<p>what was not up to par at Duke? This is not a bashing thread, but I am asking for your honest reflections on your freshman year as a student who is 99% set on Duke. What aspects of the school are not as cracked up as they are made out to be?</p>
<p>1.) The bus system really needs to become more reliable.</p>
<p>2.) Allowing us to tip on points.</p>
<p>3.) Parking. Build a deck in the front of the blue zone, and open up other areas for non-weekday parking.</p>
<p>4.) The grading disparity between natural sciences and others, which distorts the choices kids make.</p>
<p>Notice that these are all relatively small complaints.</p>
<p>yea....I have noticed that...when I ask Duke students to say what they don't like....they rack thier brain for a loooooooooong time before mentioning small nit-picky problems. kinda cool.</p>
<p>haha yeah Duke's parking situation does kinda blow in multiple respects.</p>
<p>yes. parking=TERRIBLE TERRIBLE TERRIBLE. I'm NOT looking forward to living on West next year.</p>
<p>for freshman, the board plan sucks and all, and the fact that we had no meal equivalency sucked even more. BUT that's all being changed.</p>
<p>the social scene here, atleast for freshman, kind of has its negatives. but that's probably just a representation of my personal situation, and the fact that im a girl....so don't listen to me. i love duke and am obsessed with it anyway...so ill shut up.</p>
<p>Bluedevilmike, can you explain a little more about your point #4 above about the grading disaparity?</p>
<p>Well, as is the case at nearly all schools, certain departments tend to grade harder than others. What this does is it incentivizes major "blocking", where many students avoid classes that they deem too "hard". My guess is that it has relatively small ramifications on your social circle, as well as just being less educational than I would like.</p>
<p>It's a relatively small complaint, and Duke is certainly no worse than normal in this regard.</p>
<p>I'll second loveduke's mention of social scene negatives. That's the biggest drawback for me. Otherwise I don't have much to complain about.</p>
<p>Negatives for me are the social scene and the lack of intellectual atmosphere in general. I don't have any problems with courses, grading, parking, or buses (at least this year).</p>
<p>What social negatives are you guys talking about? just that the freshman are somewhat isolated from the rest of the campus?</p>
<p>
the social scene here, atleast for freshman, kind of has its negatives. but that's probably just a representation of my personal situation, and the fact that im a girl....so don't listen to me. i love duke and am obsessed with it anyway...so ill shut up.
Yikes - please don't shut up! Else how's anything going to change? It would seem this would be a place you could talk about what you think are negatives about the social situation (either just on East or in general), have a coupla other people talk about it too, and maybe figure out if there's a way to change it. </p>
<p>Hopefully you'll never feel like you shouldn't express yourself because of your gender.</p>
<p>I meant that the social scene is mostly dominated by Greek life. If that doesn't interest you, there are some EC's that you can be involved in, but Greek life seems dominant in my opinion. Either way, I find that there is still enough to do, especially with the workload.</p>
<p>I've hung out at Duke a few times- downside for me and the reason I didn't go was that it seemed too "jocky."</p>
<p>dukeclassof09, could you explain the 'lack of intellectual atmosphere'?</p>
<p>Greek life doesn't necessarily dominate as much for the girls as it does for the guys...but when it comes to being a girl, socially it does tend to feel a little "cliqueish" if you aren't in a soror. Atleast from my standpoint there are some girls in top sororities who won't even talk to me anymore, and there can be some of that "you aren't in my group so you aren't cool at all" when it comes to going out and everything. I just find that there's one main clique of freshman who dominate the social scene and you get tagged a "wannabe" if you aren't one of them. I mean, there are schools that are definitely more cliqueish, but as a girl there are moments when i still feel like I'm in high school. </p>
<p>NOW that being said, I think east has something to do with that. Over on West we'll all be just little fish in a very big, diverse ocean, so hopefully some of that will die down.</p>
<p>Anyway, just catty, personal girl stuff. lol. That's why I didn't know if I should share, DukeEgr...but thanks for the encouragement!</p>
<p>From what I've heard:</p>
<p>Duke's parties are almost always dominated by Greek life (Frats and so on)
However, these parties are open to everyone, and parties at clubs are also popular
However, the alternatives to drinking at parties are few depending on your friends</p>