<p>How hard is it to do well at Duke?</p>
<p>Wow, you’re going to need to specify your question much further. What do you mean by well? And how do you want us to measure difficulty? Percentiles? Time in the library?</p>
<p>Even then, though, the answer will still be: it depends. It depends on your courseload, your study efficiency, your high school, and your own innate abilities.</p>
<p>Well that’s a vague question. Is doing “well” successfully subordinating yourself to the grade crunch of needing a 4.0 to get into a top medical school to please your overbearing 1st generation immigrant parent-puppeteers? Is doing “well” kicking the cocaine habit at the end of a 4-year Tucker-Max-flair-and-Nixon-illegal bender at Duke? You need to be more specific or define your terms better.</p>
<p>(edit: It seems Mike was more diplomatic than I was. Same answer, different words.)</p>
<p>hahaha joe meyerowitz always makes me laugh</p>
<p>I’ll narrow it down a bit… What would you say the average gpa at Duke is? Is it reasonable to achieve at least 3.5? I keep wondering how I’ll do surrounded by so many seemingly incredible people in classes that are curved or in general. When most are at the top in high school, I’m curious to see how they fall into place at Duke if they maintain the drive they had in high school and push it to another level. It’s hard to frame the question because obviously the answer is different for everyone and there are so many factors.</p>
<p>The graduating class of 2005 had the following GPAs or better:</p>
<p>Top 5%: 3.867
Top 15%: 3.738
Top 25%: 3.661</p>
<p>These are Trinity numbers. Pratt numbers are higher. (This is the top distribution. At the mean, I think Pratt numbers are probably lower.)</p>
<p><a href=“http://registrar.duke.edu/registrar/studentpages/student/academichonors.html[/url]”>http://registrar.duke.edu/registrar/studentpages/student/academichonors.html</a></p>
<p>Thanks Mike! That is really useful/interesting information.</p>
<p>I think you are speaking only about academic success which, doing well only in that alone, I personally don’t consider successful. So much of college is social growth. But if you do want to talk about academics, here’s what I think:</p>
<p>In my experience, one of the most difficult things (academically) to adjust to is that you aren’t that kid that everyone knows will do well on everything. Pretty much every kid at Duke was one of those kids in high school who was at the top of their class while still founding orphanages and vaccinating half of Africa. So, while some kids continue their academic drive, others decide to spend more time enjoying other activities (and -BANG- we have the bell curve). Both have their relative merits though.</p>
<p>Really, I don’t think you should try to judge success by GPA. It’s sad if people find happiness only from numerical scores. You will do bad sometimes, you’ll probably fail a few exams, even if you study. Engineers will have different GPA’s from, say, a CulAnth major. That being said, to magnificiantly over-simplify: you’ll be doing hw almost every day and setting aside time to study for exams if you want to keep a high GPA.</p>
<p>I know not to only judge by academic success… I know I will be involved in activities that I am passionate about and hopefully be as successful as I can in those endeavors, however, I still want to maintain a high GPA, because I feel I can do both. Like you talked about, it’s a big adjustment because the student body will be stronger and the material more challenging, which is why I’m interested in the academic side of things right now. I hope that makes sense.</p>
<p>It shouldn’t be that hard to do well. I find that if you put in enough time to go to every class and do all of your assigned readings and homeworks on time, you can generally get at least B’s in most classes. A’s aren’t too hard if you’re good at writing and/or test taking (depending on the class), but math courses are the hardest in my opinion. Science majors may find intro science classes harder, but I’m not taking any harder science classes. </p>
<p>Overall, if you make academics your main priority, you should be fine in terms of grades but you will have to work.</p>
<p>
Why do you think that?</p>
<p>Because certain disciplines are a bit more known for grade inflation than others. ;)</p>
<p>I haven’t found it all that difficult to do well academically (i.e 3.9+), hold an on-campus job, and do a good bit of volunteering. It means my days are pretty much shot as far as free time goes, but I still find plenty to waste in the evenings. </p>
<p>To be honest, the few people that have an idea of what my GPA is tend to be surprised because they never see me studying. I’ll admit, I’m really lazy when it comes to school, but it’s also a matter of being efficient. Figure out exactly how much time you need to do homework or study for an exam, and you can successfully juggle academics and anything else.</p>
<p>few people are capable of that – be thankful.</p>