Cons of Duke

[ring_of_fire_1]

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@Mondo

Outside the classroom, superficiality is encouraged and reinforced by most of the students.
There are ‘intellectual niches’ at Duke and it certainly is more ‘intellectual’ than the average high school BUT the mainstream culture at Duke supports forgetting about intellectualism for the most part. I think it depends by how badly you want to be part of the mainstream culture.
If it doesn’t matter to you, you will find friends elsewhere and forget of the ‘problems of the social scene’.
Take it from someone who actually goes here!
Duke is a great school and I love it in many ways but I’d highly recommend not going here with rose-colored glasses that this school is going to be perfect.
Certainly don’t go in with the gray-colored glasses I had either…</p>

<p>There isn’t much middle ground here.
My intellectual friends at Duke snicker at the idea that I want to go to Shooters (none of them do-some went once and hated it while others never went at all) while my less intellectual friends never seem to get tired of going to the ol’ nightclub.
Also, from asking questions, on average, my intellectual friends have done way better on the SATs than those who are less intellectual…

Do we go to the same school? The vast majority of the school falls under this middle ground that you refer to. These are kids that study hard for their classes and socialize during their nights off. Even during most social events, you can clearly identify the intellectual bent of the students. Trust me, I have talked to people who were truly dumb as a rock and I haven’t met a single kid like that here.</p>

<p>I feel like you hang out with a group of kids who are actively anti-social and somehow expected this school to be some mass geek intellectual haven; therefore, they resent anyone who doesn’t follow this description and they use stereotypes that characterize maybe 1% of the student body to describe nearly every other student they know.</p>