Duke 2014 Hopeful

cdz512
Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:06:57 +0000

are you serious? you obviously do not realize that SAT/ACT scores are not all that determines acceptance into these elite colleges – maybe it is mainly what you need for Duke, but I know that for a fact for Stanford, they really don’t care that much about your scores but you’re unique talents, interests, accomplishments, and most of all, PASSION. Scores get your foot in the door for Stanford, but to actually get in you need a LOT more, which is what makes the Stanford student body different than the Duke student body. posting those statistics about the average ACT/SAT for Stanford/Duke/Rice proves nothing. admissions are not based solely on SAT/ACT stats.


Yes admissions is more than ACT/SAT and GPA. But I want to ask you, how would you know that Duke has a less school with passion than Stanford? Your statement makes it seem that Duke accepts student with high scores and little EC, psh yeah right. Duke is a spirited school. The last thing they want is a kid who is all academic, not social ECs. Academics take you to the foot steps of the admissions building at Duke, overall balance of academics and EC takes you into the door. Outstanding commitment, rec letters, essays and balance (work hard play hard) gets you a letter saying ACCEPTED. And that applied to all schools not Stanford. And I would certainly not trust that Stanford’s students have better life experience than Duke because how do you know that? I’m think not one of them is inferior to the other and they are pretty much just amazing as the other.
My response with the SAT/ACT and GPA was in response to this: “You are making it sound like that the student body is of tremendous higher caliber at a place like Stanford versus a place like Duke, and that is simply not true.”

again, how would you know this?"
I think I pretty much answered your question because the scores proved one thing, they are not tremendously higher caliber than Duke.


again, what? i don’t care if your going to bet that the Rice person will get the job, that has nothing to do with this. First of all, there are other factors to getting a job other than just what college you went to. most students in engineering go on to get a masters degree in graduate school AND THEN find a job. and if you want to play the betting game, I bet a Harvard undergraduate will have a much better chance of getting into MIT for grad school than someone from Rice. But there’s no point in your betting game because betting is an incredibly useless and subjective thing to do.


Let me turn the table on you: how do you know this? did you ever experience this? I highly doubt this because you never experience this before. Oh also note that MIT isn’t good at BME either, sorry but going from a school that isn’t good at BME to another school that isn’t good at BME sounds easier than going from a school known for BME, especially undergrad, to a school that is also known for its BME. Simply to put it this way, who would you select, a BME student from Duke who has done internship and research (something that almost all Duke BME students do and get well paid experiences) and a student for Harvard whose BME is relatively unknown and hasn’t had internship (Harvard simply doesn’t focus on engineering). Oh I would also like to add, you can’t simply just apply to a school and get a masters. There is no top school that allows people to apply to get a masters. Its funny that you say that

and i agree, students don’t just rely on rankings, they really do research a lot to make sure they choose the BEST university, which in the case of Duke and Stanford, is Stanford.

Simple mistake there, college is a match not a prize, your statements simply makes Stanford seem like a prize to be one. My friend had the capability of getting into Harvard. She was top of the class, with so much good extracurricular and high test score, she chose Penn over Harvard. Another person who just graduated today was a presidential scholar, aka perfect SAT-2400, he chose to go to UMich. And another presidential scholar 2400 SAT (we had 6 total in this years graduating class), who also chose UM Ross Business over Ivies and Stanford (yes he choice UM Ross over Stanford). Simply to say it, college is a fit, you make Stanford look like a prize.

Oh, lookie here. it seems like this website shows that 92% of people accepted into Duke and Stanford choose Stanford!

Phahaha I think somebody needs to look over their statistics. “The data are ESTIMATES, based on a statistical model that in turn was based on a survey of 3,200 high school seniors at 500 schools across the country”

3,200!!! that’s about 1/8 of the students that applied to Duke this year and 1/10 of the applications of Stanford.
3,200!!! That’s like the most statistically underrepresented national survey. I mean seriously 3,200 out of pretty much hundred of thousands of seniors out there.
500 high schools?!?!?!?! There are more than 20,000+ high schools. Talk about a statistical misrepresentation. I bet you they did not go to one boarding or private competitive college prep school.
I also would like to wonder what kind of school they surveyed, what factors they used. Also I wonder how much college understanding do these people have. I mean I can go ask any one on the street simply which college do you think you would attend if you had the chance, Harvard or MIT, I bet you most will say Harvard. But if I would bring this to students who had the right “college counseling” aka they have talked to their counselors personally and have research the schools, the table would be turned greatly and I bet you it would end up near half and half, definitely not what the chart says. People have gotten so many misunderstanding thinking that the Ivies are the best of the best, simple to say, they are wrong. They are just amongst the best, not the best. Getting a Duke education will not put you in an inferior position compared to Stanford (yes some cases you will, depending on how well you did) but when it comes to job searches, it is simply to say that a Duke graduate has a equal chance at getting a job as a Stanford graduate.


wow? again, you obviously have not done much research. just because X university rejects a certain student who gets accepted into Y university does not mean that X university is better than Y. There are so many factors that contribute to that. For example, yield. You know why WashU waitlisted so many “overqualified” applicants this year? because they felt those applicants would get into a better school like HYPSM and not go to WashU, thus decreasing their yield and lower their rankings. Duke does the same thing too to have a good yield. They could have just rejected your friend because he/she didn’t show much interest or seemed qualified enough to go to a better school. The point is, just because a student might get accepted a MIT and not Duke or WashU doesn’t mean Duke is better. that statement is tremendously flawed.


I would also like to turn this table on you. Here is another true example. This year, this girl applied to SCEA (Single Choice Early Action), if that doesn’t demonstrate interest, then I don’t know what will. She got rejected, what is she now? A Yalie, yes she got accepted to Yale regular choice and rejected at Stanford early action. Lets look again, oh wait Yale has a smaller acceptance percent and number of students than Stanford. Hmmm lets look at that, so she got rejected at Stanford SCEA and accepted at Yale RD, I would say she didn’t demonstrate interest, psh yeah right. You can’t say she was over qualified can you, because according to ranking (because it will be easier for you to understand) Yale is only 2 places ahead Stanford. Oh and according to you she would not have demonstrated interest. Wrong

applicants would get into a better school like HYPSM and not go to WashU, thus decreasing their yield and lower their rankings.

I think the last thing college care about is their ranking. Again you still praise ranking too much. There is also a reason why there is something called waitlisting. If you didn’t know, the kids admitted and the first couple hundred kids on the waitlist have stats you and I couldn’t tell the difference between. To put it in simply words, schools put kids on waitlist because they think "if X number of kids leave, we can take X number of kids off waitlist and they would have pretty much the same stats which means no lower ranking.