@sonngy : CC is a microcosm of people either with or reporting higher than normal stats. I do not accept it as reliable for statistics for the whole transfer pool. Stats will be lower.
@gaokaomaster : Here is how it is slightly offensive (especially to one a person that advocates against measuring “better” in terms of ranking or lay prestige…Chicago anyone?) How are those schools better? They are not really (ok they just are not) better at the undergraduate level if you talk academics inside of the areas they all offer. They are about the same overall (their post-grad award outputs are similar for example. Mind you a place like Vanderbilt is now much more selective. This could suggest that Emory and UCB are more effective at fostering engagement with activities and opps that those award committees like seeing, basically overall, those two could enhance incoming undergraduates more whereas one school just admits students with super high stats and crosses their fingers that the output will be decent. No thanks on that model) )and have a few advantages and disadvantages in certain areas. Berkeley is the only outstanding one at the graduate and research level among the 3. But for purposes of undergraduate, they have similar quality programs that are run differently. Unless you are talking about social vibe, my research indicates hardly really any huge advantage over Emory unless you want to do a major not offered at Emory. I used to have these opinions based on prestige to (ok, Vanderbilt is basically still regarded as similar to Emory, even post-stats whoring. Berkeley is the only one that stands out prestige wise). My opinions are based on academic quality, teaching quality, monies and resources offered to undergraduates to engage in their areas of interest.
Emory does VERY well in those (and I know UCB does too. They both seem really big on getting students in all disciplines involved in independent or course based research. Emory just benefits from being smaller if you want more access), If you are more serious academically and are doing a major offered at all 3, it could be the place to go. If you are mainly looking for more school spirit or something, then maybe not. Do not delude yourself or make determinations or opinions using prestige metrics (which usually include selectivity and app. numbers which now reflect marketing more than anything else). This is kind of what led Chicago to be under-rated and over-looked by many in the past. It did not suddenly become better quality than schools ranked ahead of it in 2006 in 2010. It essentially already was. The question is WHO is a school better for. It is best to not just look at prestige and aid (determining by the latter would honestly make more sense than the first if deciding between very good schools. In such a case, prestige should not become a true factor unless it is like business school or something.
You want a place that is actually an academic and social fit. Don’t just go anywhere that is prestigious and gave you good aid). Please attempt to seriously research and gauge programmatic quality and the types of opportunities the school you choose will offer you in your areas of interest and how accessible they are. If you overvalue prestige, you may end up at a place that doesn’t do you as well as you would think based upon the rank. Carefully consider what VU and UCB offer, avoid choosing based upon rank or anything. You are going to either for undergraduate studies and they are regarded as similar caliber, but they could do things very differently and one could be better at what you want to do so do your research before determine whether or not a school is “better”. Careful scrutiny will often turn up surprises.
@VANDEMORY1342 : You know that is the same type of anti-transfer elitism that a school that is part of your screen name is known for and it isn’t Emory. I personally appreciate places that you call “Podunk U” a lot.
@bernie12 Well to be fair I didn’t know he went to case unit after I said that. Case Western is a great school. You are right about Vandy but can you blame them, after all they are elite( Emory is too), and they’re especially “Hot right now”, “new girl on the block”. However people shouldn’t get confused with a trend/fad and established prestige and/ or acedemic quality. Emory will have it’s “it girl” reign, and I think soon too.
@VANDEMORY1342 : Yes I can. It made a CHOICE (see how Chicago made this change: http://www.personalcollegeadmissions.com/getting-in/the-great-success-of-the-university-of-chicago) to do its admissions that way and it is backfiring or having rather sporadic and limited returns (like…when WUSTL did it. Seems to follow the exact same trajectory. It will work for a little bit to pump up the rank but if other things do not turn around, which will require cultural change, then it will level off).
Penn, Duke, Stanford (and more) all had “hot” phases and still choose admissions schemes that are different from that and have much better post-grad award output than any of us and many of the schools that decided to go that route for admissions (it really only makes sense for the oldest elites to have stats like that and they have data to back up that the students are even better than the already great scores would suggest). You should enhance the academics first and then wait for students to actually get better in meaningful ways other than scores. This is how you “produce” better students. Like, if you come up with a scheme that “catches” all the super high scoring denied or wait-listed students from schools such as those 3 and then those schools still go on to cream you in terms of most outputs and undergraduate accomplishment it suggests that those places have the right(or at least a better) formula. They have admitted more “serious” students who are willing to full engage their academic and social environments and even take on more challenging course work (like for example, even though WUSTL and VU have higher scores, more DPS students enter taking VERY advanced math, physics, and accelerated chemistry courses much like you would see at HYP for example. I checked enrollment numbers and VU and WUSTL where dead on with Emory 
, a school with 100 points or more lower on the range. Duke, Penn, and Stanford have to now be at least 50 points behind them so something isn’t right. Mind you that interest in such courses at Emory has actually declined so they are basically comparable to Emory in a slump with such a high scoring student body…go figure). Basically you can make yourself “hot”. Emory should not employ the same scheme as such places, it needs to find a milder path (it kind of has but it certainly isn’t DPS level).
Point is better academic quality and programmatic options will actually attract more ambitious and even gifted students. Without that, you can change the scheme to get higher scores but they may be the types that are mainly there for quality of life issues and not because “damn, I see real opportunity here. This school offers X,Y,Z” (as in they actually get students familiar with and excited about the offerings already. Schools in this tier “hot” or not, tend to attract because they are simply ranked high and are generally nice campuses. Many students are completely unaware of and may not even care about programmatic strength. They just come and do whatever). Most of those other schools (many who do not emphasize stats as heavily) get more thoughtful admits and it shows. I think it is bad to go in a direction where the students outclass the level of academics offered. If you raise stats to certain level, then your academics should become very comparable caliber to the schools in your new stats bracket which in the case of those 2 are HYPMCtCol. Sorry, neither is close. And they aren’t even close to many below it within the top 10 or 12. They are very nice campuses and have high quality of life, and very solid academics, but they are not there yet and doesn’t look like they are even trying. I don’t want Emory become an even more questionable one (kind of already is the one folks doubt. A stats, hyper-marketing oriented scheme will attract more doubt even if rank does rise). Until it legit improves more than just QOL, then it should just settle for punching above its weight instead of doing a short term fix.
I would argue that only Chicago and JHU had good enough academics to basically justify the new stats whoring type of admissions scheme. Emphasis on “had”. Many others, great but not really that level.
@bernie12 I wholly agree with you. WUSTL and even Vandy are stuck in “no man’s land” and high stats can’t compensate for it. And Emory does have more potential then some of those ranked ahead of it simply due to location. If Emory continues to push medicine CDC ( they have a few commercials now) and acedemic rigor there stature will grow. I’m not sure WUSTL can be more than a high stats school.
I’m so confused… are y’all saying that WUSTL (and others) is doing something wrong in admissions or building prestige? It’s one of the biggest names in biomedical science, has a number of Nobel prsizes associated with it, and it’s not just known for high stats. Vanderbilt and Emory are not quite the same in research output and respect but similar. Reading this thread, it seems like y’all are underestimating the academic reputation of any school that isn’t HYPSM (and reaching that slightly higher level is currently almost impossible).
@usualhopeful well in a way yes. If one is to increase Sat scores one can surmise that outputs( top 25-30 grad school placement, research, awards won etc.) would increase as well. I think what @bernie12 is illustrating is that is not the case as outputs for WUSTL and Vandy as statistically outputs are the same for Vandy, Wash, and Emory. So the quality of student isn’t actually increasing thus stature isn’t increasing either. Out of the three listed I feel as though Emory is the one that activity tries to increase outputs (see Goizetta’s 100% job placement rate) while recently raising inputs( class of 2021). I was trying to say that Emory was at a slight advantage due to it’s location(ATL being a new it city, CDC, etc). But maybe I am underestimating their prestige and acedemic prowess idk, Although I don’t think I am.
@bernie12 where would you place Georgetown in all of this, there stats are consistent.?
@VANDEMORY1342 : Georgetown is fine. It obviously has more of a focus on undergraduate education in some ways (they are a big “producer”). Doesn’t need super high scores to even gain lay prestige because its business, law, and UG social sciences programs have been so impactful and well known. And until recently their scores were basically identical to Emory. It looking more like Cornell is a relatively recent development. It “may” be more natural growth as Emory is experiencing right now. Some growth is clearly unnatural for some schools though. Like I remember when VU started to rather randomly shoot up stats wise in maybe 2009-2010. That usually reveals a big change in the admissions strategy because it isn’t like Duke, Penn, and Stanford are on the down-slide admissions wise. They are still making big marks producing alumni in fields where they have great undergraduate strength and essentially run the corporate and/or Tech world in many ways (Duke and Stanford have even made their mark in academia). Some schools want to rush to popularity and rankings and clearly forget that actual quality and impact of the program matters most. It is not like Duke and Stanford or even Penn were always that awesome. It took a transformation which took time. They gained respect from the more ambitious students once they actually became more comparable to the other super elites they usually consider. You can’t just bring in or yield super gifted ambitious students and then fall tremendously short in terms of intellectual climate or academic climate and offerings. They will figure out that they were duped by what the school had on paper (they may have read “low admit rate, very high SATs” as “same student body as Harvard” and they just aren’t sadly. Schools with less shiny but stellar stats often have more students similar to the more ambitious among those who matriculate places like HYP.) and may be less satisfied or just straight up transfer to another top 20 research or top LAC that serves their level of ambition better.
It was quite revealing when a poster over in the WUSTL forum transferred to Columbia and discussed the differences (drew lots of ire) because the 2 have similar stats, but Columbia is just at a different stage academically in that person’s area of interest (engineering). I didn’t want to believe them, and had I not taken a look, I wouldn’t have. But since I did, I found the report very believable (for one Columbia has produced many academics in comparison which kind of tells you that STEM there could be more intense especially in some fields. More pre-med friendly places usually do not follow this logic. They have their rigor, but it often isn’t the same type or as consistent. Usually the doctoral candidate feeder schools have an edge there and often a bigger focus on critical and analytical thinking across all STEM disciplines and courses in order to prep. students for research careers).
*As for Emory. Don’t forget that for a newb private school, it has an unusually strong alumni network and support and that helps Emory likely outperform in areas where it should not based on inputs. They may not be the heaviest donors to the college, but they typically donate to other areas and most importantly are very powerful. This trend of entrepreneurial spirit will likely help make this more so the case in a broader variety of fields. But what Emory, like many schools (except publics like UCB) needs to do is think about ways to raise research profile and infrastructure even further and also make a more rigorous undergraduate program in the correct sense of rigor. I think this will set the path for making a dent into each school’s influence on academia today. That is one thing it and those two lack severely. You don’t have to do this by making classes harder necessarily. You just want to make more efforts to ensure students are more engaged intellectually and academically. Emory and VU have some plans but it appears Emory is a step ahead (Immersion Vanderbilt has a similar ring to Duke Engage, but the things they propose and have implemented look like things or are straight up things Emory has had for 5-10 years) and may move forward (more plans to align majors/curriculum with research and scholarly endeavors which means many more capstone courses and experiences and research based courses). Also, Emory may have a slight advantage here simply because Emory undergraduates are a different culture. The VU documents suggest only starting with the highest achieving UGs first (they basically mean that a cultural change is needed for others to buy in), whereas Emory has always done things like that on more of a mass scale and it was a no-brainer for high achievers on campus. Emory has its own cultural issues (with academic engagement) but the foundation is more solid because the students are more academically leaning in the first place. I find that Emory students will pretty much just suck it up and go along with academic changes whereas some student bodies may more actively avoid or resist changes that make for a bigger time commitment outside of ECs. But we will have to wait and see.
@usualhopeful : We are talking about its UNDERGRADUATE program. You mention WUSTL (they have been known for weird admissions tactics in the past to boost that rank and stats. This obsession with shiny inputs lead Emory adcoms to flat out cook the books and tagged on a meager 30-40 points lol. Seriously? Even some elite schools need to get their priorities straight when it comes to UG education). Its admissions schemes are sketchy and unnecessary. There is no reason for it to be so stats heavy is what I am saying. I am saying, that it has diminished returns in terms of the accomplishments of the undergraduates it produces. Schools like Duke are also world renowned in the research realm (and Stanford and so on) and choose admissions schemes that are different that are working much better despite lower stats. The students must be more ambitious in other ways and the curriculum at such schools may involve more co-curricular (as opposed to only extra) components to make students much more competitive output wise. The idea is that there are many schools getting a better return on their input stats. To do that could suggest that the programs simply do more for the students OR they attract higher frequency of SUPER engaged/aggressive (or even just students already really great and passionate in an area) students in the first place, even if they did not get a near 1600/35 on SAT/ACT. Could be a combo. Also, WUSTL is definitely an “old cat” in terms of biomedical and research influence, but others have made significant ground recently or have flat out surpassed it. We have to look at what places are doing now. And they are all doing great, but many could be doing better, including VU, WUSTL, and Emory (hell American highered could be better here in general. Thank goodness we have so many talented folks, but often the educational system is not helping them to enhance that talent maybe until they get to post-UG training).
If you think anyone has “flat out surpassed” WashU in medical reputation, I can’t imagine where your info is coming from.
@usualhopeful : You do not think places like Duke, Stanford, and some publics are comparable? Duke for example, was not always comparable (it was great largely due to its location, but it was not anywhere near where it is today). WUSTL is now hanging with a lot of folks, including some who were good/great but were not contenders 2-3 decades ago. Let us stop pretending that time froze. I like WUSTL a lot, but let us avoid putting the schools we like on too big of a pedastal. The climb in research expenditures in such fields and the shift of Nobel Winners in medicine and usually biology/chemistry related to medicine has kind of shifted to other schools recently.
You also said biomedical achievement. I am going to stick with: “Many places have made up a lot of ground even in comparison to places that are traditionally regarded as the best”. Not as many schools are standing out on islands as before especially in that broad area (which encompasses many disciplines and if you even say “medicine”, that encompasses many sub specialties and disciplines).
What CDC related Emory ads are you referring to?
did anybody receive their FA yet?
no not yet
@BiffBrown Not sure if they were CDC related particularly but it was Emory Healthcare ads. Which in turn advertises for Emory college indirectly.
@umbra505 Nope
Any word on financial aid and/or scholarships?
@lpd512 I think FA should come out by 3pm today. Hopefully transfers don’t get shafted with FA. It’s going to suck so much if Emory is unaffordable after all this anxiety
I already received my FA
When did you receive it?
at 12 am today