The waiting is the hardest part…

2Devils
Sun, 21 Apr 2024 03:16:05 +0000

I have a kid at each! Penn and Duke are both extraordinary and your kid will have success from either. Penn and Duke both encourage interdisciplinary education whether that is taking Econ classes in addition to an engineering major(doable at both), or pursuing interdisciplinary research.
Both schools have tons of funding for undergraduate pursuits, even summer funding though that is competitive.
Both have work hard/play hard cultures but honestly the engineers at both have more work than play, with 4.5-5 courses per semester needed at both for Engineering (whereas arts& sciences at both is 4-4.5 per semester for a major).
Both report collaboration in classes and psets, but there is an intellectually intense atmosphere prevalent in both student populations, which makes for interesting discussions in and out of class.
Only one of mine is an Engineering student, and her final two were Duke and Penn. She was accepted to one of the Engineering dual degree programs which provides 2 yrs of guaranteed research and generous summer stipends plus a lot of customized advising. She applied to Engineering alone as the backup if she had not gotten into the dual, and that would have made the decision a little harder. However she loved the Penn campus, does not care tons about big sports, and it provided something different (ie not where humanities sister is and where her parents went). She loves it. My other one loves Duke and we know very satisfied Engineering students at Duke.
Best of luck with the decision!