<p>It sounds like you most want to go to Stanford.</p>
<p>If you’re worried about the engineering opportunities at Duke, then you won’t be much happier at Harvard, which doesn’t even have separate departments (though they have different concentrations for different engineering disciplines). Stanford also boasts exciting faculty–in fact, I’d say that Stanford, Harvard, and Berkeley are all roughly equal in quality of faculty. Cambridge is a college town, though Boston’s more isolated as a city (I might be starting my PhD in Cambridge soon, so this was my judgment).</p>
<p>I’ll add that in the rankings, not only are MS&E, CS, and EE #1 or top 3, but statistics is #1 and econ is top 5.</p>
<p>So can you pay for it okay? Yes, the Duke scholarship is awesome, but I’d say that unless it’d be hard to pay for, take Stanford/Harvard.</p>