Even for top NRUs like Duke, there is always room for growth. What makes Duke distinct in its eternal endeavors to provide better facilities for undergraduate students, gain more prestige, improve job and graduate school placement, conduct more stellar research? I have heard from many “Duke is a growing school”. What does that mean to you? How is it growing?
Endowment: increase from $3.8B to $7.0B over the last 10 years
http://dukeforward.duke.edu/downloads/Duke_Endowment_Snapshot_FY14_final.pdf
Operating Budget: increased to from $1.5B to $2.3B over the last 10 years
http://www.heraldsun.com/news/x219726973/Duke-trustees-OK-2-3B-2015-16-budget
Financial Aid budget: 2005 $40M vs 2015 $137M
http://www.dukechronicle.com/articles/2004/12/06/university-expand-financial-aid#.VVUeXPldXwU
@sgopal2 The first one is is actually a negative. Harvard’s endowment went from 26 billion in 2005 to 36 billion in 2015. Yale’s has gone from 15 billion to 24 billion. Stanford from 12 billion to 21 billion.
If we talk about peer schools, Columbia from 5.2 to 9.2, CMU from 0.8 to 1.6, Dartmouth from 2.7 to 4.4, Penn from 4.3 to 9.6. Duke is nothing special in those terms. In fact, the endowment increase has been absolutely minimal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment
I would assume the same for the other two points. Every college’s endowments, and thus allocation for operation costs and financial aid, are going up. Duke is lagging behind in that regard.
(10 char)
You can easily find out how Duke is planning on improving by doing a simple google search or reading the Chronicle. If you’re committing to Duke then get used to not having your hand held and doing research yourself as opposed to asking others.
Start with googling “Duke Forward”
This seems like it might count as an improvement. http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article19898535.html
@uesmomof2 Bingo! That’s exactly what I hope lb4 would find.
Duke’s endowment is 7 billion + 1/3 of the 3.4 billion Duke Endowment I think
I already knew about that building. I just didnt mention it. Although it is great that Duke is building this new facility, I mean what are its long term goals? What does it lack that HYPSM has, and how is it addressing those? While this building is part of the puzzle, there is much more level of improvement to be hand. I was wondering as a general trend.
Does it have a trend of attracting extremely highly sought after professors, or is it recently enticing more HYPSM cross-admits to come to Duke, or perhaps even peer schools like Penn or Columbia. A good question would also be: Why did the number of applicants to Duke drop by about 1,300? That is significant. There are variations yearly, but as a general trend, almost every other top tier school’s applicants went up considerably.
@Jwest22 And I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is a forum for asking questions and having discussions. It’s not about having my hand held, its about instigating a discussion about a university. I contributed to the discussion about the endowment, I am not just asking questions.So, please, really, if you want to contribute, do it calmly. If you don’t, don’t.
@Ib43823: Dartmouth’s applications dropped 14% in the 2013-2014 cycle because of the scandals, yet it still did pretty well this year. I surmise that Duke’s applications dropped by 1300 because of the Belle Knox incident. Considering, however, that we barely took anyone (if at all) off the waitlist this year, I think we still did very well in terms of admissions.
@MBVLoveless Yeah, you’re right. Do you think in the future Duke’s acceptance rate will be even lower, and it’ll get more selective? Or has it reached equilibrium.
I doubt it had to do with the belle knox incident since that was 2 years ago. It was probably random fluctuations in admissions cycles. One year they go up the next they go down. Looking at long term trends is definitely more indicative than any one year
^the belle knox thing happened the spring before this year’s admissions cycle, which may have affected some prospies’ college lists
@lb43823 No, do your own research and stop asking people here things you can easily find out on your own.
And you asking silly and elitist questions like “Do you think in the future Duke’s acceptance rate will be even lower, and it’ll get more selective?” shows me you lack depth and are only looking to see how prestigious Duke can get within a certain time frame.
Go get an internship or something or make some new friends rather than worrying about how selective Duke can get.
@Jwest22 I really don’t know what is wrong with you. Again, I don’t know why you are so caustic, but if you attend Duke, I really hope Duke students aren’t like that. Why can’t you participate in a discussion without pointing fingers? It is honestly very immature and childish.
I know about many of Duke’s initiatives, it is rather a discussion of what people think of them. Just because Duke is building a 100 million dollar engineering and physics building, that doesn’t mean that will catapult them farther. What are the institutional goals it is prioritizing, and how is it differing from other institution? Those are much larger questions.
Duke, for example, installed ACs in all the freshman dorms this year and is renovating East Campus. That’s great and all, but there are still many things to be improved on, like the meal plan, for example. Why hasn’t Duke taken an initiative to make that better? There are certain things Duke is prioritizing, and it seems that construction is the most obvious one. There have consistently been construction projects going on at Duke, especially in the last few years. It is largely focusing a large percentage of Duke Forward in construction projects. That is the institutional priority right now. But the overarching question, which is being discussed here is, is that the best plan of action. Should that be prioritized, and will that improve the quality of education for the undergraduate population? What about continuously attracting top-notch faculty, improving some of its weaker departments, and so forth. Another question. Have you looked at the regular decision yield rate for Duke, specifically for engineering? It is less than 30%. Perhaps this is why Duke is building this new complex; to focus on its engineering, which if I remember correctly, has a lower yield rate than Trinity. See, this is analysis – something you failed to provide.
There are very complex answers to this questions that are not so easily concrete, and nor they do they have a definite answer. Which is primarily why it is a DISCUSSION. This isn’t some sort of self-validation plea, I just have heard from a lot of people that because Duke is NOT part of the Ivy League and because it is a school that draws ton of regional talent from Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, DC, Texas (and of course the Northeast as well), that Duke is improving at a very rapid rate, and I was hoping to identify their priorities in this improvement.
As for the selectivity point. IT WAS A QUESTION. I mean you really like to just make false allegations, don’t you? Since applications went down this year, I was wondering how much more selective they could possibly get. Think about it, if the acceptance rate is 10% for a certain school, and they get about 30,000 applicants. To go from 10% to 9% while maintaining the same number of admitted students (3000), you would need 33,333 applicants. Only a 1% drop requires 3.3k more applicants, which is a significant increase. As college admissions get more competitive, it is only interesting to note general admission trends. How much harder can it possibly get is a good indicator of the level of talent Duke will attract in the future, thus improving it. It is not a question of prestige. Selectivity doesn’t even make prestige. Take Columbia. Most would agree that Yale, Princeton, and MIT are all more prestigious than Columbia. They all have higher acceptance rates. So, please, again, before you make rash conclusions, just stop, and think, because all you have done is make baseless conclusions.
Thank you!
I think a lot of folks have tried to be patient with you, but MOST people who have have the extraordinary good fortune to have been admitted to one of the ten best universities in America and one of the finest in the world don’t sit around worrying about nearly meaningless distinctions between who is first, fourth, or seventh. And I doubt many Columbia students think their lives are over because they aren’t going to MIT.
For your sake and Duke’s, I hope you get off one of those Ivy wait lists. The branding of the bad basketball league is obviously very important to you.
With all due respect – OP – you are off on your thinking. Not because you are asking these types of questions about Duke – but really because you are completely sold by some random ranking and not doing any real research. Do you realize that a girl walked around with mattress all year at Columbia to protest what she thought was the administrations poor handling of an alleged rape? Then there was the Bacchanal fiasco with tickets this year at Columbia Are you asking in the Columbia thread what the administration is doing to improve themselves? And by the way, I have nothing against Columbia – have several family members as alumni from there. Now let’s get to Yale – remember that girl that was killed in the science lab? Then there was a lack of transparency on sexual assault being brought forward. Then Harvard had a massive cheating scandal… remember that? Then Stanford had a cheating scandal… and MIT is known to be a stress pressure cooker.
The point is. .you are asking rather silly questions – vs. doing your own research and making your own conclusions as to which one of the top universities is more your “fit” and align with your personal goals. If you want to be an bio medical engineer, by using your logic, Duke is #2 in BME, so, should be a great choice aligned that that career goal – so then, who why care what the regular decision yield rate for engineering is? Given that Duke is one of the only elite schools NOT utilizing their waitlist this year, the university is obviously doing a great job selling itself to the students IT WANTS. Last point, None of these schools are perfect – Duke and Harvard included, but anyone that actually gets into any of the top 10 (that includes Duke BTW)… usually are pretty darn happy about it.