Whats up With Emory?

bernie12
Fri, 22 Jan 2016 05:36:15 +0000

@NerdyChica : a) D-1 schools seem to have an advantage with Rhodes (many times athletes of some sort, varsity or not, seem to get it) so I’m not betting on that, but we did get one this past round whereas “certain schools with abnormally high SAT scores” (as in higher than Duke and Stanford) did not…no tea no shade.

Emory currently “thinks” it has the infrastructure to handle that level of a faculty member, and can handle super high caliber ones indeed, but Nobel Level I don’t think is supported yet. Aside from physical and technological infrastructure, you also need a much “tougher” environment more welcoming to that sort of intensity in graduate divisions (the support of such research) and in the intellectual environment. In 2007, an article in Emory’s “Academic Exchange” (faculty members discuss different issues at Emory and that issue was on “measuring up”) had one faculty member mentioning how Emory’s attempt to maintain an extremely friendly and ultra-cordial intellectual environment may hinder the integration of a faculty member at that high of a level (basically that other faculty members may not mesh well with that or those folks and it would disrupt the more “pleasant” vibe).

As for students: Must enhance undergraduate areas that most super elites are *or like Duke, have become) great at that we currently are not such as: physics, math, and economics (no! it is not okay for Emory to use the b-school as the substitute to pick up the slack for the weak econ. dept. You actually need consistently rigorous econ. courses that manages to not lose most top students to business school majors/concentrations. Duke getting away from the super duper pre-professionalism it had and gaining much more ground in placing students in academia probably really helped its standing) and to more effectively demonstrate why and how its UG education in things such as the life sciences and various humanities and social sciences is so strong. I’ve seen the marketing and good press for creative writing and English take off, but what about the other fields? Other elite schools are not afraid to get out there and remind students why they may want to choose their strong depts over those are at other seemingly comparable schools. Emory also needs revitalization of special academic opps and programs for newly admitted and highly motivated and talented freshmen (not the scholars program).

Most super elites either have super high level courses to cater to those folks or special learning communities or opps. to attract them and keep them intellectually challenged. This mechanism is spotty at Emory and that is lesser so the case for places like Duke and Hopkins at this stage of their development. Duke for example has nicely tiered STEM classes in most depts and other special opps for incoming freshman. Places like NU and Princeton have Integrated Science Tracks, Penn the VIPER program, I can go one for many schools ranked above 15 or so. Emory merely has an honors math course which just started this year, freshman organic, which every elite has, and the voluntary core, which is indeed very interesting. I have a friend that says something else is in the work pertaining to the liberal arts (linked to the undergraduate portion of the Institute of Liberal Arts, a dept. Emory is/was quite known for really good and quite unusual at)…but that sort of thing should have happened a while ago…Emory actually looked more like higher tier schools for half my time there than it does now and I think that’s problematic.

Point is: You’re right…this stuff takes tons of thought, work, and investments in the correct areas. Takes far more than temporary fixes to game the rankings. Too many people are looking for instant and false gratification. The fortunate thing about Emory is that it hasn’t managed to trick students into thinking it is better than what it actually is by climbing the ranks and doing things like raise scores too quickly which means you have a kind of less complacent student body in terms of demanding changes when needed. That’s always a start and seems to have served Duke well (students there seemed to always demand more in terms of becoming “actually” better from what I’ve read. Being ranked super high was not enough. Just because Duke students are quite happy clearly didn’t make them sheepish or oblivious).