<p>3/2 programs are usually not perceived as “back doors”, because they take longer and are more difficult than conventional 4-year degree programs. They not commonly utilized in practice.</p>
<p>For that matter, what’s the C for? As long as we’re hacking college idioms to suit our own personal allegiances and vanities, i’ll add another P to CHYMP(P)S</p>
<p>Um, Northwestern IS NOT MORE PRESTIGIOUS THAN DUKE.</p>
<p>Mid-west bias, Pffft.</p>
<p>Duke is usually regarded as being more prestigious than Northwestern, which most people haven’t ever heard of. I’m not saying Northwestern is on the same level as University of Rochester, and I personally like Northwestern, but Duke certainly is NOT regarded in the eyes of any considerable sum of people as being below northwestern.</p>
<p>I agree, Duke is more highly regarded than Northwestern, but the difference is not as much as you make out; plenty of kids I know chose Northwestern over Duke because of its proximity to Chicago, student life, and select programs such as MMSS (advanced economics program), Medill journalism and obviously HPME (guaranteed admission to Northwestern’s Feinberg med school after 3rd year; admits I know have turned down schools as good as Caltech, Penn and Columbia for this).</p>
<p>No one really drools over Duke at Northwestern. Perhaps Stanford.</p>
<p>please no Columbia students bite my head off, but if you’re a girl Barnard is substantially easier to get into than Columbia, and gives you access to all Columbia courses WITHOUT having to take the gigantic (and imo pointless) Columbia Core.</p>
<p>Your information is a little flawed. Bard College at Simon’s Rock has a 3-2 program, which is common with many liberal arts college. You spend three years at Simon’s Rock and 2 years at Columbia; after 5 years you have two bachelor’s degrees, one with BCSR and one at Columbia. You also have to apply for admission to the program in your second or third year at Bard, so the ‘only requirement’ is not to get a 3.0.</p>
<p>While I would NOT recommend this, I do know of someone (male) who got into Penn’s Nursing school with the intent to transfer to CAS, and successfully did so. This is very frowned-upon, however, and the Nursing school admissions people are on the look-out for this kind of tactic.</p>
<p>If you want to become a dentist with a degree from UPenn, apply to Muhlenberg under the joint program. If you want to take courses at Brown (and do well enough to get a recommendation from a professor so you can transfer there), enroll at Wheaton College (MA) which has cross registration.</p>
<p>As for Duke…TODAY (and for the past 15 years), Duke is considered more prestigious than Northwestern because selectivity and quantity/quality of applicants have increased tremendously. The “Harvard of the South” has become a marketing message as this school (which must admit a certain minimum of students from North Carolina) became more national.</p>
<p>Northwestern was ALWAYS more prestigious than Duke until 15 years ago.; After the Nixon resignation everyone learned that Nixon graduated Duke Law and gave that school a bad rap. Northwestern suffers being too close to UChicago just as Tufts suffers being too close to Harvard. Move Northwestern and Tufts to Kansas and West Virginia, respectively, and their “prestige” would improve greatly…</p>
<p>Emory is well known for its pre-med, and if you apply to Oxford College of Emory (not hard to get into), you would spend two years there and then automatically transfer to Emory for the last two years.</p>
<p>If I were you (and I’m not, my writing score helps my out-of-2400 score), I’d be looking for schools (and there are plenty of them) that look only at the CR/M score. A 1480 looks significantly better than a 2080.</p>
<p>Again, I think Cornell’s guaranteed transfer is pretty sweet, since I think you can go wherever you want for two years and then transfer. You apply regularly too- so if you get in for all 4 years, great.</p>
<p>Wellesley has cross registration with MIT. There are tons of those kind of things going on.</p>
<p>Right now, though, I think the OP should just apply where he/she wants to go (with safeties of course) and see how that goes. After all, if you get in, you’ll be able to take the “front door” :)</p>