<p>I never said that I loved the schools equally, as the OP did. I do not love these schools equally for personal reasons.</p>
<p>I believe Warblers has a good point about professors. I’ve known three Duke professors and all three attempted to convince me NOT to attend Duke and not because they thought I couldn’t get in and were sparing me the disappointment.</p>
<p>As for my comments about Durham, I stand by them. Durham is not a nice place to live and much of the local community has disdain for the school and its students. I spent almost a year in Durham and we moved because a woman was raped and murdered in our apartment complex. This may not spill over onto campus but there is crime and poverty in the city itself. Consider this: on the TPR town-gown relations are good list, Davidson is #6; on the TPR town-gown relations are strained list, Duke is #4. There is animosity in the largely poor and black city of Durham about the behavior of the students and there are frequently newspaper articles that have local residents complaining about the behavior of some Duke students (ie - loud parties, public urination, extreme intoxication).</p>
<p>I would rather advocate the use of the town and the character of the student body as criteria for a decision than prestige.</p>
<p>I really believe the academic argument depends on what the OP wants to study and the relative strength of those deptartments, rather than arbitrary USNWR statistics about the relative strength of Davidson as a LAC and Duke as a University.</p>