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<p>Duke is not nearly as selective as even the non-HYP ivies. Despite offering merit and athletic scholarships, Duke has lower yield rates than all the ivies, including Cornell. </p>
<p>Selectivity-wise, Duke (17% admit rate, ~40% yield rate) is closer to, say, Vanderbilt (19% admit rate, ~40% yield rate) than it is to the non-HYP ivies.</p>
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<p>There you Dukies go again. Trying to compare yourselves to HYPSM. Funny and sad…</p>
<p>If one insists on looking at university aggregates, I have read on CC that one or both of Duke & Johns Hopkins do not submit Common data set figures and exclude data for some of their colleges from their reported aggregates.</p>
<p>But more importantly, for purposes of assessing one’s own chances, admissions to individual colleges of multi-college universities should be looked at individually. For example, admissions rates at Cornell’s seven undergraduate colleges (all of which are included in reported aggregates) vary from under 15% to over 31%.</p>
<p>Admit rates are a measure of popularity, not selectivity – and not a very good one at that.</p>
<p>Selectivity can be measured only by examining the stats of admitted students.</p>
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<p>Admit rates, combined with yield rates, are perfectly good measures of selectivity when we’re dealing with peer institutions with similar profiles.</p>
<p>So if by “selectivity,” we mean the the difficulty (or ease) of getting into a particular school (or not), then yeah…a school like Columbia is more selective than a school like Duke.</p>
<p>A kid with, say, a 2200 SAT is just more likely to get into Duke than Columbia. The numbers game dictate this. Not only that, but also the kid with a 2200 SAT at Columbia is probably more impressive than the kid with a 2200 at Duke. The former was (likely) able to get accepted at both schools; the latter wasn’t (likely). So the former has something extra that the latter doesn’t. In other words, more Duke students were (or would’ve been) rejected from Columbia than vice versa.</p>
<p>“Examining the stats of admitted students” only tell part of the story. The admissions process is holistic, so the kid with a 2200 SAT at Columbia is not the same as the kid with a 2200 SAT at Duke.</p>
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I’m not sure I agree. I don’t equate odds of rejection with selectivity. Rather, I consider selectivity the bar set for the admissions standard. </p>
<p>Using your example, Columbia may reject more 2200 scorers than Duke, but if both schools end up with (using an random %) 40% of their students scoring 2300+, they’re fairly comparable in selectivity. Columbia simply had greater popularity and drew more applicants. <a href=“Indeed,%20only%20Yale%20tops%20Columbia%20for%20popularity%20among%20the%20elites.%20Duke%20comes%20in%20#11%20–%20behind%20those%202%20as%20well%20as%20Princeton,%20Stanford,%20Harvard,%20Dartmouth,%20WUStL,%20Brown,%20MIT,%20and%20Rice,%20in%20that%20order.”>i</a>*</p>
<p>The admitted students at Columbia mostly likely did not have “something extra” that their counterparts elsewhere didn’t. They simply got lucky. Heck, I had one admissions officer at my university admit to me that something as trivial as lacking coffee could set the mood for admissions that day (scary, no?).</p>
<p>interestingguy,</p>
<p>Your example has flaws.</p>
<p>Yield rate measure the popularity more that the selectivity. Since Columbia and Duke are so different, it is perfectly normal for a student to choose Duke over Columbia.</p>
<p>But anyway, your claim is still very interesting.</p>
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<p>One or two may have gotten “lucky,” but I doubt they all were.</p>
<p>There is probably some logical reason why certain types of applicants consistently can get into, say, Duke though not Columbia. You may not understand the logic, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any.</p>
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<p>I was by no means comparing schools. I was telling YOU to calm your need to incessantly put down Duke over HYPSM.</p>
<p>Yield and acceptance rates are also skewed through the heavier use of ED at some schools (eg. Penn), so a lot of these numbers are superficial. Having got into both Duke and a few Ivies and getting a sense of how dumb the title “Ivy” is, I’d have to say that I don’t feel as if Interestingguy’s claims aren’t concrete. Duke, Stanford, MIT, and UChicago are all as selective as their Ivy counterparts. I agree with IBclass06 that SAT scores and such are probably the best measure of comparison, and all the aforementioned schools all have students with similar scores. </p>
<p>Yeah, HYPSM is probably more selective. But the difference in selectively between the rest of most top schools is moot. Anyway, to direct this towards the OPs question, top LACs, which are as selective as top universities or Ivies, give similar a education. It’s all about preference in learning style.</p>
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<p>I really don’t “need to incessantly put down Duke over HYPSM.” Society already does that for me.</p>
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<p>Duke and UChicago are not as selective as the Ivies. However, unlike Duke, UChicago does at least have Ivy-level academics. </p>
<p>And there you go once again. Trying to associate Duke with its superiors such as Stanford and MIT.</p>
<p>
Duke beats Brown and Dartmouth for academic strength. One could argue that their mission makes this the case, since they attempt to be LAC-like, but Duke nevertheless has a more distinguished faculty. </p>
<p>Furthermore, Duke has consistently had placement at least as good as most of the Ivies. Consider, for example, the infamous WSJ feeder ranking:</p>
<p>1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Princeton
4. Stanford
5. Williams
6. Duke
7. Dartmouth
8. MIT
9. Amherst
10. Swarthmore
11. Columbia
12. Brown
13. Pomona
14. Chicago
15. Wellesley
16. Penn
…
25. Cornell</p>
<p>Also consider the combined rankings for all prestigious postgraduate awards (Rhodes, Truman, NSF, Fulbright, etc.):</p>
<p>1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Stanford
4. Princeton<br>
5. Brown<br>
6. Duke<br>
7. Chicago
7. Columbia<br>
9. MIT<br>
10. Cornell
11. Dartmouth<br>
12. Georgetown<br>
13. Northwestern
14. Penn </p>
<p>Now, I don’t know why you have a vendetta against Duke. I’ve never seen anyone claim that it’s Harvard. It is, however, an excellent school that provides a great mix of academics and social life, with the perks of good weather and a beautiful campus. Anyone who constantly feels the need to put such a good school down has, I think, deep-seated insecurities about the superiority of his/her own school.</p>
<p><a href=“As%20a%20Carolina%20fan,%20%5Bi%5Dwhy%5B/i%5D%20am%20I%20always%20defending%20Duke%20on%20here??”>size=-1</a>[/size]</p>
<p><a href=“As%20a%20Carolina%20fan,%20why%20am%20I%20always%20defending%20Duke%20on%20here??”>quote</a>
[/quote]
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<p>Haha 'cause you feel bad about how un-clutch we are.</p>
<p>How I hate Duke football…</p>
<p>
is infamous for a reason: it’s terribly flawed.</p>
<p>I would say, that since Duke is neither an Ivy nor an LAC, that this thread has been srsly hijacked. :/</p>
<p>I would say the discussion is related to the OP’s apparent concerns. Distinctions among Ivies, top LACs, and other schools is tied to prestige. Prestige is closely tied to selectivity. But selectivity is slippery. How do you measure it?</p>
<p>Admit rate is the first number to look at, and it is appropriate (as suggested above) to control your comparisons by limiting them to peer institutions with similar profiles (scores and GPA). The trouble is, these profiles generally are made public (in the Common Data Sets) only for matriculated students, not for admitted students. The yield rate at best helps us guess at how selective the process must have been to generate a certain profile.</p>
<p>For example, suppose 2 schools with the following admission and matriculation profiles:
**School A<a href="Ivy%20League,%20perceived%20as%20most%20selective.%20%0AHolds%20about%2025-40%%20of%20places%20for%20%22hooked%22%20applicants.%0AMany%20very%20good%20students%20don't%20even%20bother%20applying%20without%20hooks.%0ATurns%20away%20many%20applicants%20with%20perfect%20SATs%20and%20grades,%20making%20room%20for%20hooks.%0AFor%20the%20rest,%20uses%20a%20mysterious%20mix%20of%20criteria%20including%0AECs,%20geographic%20distribution,%20and%20other%20non-academic%20factors">/b</a></p>
<p>SAT Medians .. apps .. admits .. enrolled .. admit_rate .. yield
1300 ......... 857 .. 300 ..... 270 ........ 35% ........... 90%<br>
1400 ....... 11667 .. 700 ..... 560 ........ 6% ............ 80%<br>
1600 ........ 6667 .. 1000 .... 600 ........ 15% ........... 60%<br>
TOTAL ...... 19190 .. 2000 .... 1430 ....... 10% .......... 72%<br>
Admitted SAT median: 1485
Enrolled SAT median: 1465</p>
<p>**School B<a href="Non-Ivy,%20and%20considered%20an%20easier%20admit%20than%20the%20Ivies.%20%0ATherefore,%20attracts%20many%20very%20good%20but%20unhooked%20applicants.%0AEmphasizes%20academic%20criteria%20and%20performance%20on%20a%20challenging%20series%20of%20essays.%0ARelatively%20little%20consideration%20given%20to%20ECs%20or%20%22hooks%22.%0AFor%20many%20excellent%20students,%20this%20is%20a%202nd%20or%203rd%20choice%20school.">/b</a></p>
<p>SAT Medians .. apps .. admits .. enrolled .. admit_rate .. yield
1300 ......... 5000 .. 300 ..... 270 ......... 6% .......... 90%<br>
1400 ......... 2000 .. 700 ..... 420 ........ 35% .......... 60%<br>
1600 ......... 1333 .. 1200 .... 360 ........ 90% .......... 30%<br>
TOTAL ........ 8333 .. 2200 .... 1050 ....... 26% ......... 48%<br>
Admitted SAT median: 1495
Enrolled SAT median: 1443
</p>
<p>Notice that School B admits a slightly higher-scoring set of applicants, selected more strictly and consistently according to academic criteria (grades and scores, exceptional essays). Nevertheless, School A enrolls a slightly higher-scoring class. It winds up publishing a much lower overall admit rate and much higher yield (though the 2 student bodies wind up with a rather similar academic profile.)</p>
<p>If school B receives 10,000 more applications from completely unqualified applicants, and rejects them all, would we say it is suddenly more selective than it is now? No, its policy has not necessarily changed. Certainly its admit rate would drop dramatically. It becomes more selective in practice (and where it counts) only if this change provokes a higher yield among accepted students (who like the image of greater exclusivity), then admissions standards and practices change with respect to the kinds of students currently selected.</p>
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<p>Your lists are only remotely related to selectivity. The Revealed Preferences rankings is more relevant:</p>
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Backtracking, are we? I was clearly rebutting your “Ivy-level academics” argument, not selectivity.</p>
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<p>Keep in mind that Duke can occasionally “steal” a few HYPSM admits by paying them off with merit money. These are frequently the ones who get the postgraduate awards.</p>
<p>So while Duke may gain more postgraduate awards than some of the non-HYP ivies, this does not necessarily imply that the overall quality of its student body is as strong.</p>
<p>In fact, the rest of the Duke student body (i.e. those without merit scholarships) are essentially relegated to second-class citizenship status. They do not have equal access to opportunities and resources.</p>
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<p>What does professional school placement or postgraduate awards have to do with academics???</p>
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<p>This delusional Dukie, among others, have made this exact claim (post #27):</p>
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<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/duke-university/804751-early-decision-applications-up-32-duke-2.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/duke-university/804751-early-decision-applications-up-32-duke-2.html</a></p>
<p>tk21769 wrote:
</p>
<p>The exercise loses a great deal of its <em>raison d’etre</em> once you admit the possibility of readily ascertainable “peers”. IMO, anything beyond that is a recipe for exploding your own head.</p>