A Few Questions

<ol>
<li><p>How hard is it to get a single (dorm-wise)?</p></li>
<li><p>How useful/useless is having a car?</p></li>
<li><p>What Korean restaurants/stores are nearby?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>

Freshman year, not very difficult. Sophomore year, highly unlikely and possibly impossible. Junior/senior year, not very difficult.</p>

<p>

Useful, but you can make do without one. Enough people have them that some of your friends should.</p>

<p>

Not sure about this. Bali Hai on 9th street is pretty good, but it’s Mongolian.</p>

<p>Does Duke even allow freshmen to bring cars? I know a lot of colleges don’t…also speaking of transportation, is it a big inconvenience for the freshmen to go from East Campus, where the freshmen dorms are, to West for classes? I’ve heard it can be like a 30 minute walk!</p>

<p>Yes, Duke allows all students to bring cars. </p>

<p>1). No one really knows how singles are assigned so it’s really a crapshoot</p>

<p>2). I wish I had a car on campus freshmen year. It’ll allow you to leave the Duke bubble now and then and go to the store (always a plus). Plus parking is relatively cheap on campus. IMHO, if you can bring a car (meaning you live within driving distance) then it wouldn’t hurt. Plus you’ll be popular ;)</p>

<p>3). Don’t know about korean stores but there is a chinese grocery store close by and a bigger one in raleigh. There should be one or two asian grocery stores around here too. </p>

<p>4). There’s a bus system at Duke so you don’t need to walk from East to West. Plan on at least a 20 minute commute from your dorm door to the classroom door, 30 minutes would be better.</p>

<p>Is the whole East to West thing for freshmen a really big hassle? Because it seems like it would be a pain! Obviously, it’s not going to keep me from attending Duke, but I don’t want to have to leave my dorm at 8 am for a 9:30 class (just an example).</p>

<p>How much faster can I get there if I have a car?</p>

<p>You can’t park on west. A freshmen parking permit only allows parking on east during the day.</p>

<p>so I can’t even bring my car to class?</p>

<p>What do you mean “can’t even bring my car to class?” I can’t think of a university where students who lived on campus need to or are allowed to drive to class. That’s not the norm as far as I can tell. Duke isn’t a mega-city, you don’t need to drive around campus. A car is for getting off campus or at most getting around campus late at night or on weekends.</p>

<p>you don’t need a car! We lived three hours away and didn’t provide a car till senior year when employment required one over the previous summer. Duke’s campus is infinitely gorgeous, and enjoyable and varied and the opposite of dull. Although we were at first turned off by the shuttles, we changed our minds because our son and his friends loved their one year on East as a class so much…freshmen bond on East and then scatter on West but those first year memories create many friendships that last.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>No. Where would everyone sit? How would you get it through the door?</p>

<p>collegehappy,</p>

<p>There is no way in the world that you would need to leave at 8 AM for a 9:30 AM class (I know this was just an example, but 90 minutes is wayyyyyy overshooting it). </p>

<p>The east bus stop is roughly 1.2 miles away from the west bus stop. So it takes you no time at all. You should give yourself 20 minutes on busy days, but most of the time it will only be 10-15 minutes depending on if there is a bus about to leave or not.</p>

<p>You could bike there in 10 minutes.</p>

<p>Responding to question 3…</p>

<p>There isn’t too much in the way of Korean restaurants/stores compared to somewhere like Atlanta, but they exist. </p>

<p>There’s a Korean taco truck:
[Bulkogi</a> – Korean Taco Truck | Carpe Durham](<a href=“http://carpedurham.com/2010/03/24/bulkogi-korean-taco-truck/]Bulkogi”>http://carpedurham.com/2010/03/24/bulkogi-korean-taco-truck/)
Also, I’ve heard good things about Chosun Ok for Korean BBQ: [Chosun</a> Ok Korean BBQ - RTP - Durham | Urbanspoon](<a href=“http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/25/290542/restaurant/RTP/Chosun-Ok-Korean-BBQ-Durham]Chosun”>http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/25/290542/restaurant/RTP/Chosun-Ok-Korean-BBQ-Durham)</p>

<p>There are some Asian supermarkets, but I believe most of them have Chinese owners. They still should carry whatever is needed to make Korean food. There is also a Korean church that even does mass in Korean.</p>

<p>I believe South Korea is one of the top 3 countries in sending international students to Duke as well. Both the international students and Korean-Americans are pretty active. They do everything from making food together to making music in both Korean and English. In fact, they may do too much, which may contribute to Koreans having a reputation for self-segregating the most compared to the other Asian ethnicities. Of course, it is only stereotype, and one shouldn’t generalize; there are plenty of Koreans that don’t self-segregate.</p>

<p>Car for Frosh - </p>

<p>you don’t need it. I didn’t have one all year (still don’t, actually - I’m a soph now), and it was FINE.</p>

<p>Getting to class - you hop on a bus with 1200 other freshman and it gets you to West in 8 minutes. It’s what EVERYONE does - even those who have cars. </p>

<p>(as for timing, I used to generally leave my room on East 15-20 min before class on West started)</p>

<p>The only thing a car is useful for is going to Target and stuff to buy supplies, or road tripping or late-night excursions to cheap fast food. But you still don’t really need a car because Duke has a thing called ZipCar, where you can rent a car for 1 hour, or 2 hours, or whatever, and buy your groceries and then drop it back off. </p>

<p>So you really don’t need a car.</p>

<p>Also - Duke has a HUGE korean population. They are also some of the craziest partiers on campus. Apparently Duke is really big in Korea because some Korean guy came here in the 80’s or something, and became super rich/famous through some corporation and now a tonnn of ppl come from Korea to here. And they’re crazy. (in a good way).</p>

<p>My D used it a lot this year.</p>

<p>Zipcar
<a href=“http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2009/01/zipcar.html[/url]”>http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2009/01/zipcar.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Are there any negative aspect of having a single instead of a double besides the price?</p>