<p>Go to Stanford!
With less scholars, us scholars that are going can get more resources and mentorship from the faculty!
But if you have that much reserve about Duke, I don’t think you should go to Duke. It sounds to me that you really want to go to Stanford and just need a justification for it. Duke is a good place, but it doesn’t seem like you would be happy there since you clearly show in your post and reserve about committing that you want to go to Stanford instead. Go to Stanford, leave the people who want to go to Duke with Duke. Plus, you might help somebody get off of waitlist!
Also, if you are upper-middle class and can afford Stanford, there is little to worry about. From the looks of it, your family can support you and still be happy. Take the money from your parents and get yourself a Stanford degree considering that they are okay with paying for it.</p>
<p>Hi everyone, OP here (again).</p>
<p>After talking extensively with my parents, I’ve made up my mind.</p>
<p>I’m going to be a Blue Devil–off to Duke University! </p>
<p>Truth of the matter is, I was a little naive about the whole money issue. My parents told me that while we might be able to afford Stanford for a year or so, it’s wayyy too hard to pay for both my sibling and my tuition…Then, there’s always the matter of grad school, which we definitely would not be able to afford if I went to Stanford undergrad for four years. </p>
<p>Honestly, Stanford was always one of my dream schools…but I think it’s time I start thinking in more realistic terms, instead of being caught up in the “dream” of going to a school like Stanford. And seriously, free ride at Duke? That’s hard to pass up.</p>
<p>Thank you to everyone for your input. 
I am going to try my best next year at Duke and hopefully I will be going to Stanford graduate school one day!</p>
<p>Good job OP!</p>
<p>misterbeck, I think you’ve made the right choice–as many said, Stanford’s not worth it if it’s going to be very difficult to pay for and you’ve got a full ride elsewhere (plus Duke is nothing to sneer at). And if you decide to go for a PhD (not just a master’s) and you get into Stanford, you won’t have to worry about cost at all, as you’re guaranteed a full fellowship. I also know of a couple grad students here who did their undergrad at Duke, so even with the absurd difficulty of getting into Stanford grad school, I think you’ll have a good shot with the A.B. scholarship. </p>
<p>Good luck and have fun as Blue Devil :)</p>
<p>Good decision and good luck.</p>
<p>^^Funny you’re saying this now Phantasmajoric when earlier in the thread you were fully advocating Stanford.</p>
<p>OP you definitely made the correct decision. I can’t believe that some posters argued otherwise. Too much Stanford kool-aid on their parts. </p>
<p>I would use this as an opportunity to ask my parents for 30,000 a year right out of college for the next 5 years. That would afford you a comfortable living while pursuing some low-paying dream of yours (startup, grad school, public service, Hollywood, whatever).</p>
<p>misterbeck, you’ve made the wise choice! Hope you will have a great experience at Duke! I predict that you will do very well at Duke, and that you will have no trouble at all going to Stanford for grad school–and at the grad level, they’ll pay you to go there.</p>
<p>Congrats on your decision.
First of all, I’m jealous of you as I got waitlisted at both Stanford and Duke so I’ll end up going to one of my “B”/“C” list schools. </p>
<p>Secondly, it seems that you are keen on going to grad school. In that case, you definitely made the correct decision financially in order to go to a place like Stanford for grad school. Honestly undergrad degrees are “standardized” in a sense as each university has the same curriculum for undergrad majors such as computer science (look at the curriculums on a couple of colleges if you want). Therefore, you’ll still receive a great education and is still possible to get an internship in CA if you wanted to.</p>
<p>I’m sure when you apply to grad school, you’ll get into Stanford again.</p>
<p>Congrats again.</p>
<p>@MisterBeck - great decision</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone has mentioned this, but, in all likelihood there are some terrific summer programs going on at Stanford. You can probably get funding from Duke to participate in a summer program at Stanford - thereby having the best of both worlds.</p>
<p>TO Op,</p>
<p>Congrats on your decision. Go to Duke and never look back. Like many said that you can be successful either at Stanford or Duke. The only thing you may regret is that one day when you are rich enough and $200,000 is not that important anymore, you may think what you could have done in the first place.</p>
<p>As a full-pay parent, I would not pay a dime to any private schools except HYPSM. I could not think what I can do today when I first landed in this country with a several hundred dollars and had a dream to to go a graduate school in this country, and I could be kicked out of the country if I had a visa problem. </p>
<p>FYI - I don’t know the stats for Duke, but for current graduating class at Princeton, only 8 will attend Stanford graduate school.</p>
<p>Great decision. We are a full pay family, but if our kid were lucky enough to be in the same boat as you, we would have encourage her to go to Duke. D1 has many high school friends going to Duke and they all loved the school, and most of them have a job after graduation (this June).</p>
<p>We just visited Stanford with D2(junior in high school) few months ago because it was her favorite school for a while. We were there for half an hour before she took it off her list - too sunny and too manicured.</p>
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<p>Actually Senior0991, I was advocating Stanford only if it’d be easy to pay for. As I said:</p>
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<p>and my understanding was that he would be able to pay for it. But as he said, he was “naive” in his understanding of his finances, and it would actually be very difficult to pay for it. In that case, Duke would be the better option.</p>
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<p>It makes sense to go to Stanford if someone can easily pay for it. No kool-aid needed for sensibility. ;)</p>
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I’m not so sure about that. My parents were full-pay all the way (aka pretty wealthy), and if I were in the OP’s situation I would very likely choose Duke. </p>
<p>Though my parents can afford the cost a few times over, I still feel this responsibility now to graduate in four years and not take summer school so that the costs do not increase. And though I was considering a gap year, I decided not to do one because all the programs were expensive. My parents were dropping 200,000 grand on an education that frankly I could get most of on my own (with a library card) if I were motivated enough. </p>
<p>The only scenario when I wouldn’t think much of the finances is if 200,000 dollars was practically nothing to my family.</p>
<p>Well let me rephrase: To me it makes sense to go to Stanford if you can easily pay for it.</p>
<p>Sure you can get the same education with a library card (well, at least in knowledge, but an undergraduate education is much more than knowledge–it’s about honing skills), but by that logic no school is worth the cost of attendance.</p>
<p>Of course, I think that, endowment allowing, Stanford should be free for everyone to attend.</p>
<p>“The only thing you may regret is that one day when you are rich enough and $200,000 is not that important anymore, …”</p>
<p>Seriously…what percentage of people, even “full pay parents”, feel that way? I think “some” could get to a $110k EFC this year (yes, it can happen; before you’re parents own their home, before they pay off their own school loans, before they have a viable retirement plan), and $200k still be important.</p>
<p>There are parents who would not choose full ride because there is a big disparity between full ride vs full pay school, but in this case OP is comparing Stanford vs Duke.</p>
<p>This point is probably moot since I’ve already made my decision, but I thought it might add more context to this discussion. </p>
<p>I’ve gone to a private high school for the past four years. So, given that I’ve already spent quite a bit of my parent’s money on high school, it wouldn’t seem fair to spend even more of their money on college, considering there’s a school willing to take me for free. That’s something I thought a lot about when I made this decision.</p>
<p>Arghhh…</p>
<p>“before you’re parents own their home” should read “before your parents own their home”</p>
<p>Duke. You can always go to Stanford for grad school. If you go to Stanford, you probably need to make $300k to make up for the $200k deficit. Even assuming you make an extra $10k a year with a Stanford degree (which is /very/ exaggerated), you need at least 30 years. If you think about it this way, Duke is a very easy choice. Plus… imagine all the special treatment you’d get as a A.B. Scholar. You’d be at the top of the recruitment class, as opposed to the middle of the pack.</p>
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Yeah that’s a huge advantage. Not saying the “big fish in a small pond” mentality is the best in all scenarios, but Duke is similar enough to Stanford that you’re either a big fish in a small pond (Duke) or a small fish in a medium-small pond (Stanford). That was a terrible analogy. Whatever…</p>