Currently choosing between UPenn and Duke, and was wondering from the Duke community if I’m a right fit.
Few key things about what I’m looking for:
highly academic and intellectual community (think uchicago/pton/yale)
pretty campus, but also easy/free access to culture/food/nearby stores/etc.
good dining hall food (like all-you-can-eat style)
options to stay away from greek life. College with no dominant greek/party/social life.
my plans are to get a strong undergrad life, to prepare me for graduate school
I’m also not super into sports, but as long as Duke’s community is diverse enough, I don’t think it will be too bad.
Could someone possibly speak about their experiences at Duke, and specifically what types of students attend or want to attend Duke. I want to make sure that I can fit in well at Duke.
Lastly, could you please also provide, if you were in my situation, which college you would choose, Penn or Duke?
My S24 looked at Penn pretty closely for engineering and we went to admitted students day last year. Penn’s a great campus (not as dangerous as everyone portrays in our opinion) but is in the City. We have a non-engineering friend who really loves it there and is not into greek life but has plenty of friends who are.
The issue my son had was it seemed like a lot of engineering students didn’t seem to want to stick with engineering. At a specific engineering Q&A with the engineering Dean, about 40% of the questions from admitted students were about taking classes at Wharton or double majoring/minoring in business. Ok, so that’s just one session but we looked at the student newspaper that ran an article on post-grad results and I think 40-50% of the engineering students end up in consulting or finance upon graduation.
Granted, I think a lot of students at schools like Penn or Duke end up on finance or consulting regardless of major but it seemed more geared towards those options at Penn than other schools.
Yeah, that was sort of the point of the parenthetical above. You can actually see it a lot in college-related social media. There are all these smart and driven kids who are interested in engineering because it seems (to them and perhaps also their parents) like a relatively reliable path to $$$, social status, and so on.
But it turns out college engineering is hard. And a lot of fun for some kids, but for others it is just a grind with not a lot of intrinsic appeal.
And I do think a disproportionate percentage of such kids start off in the engineering programs at colleges like Penn or Duke. Of course not all the engineering kids at those colleges are like that. But some, and more than their fair share perhaps.
Thank you for the insight. This is a hard decision, and am not sure where I should go. One one hand, I feel like my gut says Penn b/c I vibe with their students a bit more (but dislike Penn’s campus environment and there dorms), and on the other hand Duke is giving me 100% aid (while I have to pay ~7K for Penn).
Should I just choose the cheaper option?
An objective fact about the two is that while these 2 universities are similar in size, Duke (18.6%) graduates twice the number of engineers as Penn (9.0%) does.
I mean, a substantially lower cost is a hard, objective, literally bankable difference. So I do think there is something to be said with going with your lower cost option when there is not a clear reason to prefer the higher cost option.
On the other hand, feeling excited about your fellow students is not a small thing either, so if you are really not feeling it with Duke, it would not be crazy to choose Penn.
I know that isn’t all that helpful, but as a final reminder–these are both fantastic universities! Big picture, I am excited for you that you have even one of these opportunities, let alone two.
So while in some sense it is almost a negative you are now forced to choose, which is a lot of pressure, in another sense you have already won and are just picking your favorite prize. Which is not so bad.
My guess is that you’ll find your people at either school. Both are big enough that there will be a variety of different personality types at both. It’s not like everyone’s cut out of the same cloth at either one. Since you’ll be spending most of your academic time with the other engineers, an advantage for Duke is that the engineering school is twice the size of Penn’s, giving an even greater likelihood of finding others to connect with.
I don’t know if it matters to you, but the two universities draw their students from somewhat different places. While both have a national student body, here are the states from which each draws the majority (>59%) of their students from.
Penn draws heavily from the Northeast:
22% - Pennsylvania
15% - New York
12% - New Jersey
12% - California
5% - Maryland
Duke students are not as heavily concentrated in one region:
13% - North Carolina
11% - California
10% - New York
8% - Florida
6% - Texas
5% - Virginia
5% - New Jersey
I have a kid at each, though my Duke kid is humanities not Engineering. My Penn kid is Engineering. Both campuses are intellectually intense, though I would likely give the nod to Penn for being more intensely intellectual. This could be because of the differences in having an Engineer at Penn and not at Duke. Penn Engineering is very collaborative and everything I have heard about Duke E is also collaborative. There is more grade inflation at Duke, but both schools have a relatively low percent of the classes that get below a B- in the core courses (physics, calc, chem etc). At both schools, many of these cores are taken with the arts&sci students (ie with the physics majors and the premeds/other stem lovers), but there are some Engineering-only sections. Both schools have very small classes for Engineering, often under 20. There are about 350-375 engineering students per entering class at Duke and 425 or so at Penn.
Both schools have greek culture and yet neither of mine joined greek and many do not. If you want a campus sports culture Duke has that far more than Penn, with Duke Basketball being the main focus, though camping out in tents for Duke BBall takes weeks, and simply standing in line to get into the lesser games can require hours before tipoff. The sports culture at Penn is around the Eagles, given the superbowl win (hundreds of students ran into the city after the win and classes were canceled for the parade so students could go).
One difference is the research culture: Penn Engineering has about 3/4 of undergrads do some sort of research with faculty during their time there, Duke Engineering said 58% at the tour/admitted sessions. Both schools have funds to pay many but not all undergrad researchers in Stem(not just engineering, even my humanities kid got some undergrad funding for research), though with government funding issues both schools have made or are making funding cuts that might affect non-work study undergrad dollars. Both schools have extensive work-study funds for students on financial aid: work study jobs as a research assistant with a professor is widely accessible at both schools, in fact sometimes priority has to be for work study students for funding.
Finally, on the campuses, you need to go see: Penn is not in the middle of center city philly, it is its own campus west of downtown by about a mile, but the city is easily accessible, a car is not needed to go to restaurants with friends or concerts in the city. Penn’s main campus has a lot more green spaces than what can be seen from roads–you have to park and walk through it to see the main areas: it is in fact a botanical garden, with the most known green area being Kaskey park(“biopond”). Durham is a much smaller city and is not adjacent to campus. Going out in Durham requires a car or Uber but there is a cute walkable area adjacent to the Freshman campus (9th street).
Bottom line, you cannot go wrong. For whatever it is worth, my Penn kid got into both schools for Engineering as well as other top 10 programs and picked Penn, though some of that decision may have been due to her acceptance to Penn Viper (a dual-degree engineering program).
Actually, Penn SEAS undergrads in engineering slightly outnumber Duke Pratt undergrads, and UPenn grad students outnumber Duke’s Engineering grad population (2900 to 2300, MS and Phd combined)
I’m not sure this student has time to visit both campuses. It seems there is a waitlist offer* and typically students have a few days to decide. Op posted 4 days ago, so I can’t imagine there is much time left.
OP seems more drawn to Penn. It’s not a huge amount of money in terms of paying for college, if the parents are able to contribute and assuming OP works during summers, etc…
*Or has OP double deposited? I hope not, as that is not allowed and could lead to offers being withdrawn from both schools, as well as causing problems for the high school.
In no way, shape or form is Duke more like Princeton, Yale or Chicago than Penn. Duke is not an urban campus; it is not even a very suburban campus. It is a sprawling university in a fairly rural part of the country. It is basically a small city unto itself.
In 2024, according to their common data set, Penn awarded 9% of their degrees in engineering out of a total of 2437 undergraduate degrees awarded, or 219. Duke awarded 272 of their degrees in engineering. Not double as I stated because I didn’t account for the fact that Penn is bigger. My apologies. But Duke still graduated about 23% more than Penn in engineering.
I have. Duke is comprised of about 8,000 acres of classrooms and research facilities on the outskirts of downtown Durham. It feels more like suburban sprawl than anything like Chicago, New Jersey or New Haven, CT. My rule of thumb: if you need a car to get a carton of milk, you’re not in a city.
OP have you made a decision yet? Sounds like you’re averaging your estimated guess of what Penn will cost per year. Bottom line, can you afford the $20-$40,000 difference in cost? Not aware of many who make a significant decision like this based on food quality. You won’t starve, even eating “ “institutional” food. Don’t many still manage to find the “freshman 15”?
I am a UNC grad so naturally hate Duke but your characterization is wildly off. You said it was rural and not suburban which is just not true at all.
You can certainly walk from East Campus or West Campus of Duke to get a carton of milk. Not hard at all. Also, Durham is NOT rural. Just because it’s not Philly doesn’t mean it’s rural. I have a friend who grew up in Durham and now lives in Philly and those two cities have way more things in common than differences.
Hello Everyone, thank you for all the comments, I really appreciate it!
Since, I’ve committed to Penn, however I have been thinking about the cost a bit more, and regret turning down a full-ride fin aid to Duke (however, if both schools were same cost, I would choose Penn). I’m currently asking Duke to see if there’s still a spot open, but not sure if I still have a chance.