<p>"You see, on this board, many Dukies often try to convince others that Duke is better than their school. Often, this fallacious statistic is used to do so."</p>
<p>You said this when I mentioned that the Dean of Admissions for Duke said that Duke draws approximately 75-90% of cross admits from (I think) Cornell, NU, and Hopkins. I remember the argument went something along the lines of the Dean of Admissions at Duke isn't a credible source for saying stuff like this...which I thought was amusing. You also seem to argue again that because we don't know the exact processes and reasoning behind everything that Duke does there is legitimate reason to be suspicious of it. I don't come here that often but the past couple times I have I've read the same arguments.</p>
<p>The 85% comes directly from their website. Duke has a very strong reputation for premed. I'm not suprised.</p>
<p>btw, usually when Duke gets brought up, it's not b/c a person wants to promote an agenda that Duke is better than another school. Quite often someone will mention Duke then people such as you will actually be the first to establish its ranking, stating its no better than Cornell, etc, and that Stanford blows it away. Occasionally EAD will say Duke is better than school X in X, but at least he uses data. The vast majority of people who are connected to Duke on this board don't go around and claim its better than other schools. I know we're (unfortunately) kind of coming from different sides, but at least understand the Duke mentality that it feels like the school is constantly being attacked and needs to be defended. As you are probably well aware, Duke students do tend to feel relatively a lot of pride for their school (you can attribute it to sports, elitism, high donation rates, w/e) and hold it in high regard.</p>
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The 85% comes directly from their website. Duke has a very strong reputation for premed. I'm not suprised.
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<p>Another Duke student using the fallacious statistic once again... Please read what I am about to write very carefully so I don’t have to restate my argument a million times like I had to do with Bachanellia. </p>
<p>The statistic provided is not Duke's overall acceptance rate, nor is it related to how many use premed advisors. It is related to how many APPLY THROUGH THEIR PREMED CENTER. Big difference there.</p>
<p>Just the sheer number of people who have misinterpreted this statistic on this thread itself is a testament to how misleading this statistic is.</p>
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At Duke, the admission rate to medical school for seniors and alumni who applied in 2003-04 through the Health Professions Advising Center was 86 percent
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You said this when I mentioned that the Dean of Admissions for Duke said that Duke draws approximately 75-90% of cross admits from (I think) Cornell, NU, and Hopkins.
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<p>Alright... do you understand how that survey works? How official is that survey? Students are prompted to fill out a card. Many of them who turn down Duke don't fill out the card (what incentive do they have to do so)? Why do students who turn down Duke need to bother to fill out that survey? I didn't fill out these survey cards when Penn and Columbia prompted me to do so, because I wasn't going there. Thus, naturally Duke's data will be inflated. That was my argument. Nevertheless Duke alums use this data like doctrine, refusing to acknowledge its flaws.</p>
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Quite often someone will mention Duke then people such as you will actually be the first to establish its ranking, stating its no better than Cornell, etc, and that Stanford blows it away.
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<p>I never stated this on this thread. Please quote me. In fact I said even though Stanford may be more prestigious than Duke it doesn't matter because you'll get a great education at both schools. When did I ever mention Duke VS. Cornell on this thread? Once again please quote me. </p>
<p>I repeat, quote me.</p>
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at least understand the Duke mentality that it feels like the school is constantly being attacked and needs to be defended.
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<p>This is like the chicken or the egg question. Do you think Duke gets "attacked" because of the haughty attitudes of some alums on CC or do you think Duke must defend itself because it gets "attacked"?</p>
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Well, Duke is better than most of the T25(as measured by USNews right?) schools with regards to the premed experience and placement. It's definitely top 10 in this area, maybe even top 5. The top-notch premed advising, medical internships, health-related service learning opportunities, lack of a cut-throat culture among students, lack of major grade deflation, fantastic med school placement, etc. all contribute towards excellence in this area.</p>
<p>If I were a premed, I would much rather go to Duke than say MIT, where there is serious grade deflation and a cut-throat student body. Less competition is a good thing.
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<p>To be honest, most of the characteristics you listed: great advising, research opps, small classes, etc. can be found at most top 20 colleges. Maybe MIT isn't a great premed school. But, I'm not so sure you can make a good argument that Duke is better for premed than Harvard or Dartmouth or Penn or Cornell or JHU or Northwestern or Notre Dame or most other top 20 colleges.</p>
<p>I personally think acceptance rates are meaningless and that most top colleges offer pretty much the same opportunities for a student to excel in premed. Acceptance rates are a function of student quality, not opportunities. Schools like Harvard and Princeton have med school acceptance rates around 90%. Duke is at 85%. Northwestern, Cornell, Penn are around 75-80%. Michigan, Cal are in the 60's. The only schools that buck the trend are MIT and JHU. MIT is too techy to really be a good premed school. JHU has the selectivity of a Cornell or Northwestern but the acceptance rate of Harvard. But, once you factor in the screening, the extra 10% doesn't seem so great anymore. So, despite the crooning of JHU alums about how JHU is such a great premed school, I don't think it's better than any other top college.</p>
<p>Duke is known for having great college players who are absolutely mediocre in the NBA -- Couple of exceptions of course -- but if you choose to compare to UNC players who've gone on -- No dice.</p>
<p>Duke's just gaming the system. I don't think it's all that horrible of a thing to do, but w/e.</p>
<p>The statistic provided is not Duke's overall acceptance rate, nor is it related to how many use premed advisors. It is related to how many APPLY THROUGH THEIR PREMED CENTER. Big difference there.</p>
<p>Just the sheer number of people who have misinterpreted this statistic on this thread itself is a testament to how misleading this statistic is.</p>
<p>Straight from Duke's website:</p>
<p>Arts & Sciences and Trinity College - Duke University : News : Top Story : Pre-professional advising at Duke
You conveniently forgot to read the rest of the article which sheds more light on the medical school admissions process through the Pre-Med Center. Here are some quotes of interest:</p>
<p>"Trinity College students are assigned a pre-major advisor when they matriculate. When they declare a major, they are assigned an advisor in that major department, and an academic dean. The academic deans also provide other specialized advising to help students prepare for graduate school, law school, business school, and the health professions. These specialized advising services, which are available to students and alumni of Trinity College and the Pratt School of Engineering, represent the value-added of the system as a whole, Thompson said. The deans in each of these offices work with students to shape their Duke experiences to best prepare them for their future careers, to help them meet entrance requirements, to evaluate programs in terms of their interests and skills, and to garner the letters of faculty support that often provide them a critical competitive advantage.</p>
<p>"Singer helps students prepare for this process, she said, by making it harder. She meets with pre-med students in October of their junior years and asks them to fill out a pre-application. The pre-application asks for a lot of information similar to what theyll be asked on the AMCAS; when they get to the AMCAS, they dont have to go back and reconstruct what they did, for example, for extracurricular activities in their freshman year. It serves a dual role, because it helps me learn more about them." </p>
<p>"Pre-meds can look forward to spending the winter break of their junior years writing a draft for Singer of the essay theyll submit in June to AMCASS. Only when they turn in the essay in January can they schedule an interview appointment with me, Singer said. They pull their hair out about the essay, but so many of them come back to me in June and say, Thank you for having me write that first essay in January, because my June essay didnt look anything like my draft, and if Id waited till June the essay wouldnt have been any good. Ive made them sit down and do it and given them the opportunity to think over time about what theyve said and how they might say it better.</p>
<p>What you don't know about Duke since you're not a student or an alum is many of the Major Deans are also heads of the Pre-Law, Pre-Med, Grad School and Pre-Business advising offices. Painstaking care is taken to ensure that when a student finishes his 4th semester of school, he is assigned advisors and deans THAT ARE SPECIFIC to their course of study and career plans.</p>
<p>Thus, the whole process in interconnected and this idea you have that there are renegade students who are COMPLETELY BYPASSING Prehealth Advising is absolutely absurd. It just goes againt the principle and purpose of the university's support system specifically designed for students.</p>
<p>^^ Duke isn't the only one with that advising system, and yet those that do have similar (or the same) ones release the statistics that Brown man1987 has spoken of.</p>
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Duke's just gaming the system. I don't think it's all that horrible of a thing to do, but w/e.
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<p>It's unethical, of course, but not uncommon at all. Every top (even non-top) university games data (not just pre-med) in some way or another.</p>
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"And each year Duke’s graduating seniors, representing a wide range of majors, enter the medical school of their choice at an acceptance rate that has averaged around 85% for those who matriculate upon graduation."
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<p>To me that is very clear. The data stating Duke's yield rates is very clear. Make what you want out of it. I have not heard any official criticism of Duke's data, please tell me if you find any, but let's end the Duke discussion.</p>
<p>The 85% figure applies to only applicants who went to med school straight out of college. They, in general, tend to be stronger than alumni applicants. If you factor in Duke's alumni applicants, the % will probably be lower. </p>
<p>To get an idea of how much lower, compare MIT's overall acceptance rate with the acceptance rate of its undergrad applicants:</p>
<p>^Yeah, so what's your point? There's nothing Duke or MIT can do if their applicants choose to wait for like 5 or 10 years before they apply to med school.</p>
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^Yeah, so what's your point? There's nothing Duke or MIT can do if their applicants choose to wait for like 5 or 10 years before they apply to med school.
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<p>You can, however, include data on all applicants applying that particular year. For example, many of the people applying in 2007-2008 are from the Class of 2008 but there are still plenty of people from Class of 2007, Class of 2006, probably even a few from Class of 2004 or earlier. Those people (the people who graduated 2006, 2005, etc.) would presumably drag down the acceptance percentages. It is very possible to include data on all of these people but Duke chose not to. That's fine but if you were to compare apples to apples, you'd have to compare Duke's 85% with MIT's 84% (not the 74% figure). And if Duke's figures includes only those that used prehealth advisers, then you'd have to compare witih MIT's 90%. </p>
<p>The main idea to draw from all of this is that people on CC tend to magnify what are minuscule differences b/w top schools. Education, student quality, opportunities, grade inflation/deflation are more or less the same (despite what some people would have you believe). The biggest difference is in the environments. The environment at Duke is different from the one at MIT from the one at Cornell. An engineer from MIT is unlikely to want to do his engineering studies at Duke and an English major at Duke probably wouldn't want to go to MIT. Thus, arguing that Duke is better than MIT at premed (which isn't even correct) is moot.</p>
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Thus, the whole process in interconnected and this idea you have that there are renegade students who are COMPLETELY BYPASSING Prehealth Advising is absolutely absurd.
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<p>Dude, how many times do I have to explain this to you? You're a Duke alum so I thought you should be at least intelligent enough to understand the following distinction: </p>
<p>The statistic provided is not is it related to how many use premed advisors. It is related to how many APPLY THROUGH THEIR PREMED CENTER. Big difference there. You can use premed services and still not apply through the center. You want me to repeat that again? </p>
<p>The statistic provided is not is it related to how many use premed advisors. It is related to how many APPLY THROUGH THEIR PREMED CENTER. </p>
<p>Let me repeat that once more, this time in bold and underline.</p>
<p>**The statistic provided is not is it related to how many use premed advisors. It is related to how many APPLY THROUGH THEIR PREMED CENTER. **</p>
<p>Please read the above statement very carefully and slowly before you continue to argue. I don't think you understand this. Sheesh.</p>
<p>Explain the following question and I will GLADLY concede:</p>
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So why include the language?</p>
<p>There'd be no need for it if it didn't affect overall numbers
<p>To quote the famous ETF from Student Doctors Forum:</p>
<p>***"berkeley: #2 ranked university on earth by 4 separate U.S. News type publications around the world. separate parking spaces for nobel prize winners.</p>
<p>duke: what you take after eating a lot of indian food at berkeley."***</p>
<p>wow people please shut the frick up about Duke.
It's a pretty good school. It's better in some things than other schools and worse in some things.
Move on?</p>