<p>Ah. Did you study law or business?</p>
<p>By the way, I think the acceptance rate is so high because it is an average. Each year the acceptance rate slowly drops and the prof never mentioned this sort of deflation.</p>
<p>I actually did my graduate studies in Industrial and Labor Relations, but I did consider Law school and Business School at a stage in my life.</p>
<p>My own school (Princeton) had a 26% acceptance rate to Harvard Law in 02-03 and about 20% to Yale. I would imagine Harvard to be about 30% and Yale about 26% as well for Harvard Law. I do find it quite hard to believe that Duke manages 40% unless so few kids applied that the stat is irrelevant.</p>
<p>Then don’t…</p>
<p>Maybe I heard wrong about Harvard but Yale’s was most definitely 16%. That one I vividly remember. I will check again about the Harvard stat because I probably heard the wrong school. But what I do know is that most Duke graduates go to Harvard Law beyond any other school.</p>
<p>Here’s what I remember from various sites (mean attendants at law school per class from Duke) and from emailing/talking with people here. This is only for the ones I’ve heard about and the only ones that have totally legit online data on the sites are Chicago, NU, Harv, Gtown, Yale, and UVA, the rest are from places on CC that might not be legit or from Duke law applicants this year</p>
<p>20 at Gtown, 20 Harv, 7 Yale, 6 Stanford, 15 NU, 15 Chicago, 10 Penn, 10 Columbia, 20 UVA, 10 Mich, 15 in the law school for UC Berk though I forget the exact name, and 10 for another UC I forget which one</p>
<p>however, it really varies by year, 4 years ago 24 kids got into Harv and 3 years ago only 15 did; if the acceptance rate is actually high, it can be explained just cuz everyone from harv applies to its law school whereas only the most competitve duke students apply, but I haven’t seen documentation to affirm that</p>
<p>I also find it very hard to believe that 40% of Duke prelaws who apply to HLS get in. That seems way too high to me. </p>
<p>However, we don’t have to argue about it, because we can check. We can either ask Duke directly, or we can get a current Duke student to go to the office and look at the data and report back. Anybody here know a current Duke student? I know of one (daughter of a woman I know), but there’s gotta be somebody here with better Duke connections than me. </p>
<p>I can certainly believe that Duke students go to HLS more than any other law school if, for no other reason, HLS is far and away the largest daytime law program in the nation. So HLS tends to matriculate more students from all the top undergrad programs (not just from Duke) than does any other law school.</p>
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<p>However, you must agree that the Caltech undergrad experience doesn’t share much in common with the experience at, say, a Michigan or a Berkeley. The Caltech student body is tiny, the classes are tiny, the student camaraderie is quite tight, and you never feel like a number. I agree that the profs are far more oriented towards research than teaching. However, on the whole, I would have to say that if I had to choose one category to put it in, I would put Caltech in the LAC category. Caltech obviously doesn’t fit perfectly in that category, but I think it fits even MORE imperfectly in the research university category. </p>
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<p>I think this hits the nail right on the head, as well as all the things that Yalesocietymember has been saying. We might say that the LAC’s and the research universities are so different as to be incomparable. Yet the fact is, the people who get into a LAC and also to a research university have to compare them to decide where they want to go. Even more importantly, the employers and the graduate schools also have to compare them. For example, Harvard Medical School considers applications from those who went to both big research universities like Berkeley or Michigan as well as those who went to LAC’s. McKinsey recruits at the big research universities and also at the elite LAC’s. </p>
<p>So the point is, comparisons between big research universities and LAC’s are done all the time. McKinsey can’t cop out by saying that a LAC is not comparable to a research university. They HAVE to compare them to decide who they are going to hire. </p>
<p>Hence, if the consumers and users of education go around comparing LAC’s vs. research universities all the time, I don’t see why you couldn’t enumerate them in one unified ranking.</p>
<p>Sakky, I agree with most of what you say about Caltech. That is why I classify it as a “quasi LAC”. It is a research universitiy with a faculty that primarily dedicates its time and effort to research, but it does share some charactreristics of a LAC. But one thing I must make clear, the “student camaraderie” at Michigan and other highly spirited research universities is also very tight. </p>
<p>As for comparing research universities with LACs, like I said, it is possible, but if we do that, we will most likely have a very controversial result. It is pretty clear that all in all, there are about 35-50 research universities, LACs and quasi LACs that make up the top universities in the nation. Depending on the criteria we use to rate the universities and colleges, the research universities will all end up either at the top of the ranking or at the bottom of the ranking, the LACs would end up either at the bottom of the ranking or at the top of the ranking and the “quasi LACs” would almost invariably end up in the middle of the ranking at all times. This will result in the LACs or the research universities feeling either vidicated or cheated and will almost certainly leave the quasi LACs feeling neither satisfied nor disatisfied.</p>
<p>And if we are to find a very wide-ranging group of criteria to rank universities, then you would probably have a a couple of universities at the top that are above the remaining universities and colleges, but the rest of the institutions will probably be so close to each other that it might as well be a tie.</p>
<p>Quite honestly, I favor the rating/grouping system. The top 10-15 research universities, the top 10-15 LACs and the top 10-15 quasi LACs all get ***** ratings. If I were to group them all togther, I would probably have three groups, with H,M,P,S and Y in one, the next 8 or 9 research universities, top 10 or so LACs and top 7 or 8 quasi LACs in the second group and the next 5 or so research universities, the next 5 or so LACs and the next 7 or 8 quasi LACs in the third group. All three goups would be practically equal.</p>
<p>Sakky, you must have not read my last post. I said I most likely made two mistakes in writing that comment</p>
<ol>
<li>The avg is not current</li>
<li>It probably was to another school</li>
</ol>
<p>LOL you would actually contact someone’s daughter in order to verify me? I’m flattered. I wish to go to Yale above any other school, so I’m sure about the 16% comment. Now, take that with it normally being 6-7% and I consider that being amazing.</p>
<p>By the way, no need for a 5 paragraph retort…it’s a week day. :)</p>
<p>DMC, the average acceptance rate of students from most universities and colleges into Yale Law is not 6%-7%. It is more like 1%-3%. The only reason why Yale’s acceptance rate is 6%-7% is because they accept a very high number of students from the Ivies, Stanford, Duke and other elite universities. But most other universities don’t even come close to 5%.</p>
<p>And yes, 16% success rate to Yale Law is amazing. Michigan is roughly 5%!</p>
<p>And even still, it will be a </p>
<p>L
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<p>to even get waitlisted. Godspeed.</p>
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<p>It is interesting that you would put it under LAC because if you ask David Baltimore, I believe he would put Caltech under research university. It is undeniable that the word ‘research university’ may be interpreted differently. Nevertheless, Caltech, from my personal experience, is just like a graduate school altogether. The typical LAC teaching classes are not existent. As someone pointed out earlier, Caltech undergrads generally don’t care about their classes, hence the classes are often smaller than they are supposed to be. A class of 25 students would often only have 5-7 students appear in the lecture. There are many project classes where we only see the prof once or twice at the beginning of the quarter and meet him again for the final evaluation. This is very different from LAC environment where lectures are regarded essential. Most students at Caltech study independently and many have experienced research from their freshman year, this is why I put Caltech under research university category. It’s just too much research-oriented.</p>
<p>But again this is based on my definition of research university which may not necessarily apply to others.</p>
<p>Furthermore, to add to what rtkysg said, a LAC education is generally very well rounded and diverse. Most Caltech students spend 90% of their time studying science.</p>
<p>I perfectly agree that Caltech doesn’t exactly fit into the LAC category, and if I really had my way, I would choose to call it a “research-LAC” (which you can interpret however you want), or maybe Alexandre’s moniker of “quasi-LAC”. </p>
<p>However, my point is, if I was forced to choose one of the existing categories, I would prefer to put it into the LAC category. Not that it fits great there, because it doesn’t, but because I don’t think it fits well in the research university category either. Simply put - I believe the education you would receive at Caltech is more similar to what you would get at a place like Williams than a place like Michigan or Illinois. </p>
<p>Furthermore, about the well-roundedness comment, I would say that if a pure tech school like HarveyMudd can be considered a LAC, then so can Caltech. In fact, I think that Mudd illustrates my point better. I think we can all argee that the education you would get at Caltech is far more similar to what you would get at Mudd than you would get at Michigan or Illinois.</p>
<p>From my personal experience, Caltech is very much like MIT (Science & Engrg dept) than any other school including Mudd, except that MIT profs teach better.</p>
<p>I would like to take a second to thank everyone contributing to this discussion of academic rankings. I’m just happy that the subject is being addressed. After reading through many of your posts, it’s obvious that there’s a myriad of opinions regarding the polls. There are actually more polls out there than the 5 to which I’ve made reference. YaleSocietyMember, actually the Institute of Higher Learning’s poll of the world’s top universities does list the USN&WR undergrad poll as one of its sources. It did consider the undergrad programs. I’m not sure of the Times of London poll though. </p>
<p>The only 2 major sources of undergrad program ranking are the USN&WR & Gourman polls. We can argue in circles as to which poll is more accurate, but I dismiss both as invalid. It doesn’t matter whether one poll has better defined criteria than the other. If biased criteria are used, then such a poll should be dismissed as invalid. If any academic poll is to be respected, it would be the NRC Report. There are no if, ands, or buts. This is the most respected source of ranking in academia. Contrary to what I wrote previously, the NRC Report required 4 years to complete, not 2. </p>
<p>I could live with a poll which divided the universities into 3 categories, as some have suggested…major research universities, the inbetweens, and the LAC’s. It’s important to consider avg. SAT scores, graduation rate, etc. However, I believe that the quality of faculty, curriculum & programs, libraries, & research should be more heavily weighed than the “quality” of the student body in the major research schools category. Just for the record, I object to avg. SAT scores being used as the sole measure of student “quality”. Some of you are suggesting that only the students with high SAT scores are quality students. Yet many students who don’t have relatively high SAT scores may be extremely talented and accomplished in a particular discipline. Ie. I don’t think too many people give a damn about Arthur Miller’s SAT score. He was an extraordinarily talented writer, who won the Hopwood Award while studying at Michigan. I don’t think math scores on the SAT are significant in this case. </p>
<p>The purpose of these undergrad program polls should be to give prospective undergrad applicants an idea of which schools will offer them the best quality education. How can you ignore the quality of departments & programs, libraries, & research resources when assessing the quality of education? These vital criteria are missing from most of the polls. Actually I would love to see just one of these polls use the NRC Report as its primary source for quality of departments. Unfortunately, some of you refuse to acknowledge that any given department is only as good as its graduate program, yet this is a common perception. The most highly regarded departments will have the top faculty, world class research, best grad students, and more accolades (Nobel Prize winners, citations, etc.) relative to others. Also the top departments normally have many, many more course offerings for its undergrad students. I have a problem with every poll other than the NRC Report. Even the international polls favor the schools that excel in science with the most Nobel Prize winners. However, many of those schools are lacking strong departments across the board, so why are they ranked among the top universities in the world? Ie. Cal-San Francisco? I thought it was exclusively a medical center. Go figure. </p>
<p>Devil Cry, if you actually believe that Michigan’s status as a top academic institution is something of the past, you better get a reality check. Michigan actually had the 3rd highest avg. score across the 41 disciplines evaluated by the NRC Report. In regard to number of NRC top 10 programs, Michigan placed 10th. Duke placed 19th in this category. However, it should be noted that Michigan had 38 out of 41 programs ranked. In contrast, most of the other schools placing in the top 10 for most NRC top 10 programs had significantly less numbers of programs ranked overall. Many of those schools had numerous zero scores which lowered their averages across the 41 disciplines. <a href=“NRC Rankings”>NRC Rankings. However, the NRC Report didn’t evaluate professional programs. In addition to its strong academic departments across the board, Michigan has the following professional schools ranked in the top 10:</p>
<p>School of Pharmacy
Ford School of Public Policy
Law School
Medical School
School of Education
School of Information
School of Engineering
School of Music
School of Nursing
School of Public Health
School of Social Work
Ross School of Business</p>
<p>Michigan also had a top 10 ranked dental school according to the USN&WR until the ADA decided to protest the publication. ADA accredited schools are no longer permitted to send information to USN&WR. Of course, Michigan is still one of the top dental schools. All things considered, I believe Michigan is grossly underrated by the international polls. It’s one of the most complete universities in the world. As you can see, Michigan is still going strong. And just for the record, Michigan is 5th for alumni giving in regard to the amount of money donated by alums annually. However, USN&WR chooses to list alumni giving in terms of % of alums donating. This is yet another criterion that favors smaller schools.</p>
<p>^biased criteria? all criteria can be manipulated. also, SAT scores is a really good measure. And of course Michigan will have all sorts of departments, it has tons of students and resources because its a huge school. In undergraduate education atleast, I’d take an Ivy or similar elite private over a large public anyday, and I’m sure most others would. Nothing against Mich though.</p>