WashU Vs. Duke

<p>NO NORTHWESTERN B-SCHOOL EITHER. Cracked out rankings. No Stanford law/bus/medical, which Stanford shines in all three categories.</p>

<p>No Stanford law AND business???? I am sorry, that ranking is STUPID. Most people that work for WSJ are from the NE and they just want their schools look better. Stanford would be ahead of Princeton at the very least if those two were included.</p>

<p>Sam Lee - it does have San Fran med school which is in Cali with Stanford...still, I think WSJ is pretty good and probably the best ranking of its kind by far - professional school placement is very important and even though the data might over-favor Northeast schools, Duke still decisively beats WashU.</p>

<p>thethoughtprocess,</p>

<p>I am not sure what exactly your point of pointing out the only program in the west coast is. WSJ picked 13 out of the 15 programs in the east coast. Stanford got robbed big time, yet somehow still came out as #4.</p>

<p>Lol,yeah...but I'm saying, how many programs are within three states of North Carolina OR Missouri? There are no top programs in those regions listed. Duke still comes out as #7. WashU, facing a similar hurdle, comes out at number 40something.</p>

<p>
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WashU, facing a similar hurdle, comes out at number 40something.

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</p>

<p>Exactly. That was my main point and I presented alternate findings from simply looking at the # of students that went from WashU to HLS/YLS last year to show that WashU's (law) placement is certainly not amazing but is on par with its peers. I have heard that it's business placement is not amazing, and that wouldn't surprise me, though I'm sure it's medical placement is very good.</p>

<p>thethoughtprocess,</p>

<p>The difference is Duke is still in the east coast so they are more inclined to move to the northeast than students at WashU, let alone Stanford. This is especially the case when Durham is pretty undesirable. Most people go to Duke despite of Durham, not because of it. Maybe schools like Tufts benefits more than Duke in the ranking but overall, Duke isn't hurt by the ranking, certainly not relative to schools not in the east coast. There isn't any top-5 professional program in NC so there's nothing wrong with WSJ not picking them. This is not the same thing as not picking WashU med-school, Kellogg, or Stanford business and law schools.</p>

<p>Sam Lee,</p>

<p>I doubt many WashU grads want to stay in Missouri. I don't see what your point is with mentioning Durham. </p>

<p>Neither Duke, nor WashU, nor Stanford have any of there schools in the survey professional schools - yet regardless Duke and Stanford are still in the top 10, while WashU is near the bottom of the top 50. Duke and Stanford beat out Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, and several other Northeast schools. WashU clearly falls short of these and many other schools as well.</p>

<p>If you look at where their business students go after graduation, a lot stay in the midwest. <a href="http://www.olin.wustl.edu/wcc/pdf/AnnualReportBSBA.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.olin.wustl.edu/wcc/pdf/AnnualReportBSBA.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>55% stayed the midwest
24% went to northeast</p>

<p>Since business students are probably the most inclined to move to the northeast, the % of the whole student body that stay in the midwest is even larger.</p>

<p>As for Stanford, I know a lot of people at Stanford hate winter. That's how they are there at the first place. According to one of the top-MBA guide books, one of the most frequent complaints from recruiters about Stanford grads is that they are inflexible with relocation.</p>

<p>Sam Lee, the WSJ feeder rankings are for undergrads going into professional schools, not business students. Its a significantly different demographic.</p>

<p>Duke students might hate the winter too...again, not sure why this applies to Stanford and not Duke.</p>

<p>thethoughtprocess,</p>

<p>Many of these WashU grads are the ones that apply to business schools several years down the road. Where they are already working or even settled down significantly affect the choice of schools they are applying to. It's more unlikely that someone already in the midwest is gonna apply to bunch of schools in the northeast and not Northwestern, Michigan, and Chicago. Maybe many would apply to Harvard regardless of where they live but I'd be very surprised if someone from the midwest would apply to most or all of those five at the same time (you may not get into Harvard but you may get into another one picked by WSJ or vice versa) while those already in the northeast are more likely to have more, most, or even all of the 5 schools picked by WSJ on their school-to-apply list. </p>

<p>As for med/law schools, again, I'd bet more Duke students would have more of those WSJ schools on their list than students from WashU and Stanford would. Also, many Stanford grads would have no problem picking Stanford law/business over any of those in WSJ survey. I doubt many would pick Duke/UNC MBA over any of the WSJ's ones, regardless how much they hate the winter. ;)</p>

<p>Sam Lee,</p>

<p>I'm just trying to stress that Duke is really far from the Northeast. No programs used in the survey are even near Duke, at all. Yet still ranks 7th in the WSJ feeder rankings. Pretty good.</p>

<p>The truth is a majority of the strongest professional schools are in the NE.</p>

<p>That is certainly true, but it seems illogical to examine a school's placement by claiming to look at the top 5 in each category and then exclude Stanford for law, Northwestern and Stanford for business, and UCSF and WUSTL from medical when these schools are all considered in the top 5. A better assessment would have been made if the WSJ had expanded their selection to include the top 10 or so top professional schools in each group or if they had been better about picking the 5 they did decide to evaluate.</p>

<p>thethoughtprocess,</p>

<p>Techincally, Duke isn't that far from the NE, especially other potentially desirable alternatives (Atlanta?) aren't that much closer. Like I said, most Duke grads don't stay around Durham and from what I gather, large fraction of them move to NE after graduation. Employer reports show Duke's law/business grads end up in the NE more than anywhere else. More of their law grads take the NY or DC bar exam than NC one! Therefore, that "no programs used in the survey are even near Duke" is kinda moot. I know these are not the undergrads but the data show that Durham or the general mid-atlantic isn't desirable to most law/business grads and I think it applies pretty well to many of their undergrads also.</p>

<p>On the other hand, if they replace some of their wacky choices with Kellogg, WashU med school, Stanford law/business, I am sure the gap between WashU and Duke would be somewhat smaller and Stanford would certainly be further ahead of Duke. The point is WSJ went out their way to pick more NE professional schools than they should and it actually benefits Duke, at least relative to other schools not in the east coast.</p>

<p>Sam Lee</p>

<p>Maybe all the Duke students go to the NE because so many get into top law/business schools or get the NYC finance jobs that everyone wants...and not just because they hate Durham (which isn't as big a factor as the media pretended it was during the last year)</p>

<p>I would assume that Wash U students who apply to elite NE professional schools would move there upon admission and entrance as well (despite loving Missouri).</p>

<p>Sam, nice theory but you're wrong. </p>

<p>If you look at WashU's recruiting and placement list you see alot of names like accenture, Bear Sterns, and PWC. Good firms, but hardly Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and BCG. The best jobs tend to be based in the Northeast and Duke has much more access and awareness when it comes to getting these jobs. WashU's job placement list out of Olin is not impressive.</p>

<p>Its a cycle: WashU places their grads into worse local business jobs with lesser firms and then in turn these students often end up at lesser MBA programs.</p>

<p>Also, Duke has just as many regional pulls as WashU (Washington DC, Charlotte, Atlanta) yet they end up at top grad schools at an enormously higher rate.</p>

<p>thethoughtprocess,</p>

<p>
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I would assume that Wash U students who apply to elite NE professional schools would move there upon admission and entrance as well (despite loving Missouri).

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</p>

<p>That's true and I never say otherwise. But the difference is many of them also have schools like Chicago/Kellogg/Michigan on their list of schools to apply. One of my ex-roomates, who had already been working for few years in Chicago and married when he applied to MBA programs, applied to Chicago, Kellogg, and MIT (only MIT is on the survey even Kellogg deserves to be there). He got admitted to MIT and Chicago (very surprised by Kellogg's rejection as he went to NU for undergrad). If he were in NYC, his school list would probably look more like Dartmouth, MIT, Harvard (all three are in the survey). Assume that all these schools are equally difficult to get in, he has 3times the probability to get into any of the WSJ school if he were in NYC. So my point is that there are more Duke grads already living in NE and hence more of them apply to those WSJ schools on the survey and there are more chances for them to get into <em>any</em> one of them. It's number is inflated relatively to WashU or Stanford.</p>

<p>What on earth does business have to do with a non-premed biology major??? Stay on track, people. I know it's difficult. ;)</p>

<p>slipper1234,</p>

<p>I am not saying WashU is equal to Duke by any stretch in prof school placement. I am just showing how WashU and to even larger extent, Stanford, are hurt by WSJ's ridiculous choice more than Duke is. Certainly, I am not saying the "significant" gap between WashU and Duke in that survey would just disappear if the WSJ has more legit choices of their top-15 programs.</p>