<p>I would agree with noobcake and IBclass06 on the differences between Duke and Vandy. Vandy is definitely interested in recruiting Jewish students so I wouldn’t think this should be an issue. Vandy and Wash U often attract the same students. I’d also look at Michigan if you are looking for a school with a large number of Jewish students that meets your criteria.</p>
<p>If you like big cities, Cornell probably isn’t what you are looking for.</p>
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<p>Vandy is better at football; Duke is better at basketball.</p>
<p>Vandy is located in a nice city; Duke is located in a ****hole. </p>
<p>Vandy is more southern; Duke is known as the southernmost satellite campus of Rutgers. </p>
<p>Those are the main differences.</p>
<p>Just wanted to let the OP know that Duke has ED but Vandy has ED I and II. You can apply to Duke ED and Vandy EDII; if accepted at Duke, you must attend, of course, but you could have Vandy as a backup. However, you should not apply ED anywhere you haven’t visited, or if you need to compare financial aid offers.</p>
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<p>Uh, Duke beat Vandy at football last year AT Vandy. Not saying that Duke is traditionally better than Vandy at football in recent years (because it’s not), but Vandy’s not a powerhouse. No point to respond to your other comments as they don’t really deserve a response.</p>
<p>To the OP, looking at your criteria:</p>
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<p>Duke wins this category hands down. Duke basketball is like nothing else, but if you’re a football fan, you might look elsewhere. People still go to tailgate though, and other sporting events (soccer, lacrosse, etc.) are popular as well. Vanderbilt is a solid second as part of the football crazy SEC. They have some other quality teams. Cornell at least has hockey and lacrosse, so it’s okay for an Ivy League school, but doesn’t compare with Duke/Vandy. Wash U is terrible in this category; their women’s b-ball team is usually good, but it’s DIII, so nobody cares.</p>
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<p>I think Duke/Vandy/Cornell fit this description the best equally, but you’d be fine at any of the four. </p>
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<p>Cornell engineering and sciences are notoriously competitive (but that’s the norm everywhere), but you honestly should be fine if you’re majoring in communications, marketing, or psychology (traditionally easier majors).</p>
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<p>I haven’t been to Cornell - but it’s isolated and cold. I’ve been to the other three. Wash U is a beautiful self-contained campus segregated from the rest of the city. Smaller, intimate, and feels more like a LAC than a major research university in many regards. Duke campus is sprawling and HUGE; multiple campuses, beautiful Gothic on west (where you’ll take most classes and live most of your years), georgian on east (freshman campus). Vanderbilt has nice Georgian architecture and a nice campus as well, located near a good area of Nashville. You really need to visit yourself and draw your own conclusions.</p>
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<p>Eliminate Cornell. Vanderbilt and Wash U are in big cities. I’d say Nashville is a lot nicer than St. Louis, but it’s personal preference. Duke is in a medium sized city - the research triangle has more than a million people, but doesn’t have the same layout/density of a major city. Charlotte, Atlanta, DC aren’t *too *far, though. </p>
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<p>I don’t know about all the schools, but Duke doesn’t offer a communications or marketing degree. It does have a markets and management certificate though, that is typically combined with an economics or sociology major. It’d be pretty easy to do psych + markets and management though. You’ll have to look up the other schools.</p>
<p>In regards to Duke v. Vandy…I wouldn’t worry about the Jewish thing anymore as others have said. Wash U and Duke have fairly large Jewish populations as well.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt is definitely more southern than Duke, especially being in Nashville. You’ll see more sundresses, seersucker, etc. at football games. Duke is plenty preppy though. Duke is located in the south, but it’s student body is more skewed towards Northeasterners and is located in a very liberal area of the south (i.e. Durham and the Triangle). I think this point is overemphasized, though, and most people would be happy at either. Vanderbilt does have a bit more of a Greek scene than Duke. And Duke’s is fairly prevalent. Vandy prob the most prevalent Greek scene of any top 20 school. Both have plenty of parties. Duke has slightly more prestige and the top notch recruiters come to Duke in larger numbers than Vanderbilt. (Although in this job market, it’s brutal everywhere…) Vandy obviously is not shabby and you’d be fine there as well. I’m just going be percentages. I’d say Nashville is a more exciting city.</p>
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<p>True, but if you are talking about football programs in general, there is no argument that Vanderbilt’s program is better than Duke’s. Duke has traditionally been downright awful at football. </p>
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<p>Just telling it like it is. Durham is straight ghetto. Never been to Nashville, but I’ve heard great things about it. </p>
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<p>It is still worth noting that the Raleigh-Durham area is the fastest-growing metro area in the country at this point. </p>
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<p>You’re spot-on right here.</p>
<p>Vandy is in the SEC, is far more southern than all of those schools (hence all the fratty kids walking around in Greek shirts and what not). It is kind of like a mixture of Alabama and Princeton. Vandy recruited the hell out of Jews in the past decade or so, and now that they’re at like 15% or whatever, it’s no longer considered an advantage, but you would be comfortable here because of all the recruiting they did and the new Hillel, etc. Same thing goes for most other minorities, although it’s still better to be a minority than a white kid who plays sports from the South with awesome grades and parents who went to Vandy. There are a ton of those in the senior class, a bunch in the junior class, some in the sophomore class, and 3 in the freshman class, so watch out if that’s you.</p>
<p>I was just reading another post in a different topic and somebody said something about Vandy being very “anti-intellectual” when compared to academic peers. That’s a pretty accurate way to view it in general, although obviously there are exceptions. It’s probably the most balanced school in the country when it comes to students having full opportunity to have whatever college life they want, unless that college life is to be surrounded by a bunch of kids that are into the same crap as you.</p>
<p>^^^If I make take the liberty of paraphrasing (and rephrasing) whoistebow’s comment: the applicant pool at Vanderbilt is rapidly changing. It includes a much greater variety of ethnicities, races, economic backgrounds and geographic origins than just a few years ago. Admissions is, not surprisingly, taking advantage of this phenomenon to make the undergraduate program less regional, and more inclusive, than it was in the past.</p>
<p>I recommend a personal visit by anyone interested in the school. Much of the conventional wisdom (not only here on CC) is out of date.</p>
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<p>Maybe pre-med classes, but I’ve never seen much competitive spirit in Cornell engineering/science classes. Cooperation is far, FAR more commonly seen than competition.</p>
<p>In the spirit of midmo’s comments above -</p>
<p>I would recommend that anyone seriously interested in any of these schools visit in person. Durham is like any city - there are also bad parts of Nashville, and I feel lucky to have survived several years in St. Louis without any problems. The areas surrounding both Duke and WashU are safe. I have spent some time in Nashville and believe me, there are rough areas there, too.</p>
<p>I think we are being a bit dismissive of WashU here.
besides school spirit (which is lacking for athletics, since it is D3, but not for the school as a whole,) WashU fits all your criteria. It has much nicer dorms than Duke and Vandy, and St Louis is comparable to Nashville as a city. Durham really sucks; do not consider it a “big city.” I’ve spent considerable time in all 3 cities, so this is a legitimate statement. WashU also has an undergraduate business school for marketing (not sure about the other 2).
It seems, though, that Vandy fits your criteria the best, assuming they have the major options you want.
Also, whoever said Vandy and WashU attract the same students is incorrect.</p>
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<p>I disagree, based on the large number of students I know who apply to both. There are many similarities about the way the schools are organized, about the rules for double majoring across schools, the size of the undergraduate student bodies, the presence on campus of highly respected medical centers, and, not insignificantly, the fact that both universities offer very lucrative merit scholarships to some top candidates. And, although St. Louis is considered midwest and Nashville south, the fact is that they are only 4 hours apart by car–and both have four seasons, though Nashville’s winters are milder.</p>
<p>There are differences, of course. Those differences carry different weight with different students, however, and I think it would be a mistake to write one or the other off without checking them out personally.</p>
<p>About the “nicer dorms at Wash U”.: The dorms I have seen at Wash U are nice, but the new freshman Commons at Vanderbilt is very attractive. While some of the upperclass dorms at Vanderbilt are not great, there is quite a variety of housing options, and all undergraduates are expected to live on campus for all four years; there is no need to try to find nearby housing in a safe neighborhood, which (in the past, at least) has been a problem at Wash U.</p>
<p>Having said that, St. Louis has much more to offer than many people with no experience of the city seem to think. The adjacent Forest Park is wonderful, the Central West End is not far, and most of the areas around Wash U are pretty safe. </p>
<p>There is no undergraduate business school at Vanderbilt, and that is one pretty big difference between Wash U and Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>“Just telling it like it is. Durham is straight ghetto.”</p>
<p>If “Durham is straight ghetto”, why are University of No Class students are always in Durham to go to the mall, Wal-Mart, Target, Barnes & Noble, and other stores?! Didn’t Eve Carson get shot and killed in Chapel Hell?! I guess Chapel Hell must be “straight ghetto” !!! (rolls eyes)</p>
<p>The ultimate question to ask yourself is: “Do I want to go to a school that’s ranked among the top 10 universities in the country and among the top 15 universities in the world…or go to a school that’s not?”</p>
<p>DUKE!! (10char)</p>
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<p>Hey ****bag, where did the hoodlums that shot Eve come from? Durham. And what did they do before they shot Eve? That’s right, they shot and killed a Dook student in his own apartment. Only Dook scumbags like you would use the tragic murder of a UNC student by Durham residents as a talking point.</p>
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<p>Careful…your inferiority complex is shining through.</p>
<p>“Hey ****bag, where did the hoodlums that shot Eve come from? Durham. And what did they do before they shot Eve? That’s right, they shot and killed a Dook student in his own apartment. Only Dook scumbags like you would use the tragic murder of a UNC student by Durham residents as a talking point.”</p>
<p>What does where they came from have to do with anything? If you believe they are “ghetto” because they came from Durham or because they shot and killed someone, well, if they were Chapel Hell, then Chapel Hell must be “ghetto” as well! Funny how you described a UNC student’s murder as “tragic”, but didn’t use that adjective to describe the Duke student’s murder. Only University of No Class “scumbags” (as yourself) would claim Durham as “ghetto”, despite the number of times you are in Durham as a patron of Durham based businesses and establishments…</p>
<p>“Careful…your inferiority complex is shining through.”
“Inferiority complex”?!! Puuuuhleeze! Duke is ranked among the top 10 universities in the country and among the top 15 universities in the world. Meanwhile, not only is University of No Class not ranked among the top 25 universities in the country and top 100 universities in the world, but it also:
a) hires doctors who have past DUI charges and convictions, who get trashed and decide to speed 90 mph in a 45 mph zone, and kill college students
b) hires professors who bite airport security officials
c) hires coaches who have sexual relations with and sexually harass their players</p>
<p>Careful…your Jan Brady Syndrome is shining through.</p>
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<p>Durham is ghetto, and everyone from North Carolina knows it. Thankfully for Duke, most people that attend that university come from out of state, so they don’t know Durham’s reputation.</p>
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<p>And Dook hires coach K, who eats small children. What’s your point?</p>
<p>“Durham is ghetto, and everyone from North Carolina knows it. Thankfully for Duke, most of the people that attend that university come from out of state, so they don’t know Durham’s reputation.”</p>
<p>a) Are you implicitly stating that if people who “come from out of state” knew Durham’s “reputation”, they would automatically reject the chance to study at a university that’s ranked among the top 10 universities in the country and top 15 universities in the world?!</p>
<p>b) If Chapel Hell is so awesome, then virtually no one around the world knows it, because, afterall, 86% of University of No Class students come from the finest trailer parks and NASCAR families of North Carolina!</p>
<p>“And Dook hires coach K, who eats small children.”
afalkdafalkafalkjf!!! Duke must be awesome (the stats don’t lie bud) for you to be so jealous! Get some help for your Jan Brady Syndrome…</p>
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<p>Yes.</p>
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<p>Wrong, as always. You ever wonder why Chapel Hill is always overrun with Dookies? They know where the better college town is!</p>
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<p>Obviously Dook didn’t teach you how to spell. I’m proud to go to UNC-the University of National Champions. I realize it must bust your balls that UNC has dominated Dook for the past few years, but maybe Coach K will be able to change that lately in his next deal with the devil.</p>
<p>To the OP-
You may want to investigate whether these schools have the program(s) you’re looking for. Not sure who has marketing on an undergraduate level. For graduate business, I saw Business Week’s rankings for b-schools, and was surprised that Fuqua (Duke) was #8, higher than Sloan (MIT #9). Olin (WashU) was a respectable #28.</p>
<p>Some schools allow upper-level undergrads to take classes at their professional schools, so you may want to ask about that possibility.</p>