Duke or Yale?

twinkletoes23
Sat, 15 Dec 2007 19:50:34 +0000

I applied ED to duke last year and it’s been the best decision of my life. I honestly don’t know if i could have gotten in RD without the ED edge, since everyone here is so brilliant and smart.

I love Duke. And I know so many people who love it here. Yes, sometimes I have a love-hate relationship with Duke, but most of the time I love it. Here’s the top few reasons:

1. Academics. The students here really focused with their schoolwork, but yet, they’re not uber-competitive. I always feel like students are really competitive with themselves, and not with other people. Never have i hesitated asking someone in my chem 21 class to explain a problem to me, work on lab together, or study for tests together. for the most part, we help each other out, but we’re very hard on ourselves… which i like.

2. as with the academics, we all pretty much support each other through hard times… haha during finals week my friends and i went on a junk food shopping spree (at whole foods, paradoxically) and had a mini-fest in the library and such.

3. weather. it was 80 degrees this week… it does get cold, but nothing compared to the northern schools

4. campus is beautiful. amazing. as pretty as the gothic part is, i am in love with the science buildings around the engineering quad

5. the social scene. there’s almost always a party thurs/fri/sat nights. which involves a lot of alcohol. also, the frat parties are pretty non-exclusive, compared to other schools (ahem, UNC)

stuff about duke that i don’t like

1. The academics are hard. HARD. The science classes are curved to a B-. You’ll be happy if you’re average, but then average is a b-, which is kind of disappointing. there is no grade inflation here. everyone is crazily smart too, which doesn’t help the curve

2. rich white kids who think they’re better than everyone else. again, this stereotype does exist at Duke. I’ve encountered some group sof people who are very “exclusive” in terms of who they hang out with and act like “they’re better than everyone else” and who reek of money… but honestly, that’s a very small percentage of Duke, and you really don’t need to waste your time with superficial people like that. Otherwise, the student body, for the most part, is very accepting and chill

Duke is amazing in a nutshell. Sure, yale may get a better “wow” factor, but it’s honestly the difference between a lexus or BMW.