But Duke is NOT Harvard. I’m sorry; but you are only deluding yourself if you’re thinking Duke = Harvard.
For school prestige and brand name recognition, Berkeley is much more closer to Harvard than Duke is to Harvard. Perhaps some students may be choosing private schools over Berkeley because they prefer the system – how almost everything is being handed out to them rather than them making an effort to get those same things. But that doesn’t have any bearing to school prestige, particularly in this case, and specially for engineering. The data I showed are full-proofs and true testaments to my arguments.
Duke may be able to offer a more caring environment with the kind of personal attention it gives to its students, but it doesn’t mean it’s automatically more prestigious. If we have to go by that logic, then it would appear all the LACs are more prestigious than Duke. But I don’t think there’s any LAC out there I can honestly consider to be more prestigious than Duke. So, that logic fails.
For many, many aspiring engineers, yes, they would rather have Berkeley (than Duke) behind their names. As a matter of fact, for those people, Duke is almost non-existent on their radar.