad programs just because they add to a schools name (of course, this is often contended)
Chicago - 4.7
Columbia - 4.6
Duke - 4.5
Penn - 4.5
Dartmouth - 4.4
Brown - 4.4
William and Mary - I'm not sure, but probably again, much lower</p>
<p>Number of National Merit Scholars enrolling at undergrad insitutions - NMSC winners are usually the most selective students in the country, so where they go could be correlated with undergrad strength:</p>
<p>1) Harvard - 287
2) Yale - 232
3) Stanford - 194
...
6) Duke - 117
7) Penn - 101
8) Columbia - 71
...
62) William and Mary - 10
OK, so top students like to choose Duke more than William and Mary.</p>
<p>WSJ Feeder Rankings, a gauge of proportion of students being sent to some of the top 15 professional schools, this has a blatant Northeast bias which hurts West-Coast schools and Southern schools:
1) Harvard - 21.5 %
4) Stanford - 10.7%
7) Duke - 8.6%
8) Dartmouth - 8.4%
11) Columbia 7.14%
50+) William and Mary is not included in the top 50 schools
Ok, so Duke sends many kids to top professional programs, atleast on this biased survey towards Northeast schools.</p>
<p>Ok, so Duke does really well, especially considering Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Dartmouth each have their professional schools used in the 15 survey schools, whereas Duke has none (though its professional schools are usually ranked between 7-12). Duke did all this in technically less than a century.</p>
<p>Ok...is there anything else that needs to be shown to make you stop making comments such as Duke is only ranked highly or respected because "it is private and has the largest advertising budget?"</p>
<p>I think I've shown you many reasons why Duke owns Willian and Mary in almost every way, and why Duke certainly isn't overrated since it is considered one of the best schools in the country/world. It also has good white basketball players, who doesn't love that? So, I've shown rankings on the two most popular undergrad rankings, SAT scores, feeding rates into top professional schools, and the choices of National Merit Scholars, who themselves are among the top students in the nation. Would you like to see anything else? I'm sure it will only serve to further my point. Is there any data or rankings or survey of undergrad strength, anything at all, that would contradict my point that Duke is better than William and Mary for undergrad and why its not overrated and why you should become better informed on a school before attacking it?</p>