<p>I think the bad blood has more to do with certain Duke students and recent alumni that up until a short time ago insisted on coming here to put down U Chicago…look guys, they’re both fantastic schools with different strengths. The fact that they’re in the top 10 (15, 20, 25, I would even venture to say more) of the US News gives enough proof of this, and who’s ahead in a given year has to do more with non-academic criteria that can be “gamed” rather easily. As has probably been mentioned many times, the bigger differences lie in the general cultures of the schools, <em>like strong sports tradition vs aloofness towards athletics, bigger traditional party scene vs a generally more nerdy crowd, the city of Chicago vs Durham, etc. On the academic side, Chicago is supposed to be better for getting you to NASA and Duke is supposed to be better for getting you to med school, Chicago for a PhD in Economics and Duke for Wall Street, and yada yada yada. Well guess what? Anybody can do any of those things in either one because they’re TOP schools, and maybe one gives advantages over the other for specific goals but a) a general US News ranking difference of 3-4 spots is not going show you this, b) these small advantages are not going to matter at all if you just sit on your butt and expect the school’s reputation to do all the work for you. For example, a Chicago student with a great MCAT score, top GPA and lots of research experience is going to be a better candidate for med school than a Duke student (or a student from any institution for that matter) that doesn’t have those things. Once you reach the level of top school, which Duke and Chicago are both part of, FIT matters a lot more. Who cares that they’re a few spots apart? Chicago may be ranked higher than Duke now but Duke would certainly be a better choice for BME…starting with the fact that Chicago doesn’t even have a BME program.</em></p>