<p>I am trying to decide between Dartmouth, Duke, and the University of Chicago, and I need some help! I applied undecided, but I am currently leaning towards perhaps studying global health. Keep in mind that I am still not very sure about my major. </p>
<p>Also a couple questions that would help me make my decision:
- In terms of social life, are Dartmouth and Duke very party and drinking-oriented schools? I am not a big partier, so I have been worried about some rumors about Duke and Dartmouth.
- Does Duke and Dartmouth’s emphasis on Greek life add to or take away from the schools?
- What could Dartmouth offer me in terms of global health (I was thinking maybe a double major in biology and government with a concentration in IR)?
- How is the social life at UChicago?<br>
- Which of these three schools has more academic prestige? Looking into graduate school and the job market, how do candidates from these universities weigh against one another?
- How are interracial relationships within these schools? Do those of the same race or ethnicity tend to stick together or is it very integrated? </p>
<p>We can clearly take Duke off the list lol. From here I would pick Dartmouth over UChicago, because it’s long been known to be a prestigious Ivy league institution taking top quality kids, while UChicago has only done this in like the past three years.</p>
<p>@Clark10: Why can we “clearly” take Duke off the list? And even if UChicago had only been admitting quality students for the past three years, those are exactly the people whom OP will meet there. You’re going to have to demonstrate both the truth and importance of things you say if you want to be taken seriously.</p>
<p>You have one of the toughest choices. All 3 are top caliber schools with very different environments. I’m a Uchicago Alum and am biased towards my own school… BUT… Dartmouth has excellent, excellent connections in Finance with their alumni base and their career services departments is lightyears ahead of Uchicago’s. I’d expect that to be true in most other strong fields like Medicine as well. Does the name Jim Yong Kim ring a bell? Like Uchicago, Dartmouth attracts some of the most talented people in the world to work and study there. That said, Dartmouth is in the middle of nowhere unless you drive 2-3 hours. At most colleges your so busy most days you just hang out on campus, but i’m sure Boston roadtrips will happen once a month or so there.</p>
<p>With Duke, your getting another great school with a good reputation in medicine. I would say prestige-wise its tied with Uchicago nationally but not as strong Internationally. Plus since they’re great at sports every “normal” non-elite school person will actually know you went to Duke as opposed to thinking you went to University of Illinois, Chicago. Socially its on the opposite spectrum of Uchicago since its a cross between a SEC style southern state school and your Northeastern elite Ivies. For the majority of the school and even the studious pre-meds the Blue Devils dominate your social calendar.</p>
<p>I can’t speak much on race at the 2 other schools, but at Chicago its pretty much self selecting based on common interests. I.E. Alot of desis and non-indian people intereted in indian sub continent culture know each other from the various south asian dance organization. A ton of East Asians and Jewish people end up in the finance and consulting clubs because they view that as a way to achieve success. My closest friends were my dorm-mates who spanned literally every color of the rainbow, but in my pre-professional oriented clubs it was pretty much heavily Yellow and White.</p>
<p>If your not a big partier, don’t worry there’s always at least a minority of people like you at every school (even in a school with a Keg for a mascot and a southern sports dominated school). At Uchicago its probably at least 50% starting out 1st day as a Freshmen, but by the time your a sophomore it’ll have dropped to like 20% since everyone’s pretty well integrated and even if you don’t drink you can have a great time at parties.</p>
<p>You have a tough choice ahead, I’d say go to all 3’s campus visit weekends, and then pick them between a combination of who gives you the most money and which people you clicked with the most. Good luck!</p>
<p>Its kinda funny you ended up choosing between 2 of the other top schools a ton of my friends from high school ended up in. Hopefully my response helps!</p>
<p>To chose among the three colleges, it is not too hard to make a decision because they are three very different schools. UChicago is in a big city with various urban activities and culture diversity. It has most academic prestige among the three. Outside US, not many people know or heard about either Dartmouth or Duke although they have similar undergraduate ranking in the US. But, most people know UChicago (see various academic ranking among world universities). Uchicago faculty are among the best in the world. Students at UChicago are more focusing on learning. Dartmouth is an excellent undergraduate college (of course attached to an ivy name). The school is located in the middle of nowhere so the students have more time for Greek life (good, bad, depends who you ask). Duke is in the south and famous with its basketball (coach K). Students are crazy about their sports programs. Clearly Duke students have a lot of fun (maybe too much). Neither Dartmouth nor Duke’s faculty are world class but they are good enough to teach undergraduate. </p>
<p>Ask yourself before you make a decision, what is most important to you as a student? College leaning experience, location, sports, or Greek life? If you like remote place for college and want heavily Greek life, chose Dartmouth. If you enjoy sports, especially basketball, then go to Duke. If learning is most important to your college life, you want to learn from the world class faculty and like to live a large city, then UChicago is the place to go.</p>
<p>Ignore, lenser and y3arly, those accounts have posted nothing but unsubstantiated comments trying to convince people not to go to UChicago. Probably some kid who got waitlisted and is trying to sabotage potential students on the forum.</p>
<p>From the OP is sounds like the best fit is UChicago. Career Advancement has had a makeover in the past few years. For academic prestige, UChicago will get you into the best graduate school programs. UChicago Econ is also probably the best in the world. I don’t know much about IR, but PoliSci is getting a boost from the new Institute of Politics headed by David Axelrod. As for interracial relationships, students will go to to their respective cultural clubs but I have never perceived any barriers between different race students.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the fact that you’ve trolled in the past, the WSO study is fascinating.</p>
<p>To the others on this board - any idea why UChicago wouldn’t even come up as a “semi-target” for the bulge bracket banks? Targets include the 8 ivies, Northwestern, Stanford, Michigan, etc., and semi-targets include Vanderbilt, Wash U, Emory, Indiana U, etc. </p>
<p>This would seem to be a significant gap for UChicago’s placement, if this is indeed the case. </p>
<p>Actually, in looking at the list more closely, some omissions seem puzzling.</p>
<p>MIT (even with Sloan undergrad), Caltech, and Hopkins aren’t on the list at all - either as targets or semi-targets. Also, are George Washington and Boston College (both semi-targets) more highly coveted than interested grads from MIT, Caltech and Hopkins?</p>
<p>Additionally, Notre Dame, Carnegie Mellon, and Tufts aren’t included on the list at all. Are graduates from these three schools less coveted than GW, BC, Illinois, etc.?</p>
<p>I’m wondering if the study went by bulk numbers (e.g. those schools sending a lot of grads to the top banks were then “targets,” those with less representation were “semi-targets,” etc.). Because, for example, not having MIT (with Sloan undergrad) on the list doesn’t make sense to me. I’d imagine talented MIT recruits are courted just as hard as those from NYU, NU, Georgetown, Penn, etc. </p>
<p>The “targets” include places like NYU, Georgetown, and UVA, but neither Chicago nor MIT is a target or semi-target. Frankly, I don’t know how to interpret that. Also, note that students from the “non-targets” outperform (in terms of pay) the students from the “semi-targets”. As many commentators point out, no bank pays people from different colleges different amounts to do the same jobs, so the issue is really whose students are getting hired by the high-paying banks (and which ones are giving their compensation information to Wall Street Oasis – it’s not exactly a scientific study). Since I know Chicago (and MIT) students get hired by the high-paying banks, they may well be part of the reason why the non-target averages wind up higher than the “semi-target” averages.</p>
<p>“The target schools are generally considered to consist of Ivy League schools, top liberal arts colleges (LACs), MIT, University of Michigan, Stanford, Georgetown, University of California - Berkeley, and the University of Chicago. Each of these schools has a large number of Wall Street firms recruiting on campus every year.”</p>
<p>alicejohnson, as Nihilus’ post shows, in fact you can’t substantiate your claim that Chicago is not a target . I can’t blame you for reaching that conclusion on the basis of the Poets and Quants blog post, but given that the Poets and Quants blog post didn’t exactly make sense and isn’t exactly an authoritative source, if you were really looking for the truth you would probably have dug a little deeper. Seizing on random pieces of evidence that support your prejudices and promoting them isn’t the same as “back[ing] it up.” So it was maybe a little bit trolling.</p>
<p>As for the 4% RD acceptance rate, I don’t know what basis you have for questioning that; it’s pretty much a mathematical given. It’s a stupid thing to “tout,” and I don’t know exactly who is “touting” it, but it’s not wrong. IT doesn’t have anything to do with whether Chicago is more selective than Duke. It has everything to do with the fact that Chicago’s early round is EA, while Duke’s is ED. Chicago’s early acceptances have in recent years been more than half of its total acceptances while Duke’s early acceptances are less than a quarter of its total acceptances, but Chicago gets 40% of its total applications early and Duke gets less than 15% early. Also, Duke has somewhat more slots to fill – about 350 more per class. So comparing RD acceptance rates isn’t that interesting.</p>
<p>It is very possible, if UChicago accepts 1350 students early, that 65% of the class each year comes from early applicants (as opposed to ~50% at other schools). I’m not sure if this is a good trend or not, and I also worry about the preference for early admissions.</p>
<p>If you look at the stats, the accept rate for early (~12%) is nearly three times HIGHER than the regular rate (~4%) at UChicago. Typically, early applicants tend to be wealthier, and savvier about the process, and I’m a bit disheartened by what’s probably a very early-accept heavy class at UChicago. </p>
<p>The process can certainly drive down overall accept rate, but it comes at a cost. </p>
<p>Actually, Cue7, the situation is a little bit worse than that. Lots of the early applicants get deferred, and probably about an average percentage of them get accepted RD. I think what that means in the end is that the actual admission rate for EA applicants is something like 14%, and it may be that 70% of the enrolled students come from people who applied EA.</p>
<p>I’m just not sure if that’s a good trend. All the data we have shows that early applicants tend to be more affluent, savvier about admissions, etc., and the school may then be shutting the door on qualified candidates who don’t have access to the resources that many early applicants have. </p>
<p>Also, I wonder what it does to the culture of the class to have so many early accepts in the mix? It seems as if the word is now out that, if you’re interested in UChicago, apply early. For those with the resources, there’s absolutely no harm to applying early, and it offers the best chance of admission to the school. This sets the school up for having consistently 40% of the app pool in the early round. </p>
<p>Alicejohnson, my personal experience was that many international graduate students never heard Duke or Dartmouth before they came to the United States for their Ph.D study. Instead, they knew much more about schools like MiT, Yale, Chicago, Berkeley, Harvard, Columbia, and the like, which have strong academic reputation on their faculty and research. All those schools have trained a lot of Nobel winners. They have strong education and research programs. And more importantly, they have the culture of teaching their students to become a scholar. So, they are not just good in US, they also have excellent reputation internationally. In contrast, neither Duke nor Dartmouth has trained many excellent scholars. How many Duke faculty are well known in their fields internationally? Basically, they are just good undergraduate institutions. If you want to argue more, look at the numbers of Nobel prize winners among those three schools. You will figure out which has much better reputation. Personal experience with Duke graduates was that they are just too crazy about their sports programs and they did not learn much in their college. Surely they had a lot of fun time wasting their parents’ money. For many people who want to spend four years precious time, UChicago is far better choice than Duke or Dartmouth.</p>
This has got to be one of the biggest loads of BS I’ve ever read in my life. Duke has top 20 programs in nearly every field of study besides Chemistry and Earth Science according to the NRC. It is a peer of Chicago’s in nearly every subject area besides Math, Physics, and Economics.</p>
<p>Since there’s a Nobel Prize awarded in the fields of Math and Physics where UChicago is a powerhouse, UChicago is going to boast a lot more Nobel affiliations than other schools like Duke or Penn.</p>
<p>As for Dartmouth, its bread and butter is undergraduate instruction. Just because its professors aren’t globally recognized scholars, that doesn’t mean they can’t teach basic undergrad clases properly. Dartmouth alums who excel can then get their PhDs in Math or Economics in a place like Chicago for postgrad.</p>
<p>You are blatantly overstating how much the strength of the faculty for undergraduates. There’s a reason Brown and Georgetown is considered superior to the University of Wisconsin and University of Madison despite having weaker graduate programs.</p>