a just a few questions from a to-be '12

<li><p>How do most kids dress at Duke?</p></li>
<li><p>Duke gets a pretty bad rap on race (the lax bs aside). How much of it is legit and how much is exaggerated? (After all, I thought top-ten schools were supposed to have generally more open minded, eclectic communities.)</p></li>
<li><p>With which universities would an average Duke student most likely associate his/her school? HYPS? Other Ivy’s? UVA, UNC? Other schools? </p></li>
</ol>

<p><3</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Walking around campus you see everyone in Jeans and duke sweatshirts. I swear the bookstore must make a killing because it's all anyone wears to class (that and the fact that the books are horribly overpriced). Outside of class, I suppose you see something of everything. In terms of nightime "bar" attire its typical of every college campus I have scene.</p></li>
<li><p>In my experience (I am no longer a student), there is definitely social segregation between different racial groups. I'm not really sure exactly what you meant in terms of the bad rap.</p></li>
<li><p>Duke students associate themselves with Duke and don't compare it to other places. People were worried that when Broadhead (the president) came from Yale people would make comparisons. Duke is NOT Yale of the south. Duke is Duke. It's obviously infinitely better than UNC and a comparison between the two would be ridiculous. (that was a joke before I get my head bitten off.)</p></li>
</ol>

<ol>
<li><p>You see pretty much everything. Many students do walk around in Jeans and Duke shirts/hoodies, but there are definitely girls who do get more dressed up (not dress dressy, but make a conscious effort to look well put together), and many guys in jeans and polos/button downs as well. There are a ton of different styles around campus so wear what you want.</p></li>
<li><p>I agree that there is definitely social segregation but the sort of hostile, unaccepting atmosphere just doesn't exist. I'm friends with people of all sorts of races, however, as are many people. So it is a very open atmosphere, but you will definitely see what I think is a self-brought-on sort of segregation.</p></li>
<li><p>I agree. I don't think Duke every associates itself with any other University...we do our own thing. It's mainly other people who do.</p></li>
</ol>

<ol>
<li><p>There's a lot of shcool pride here, people where a ton of Duke stuff. To class, its very varied in waht people wear..I did notice girls here dress up a ton to go to class. At parties and stuff its definately more preppy than the West Coast if you coming from that part of the country.</p></li>
<li><p>There's a little self segregation here but honeslty, there is a little self segregation on any diverse campus. I have friends of every race and hang out with lots of different people...and I am definately not unique. There are things like multicultural dance groups, a center for race relations, etc. which helps things out. There is self segregation, but no hostile atmosphere, and the self segregation problem here is no worse than any other campus in the top 20. And there is definately a ton of racial diversity...thats not even a question.</p></li>
<li><p>Yeah Duke isn't like anybody else neither do we associate with anyone else like that. Dukie's are going to kill me if I say this but I'd say the school most like Duke is probably Stanford.....then again name me another top ten university with a top ten basketball team.</p></li>
</ol>

<ol>
<li><p>do Duke students take up part-time jobs, etc? </p></li>
<li><p>how's the residence and food at Duke?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>I've got a question too.</p>

<p>How "cut-throat" is the competition at Duke? Is it competitive but supportive with students or is it extremely aggressive?</p>

<p>How about asian Indian population at Duke? Any asian indian got it?</p>

<p>Lessee -
"do Duke students take up part-time jobs, etc?" - some do. There are work-study jobs as part of financial aid packages; some lab/research jobs; some people get jobs in the surrounding area and whatnot. I would say it's a smallish number, generally</p>

<p>"how's the residence and food at Duke?" - since I live off-campus (because I'm...you know...old) and my freshman dorm is no longer a dorm, can't give you any recent feedback. For the latter, I eat two or three meals a day at Twinnie's, the cafe at Pratt, and like it a lot.</p>

<p>"How "cut-throat" is the competition at Duke? Is it competitive but supportive with students or is it extremely aggressive?" - By and large, I would say that students compete with the <em>courses</em> they take and not the students with whom they take them. The silver lining of any kind of grade inflation is the fact that - at least for me - there's no pressure to conform to some absolute grading scale or spectrum. If all my students performed really well one semester, then I give all A's - I am not going to try to turn a 93 into a C- just 'cause. Some of the larger classes can be competitive in terms of the students taking them, but I've not really heard of students comaplining about, say, people not sharing note or people not being open to forming study groups.</p>

<p>"How about asian Indian population at Duke? Any asian indian got it?" - I would certainly assume so based on past numbers :) [url=<a href="http://www.dukediya.com/%5DDiya%5B/url"&gt;http://www.dukediya.com/]Diya[/url&lt;/a&gt;] is Duke's South Asian Student Association (I think it's cute that they made the "duke diya" text Devanāgarī-ish)</p>

<p>fritz90 - about competition in classes, there definitely is going to be some at any good school especially in classes with heavy curves like pre-med classes. Kids do work really hard, but the competition for the most part in even pre-med classes is anonymous since most people aren't really aggressive outwardly towards others via comparing grades or other noticeable ways.</p>

<p>As someone whose going pre-med I'm glad to hear that. I am from an unweighted unranked high school so I'm used to the internal drive that you guys are talking about and I've heard some serious horror stories about ranked communities. Oh well, it just means that I'll have to work that much harder :]</p>

<p>Thanks for all the great questions and answers!</p>

<p>I think one of my Indian friends told me that Diya is actually one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) student associations on campus.</p>