@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!