<p>
[quote]
I meant duke is MUCH HARDER to get into than Wash U. One can't just look at percentage of students accepted, it's the quality of the applicants too
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I disagree. If you look at the stats threads for both schools, you will see that there is no difference in the quality of applicants and that many that were accepted at Duke were rejected/waitlisted at WashU and vice versa. In my opinion, they are peer schools and equally difficult to get into.</p>
<p>As for the above reference to Duke's peer being Northwestern but not WashU, you will find that the cross-admit rate between WashU and NU is very high, indicating that they attract and accept a similar type of applicant.</p>
<p>I personally think that besides HYPSM, Duke and Columbia are the next 2 best schools in the country(besides LAC's) all things considered HANDS DOWN. Duke is #6 on the WSJ Feeder School Ranking and #8 on the US News Ranking and has never fallen below #10 on any undergraduate college ranking system I have ever seen. On the other hand, it's other so-called "peers" like Georgetown, NU, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, WUSTL, Penn(without Wharton), Michigan, etc. float in and out of the top 10 and sometimes even wander into the top 20.</p>
<p>I would argue that "peer school" designation has a large "reputation" component. Furthermore, the "reputation" component has "regional" and "national" subdivisions.</p>
<p>For example:</p>
<p>While WUSTL may not be as nationally known as Duke, it is certainly very well regarded in the South, where Duke is. Therefore, more students from the south that would apply to Duke would also apply WUSTL. That is a big reason for why it's a peer school to Duke. </p>
<p>On the other hand. NU cannot be considered a regional school to Duke so it must be considered on a national level. Nationally, NU is not as well known as a school of the same caliber as Duke (though it's reputation is still considerable), therefore, by extension, it's not a peer school for Duke.</p>
<p>The college applicants are indeed very smart. Most of them decide the peer schools, based on the field of study and geographical preference. From my experience, I have seen the following 'top of the mind' choices for applicants. This doesn't consider the list of LAC, where the opinions seem to be guided/influenced by the GC or a family member. </p>
<p>End of the day, the perceived academic reputation plays a very important role in deciding the peer schools. In terms of overall attraction, I find the USNews ranking very close to 'Common perception'.</p>
<p>Actually it probably was still top 10 even then. Someone on CC once posted the schools which had experienced the greatest change in rankings from the first rank to now and Duke wasn't on it (and I think the smallest figure was 5 or 6...not sure though). While I don't buy the rankings myself, Duke is considered to be a solid top 10 school.</p>
<p>Duke is definitely a solid top 10 school according to USNWR but I think the OP's question dealt with peer schools. Where do you draw the line as to peers, I guess is the difficult part. One can say the top 10-20 schools are peers, I guess. It seems based on CC most people are considering Duke v. Penn, Cornell, NU as opposed to Duke v. Stanford.</p>
<p>You can't really say that all 10-20 schools at the top are peers. While academically and ranking-wise they are similar, they are bound to attract different types of students.</p>
<p>Example: Caltech and MIT are not peers to Duke even though they are all top 10 schools. </p>
<p>A school I think, can have at most 5 peer schools. And the criteria for being a peer school IMHO are:</p>
<p>1) Location (regional or national)
2) Reputation within the location subdivision
3) Academics (both student quality and program quality)
4) Rankings (both major-wise and overall)</p>
<p>Some what debatable:
5) Size
6) Price</p>
<p>Only when two school are similar in most/all of the above criteria would I think of them as peer schools.</p>
<p>US News first published rankings in 1983 and '85. They went annual in '87. In 1985, Duke was #6. HYPSM and Duke have been the most stable schools in the top ten.</p>
<p>Anyone who doesn't think Duke is peer to the lower Ivies is just a northeastern snob. Student talent is similar, job recruitment is similar, grad school placement/standardized test scores are better, and cross admit battles are usually 50/50.</p>
<p>Duke beats NU/Chicago/JHU/WUSTL in all the above categories.</p>
<p>And no, I don't think Duke leads Columbia at all. If anything, they are peer schools as well, and many will argue the same for other schools on your list. </p>
<p>All of this "my school is better than your school" stuff gets really silly after awhile, ya think?</p>
<p>Enteril> I made that decision as well. Although Cornell was higher up on my list than NU but then NU gave me one of those new merit based scholarships. Still chose Duke though for a variety of reasons.</p>