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I only graduated last year but there’s not a single person I’ve met so far who has been unaware of Duke. I’m sure a lot of it has to do with sports but part of it has to do with establishing yourself as the premier school in a region of the country.</p>
<p>UChicago has the highest academic prestige in the Midwest but its Notre Dame that has the strongest recognition in the region. That disparity between academic prestige and lay prestige doesn’t exist with Stanford, Harvard, and Duke respectively (West, Northeast, and South). People who do matter and people who don’t matter all know those schools very well in those regions at least.</p>