<p>what's better?</p>
<p>Um, I don't know what Georgetown SFS means but I personally did NOT like Duke polisci when I was thinking of becoming a major. They seemed impersonable and just kind of not willing to devote attention to their undergraduates and treat them as individuals instead of just a part of a mass of polisci undergrads. I've heard that only like 6-8 polisci seniors write a thesis compared to much higher numbers in other departments that aren't even as large. This is all from my own experience though . . . just thought I would throw my 2 cents in, that i was thinking of being a major but decided against it because the polisci dept really just turned me off to that major.</p>
<p>Wow, this is a tough choice. Duke's polisci department is actually very reputable - and I think, actually, very few Duke students write theses at all.</p>
<p>But compared to the SFS (School of Foreign Service, Alex)... wow, congratulations on a very difficult choice. I find myself hoping that somebody with more knowledge will post here.</p>
<p>(I'm curious as to what you ended up majoring, in Alex - you don't like either of my two favorite choices! :) )</p>
<p>I love Duke, but if you're at all considering a career in international relations/politics/whatever, Georgetown SFS is top notch-- top faculty, top LOCATION (I mean, come on, if you want to be a diplomat, living in DC really helps; you can have more DC internships because you can work during the school year which is something a Duke student can).</p>
<p>I didn't get into SFS-- now I'm glad I didn't, because I realize it would've been such a hard decision for me to make. But, I will tell you that I did enter Duke as a political science/IR major and realized within a year that it wasn't the field for me. While SFS is ridiculously amazing, I'm happier to be an arts and sciences student at Duke than I would be had I gone to Georgetown.</p>
<p>Duke's political science department is pretty well regarded--- we have a lot of great professors, though a lot of them were on sabbatical this past academic year. It made choosing classes harder, finding advisors harder, etc. I'm sure they'll all be back next year, and my freshman year it wasn't a problem at all-- but it did happen. I don't think something like that would happen at SFS, but who knows, other than a few core professors I feel as if many are visiting professors (soooo they're past leaders/diplomats/experts in their fields with other jobs). I couldn't find a home in the Duke political science department-- I felt kind of unimportant, but my friend has made it her own and everyone knows her in the department.</p>
<p>At the same time, we have a Diplomat in Residence at Duke who gives presentations, helps you with your application, and helps you study for the Foreign Service Exam. A number of students here also get highly coveted State Dept. Internships....not to mention a ton of other internships in DC over the summer. Odds are you won't always want to be doing an internship AND taking classes every semester if you were at Georgetown. So, in my opinion, pick the school/program that works for you...and also take a look at PPS here at Duke. You'll get great internships/jobs during the summer and after you graduate regardless of which school you choose.</p>
<p>Duke is much better overall than Georgetown, which is why many students in Duke's Polisci IR concentration are at the same spot as Gtown's SFS</p>
<p>However, to each his own, no wrong choice there, congrats</p>
<p>GTown SFS </p>
<p>I love Duke, but thats the choice here</p>
<p>I got into SFS and duke as well.</p>
<p>I decided that I don't want to do foreign relations or politics at all (i love politics but... I don't want to be a politician), but SFS is still pretty hard to turn down.</p>
<p>I did too. I'm trying to decide. Duke seems to be sort of detached and perfect for studying a great deal and writing. Georgetown is highly involved due to it's location. Which school dedicates more attention to undergrads? Which school has higher ratio of PhD's teaching freshman and such? Which school offers more opportunities in terms of exploring one's passions and then pursuing them through research? Presently, I'm into international politics, possibly Sino-American relations or Latin American ones. I'll probably be making campus visits soon. Help, the deadline approaches!</p>
<p>In my opinion, if you're 100% absolutely sure and confident that you want to study political science/international relations, definitely go for SFS. As discussed above, there's really no better school for that than SFS, there's no better place than DC, and it's an amazing opportunity.</p>
<p>HOWEVER, if you know that you're the type of person who may change your mind after a year or so of college, pick Duke. The PoliSci department here is strong enough that if you do continue with it it will be very reputable, but as bluestar7 said, if you switch to a different academic path, it will most likely be a lot stronger here than the same path would be at Georgetown.</p>
<p>But congratulations on having such a tough choice to make!</p>
<p>I went to Blue Devil Days last weekend. </p>
<p>Basically, I was supposed to spend my whole spring break touring colleges and go to uchi, northwestern, gtown, and berk after duke</p>
<p>but after I got back to the dorms at 2 in the morning, I flopped onto my sleeping bag and realized that I had fallen in love with Duke. And cancelled all my flights and flew home.</p>
<p>I'm going to Duke.</p>
<p>It's not all because of that one night-- it's a mixture of things.</p>
<p>1) The campus is gorgeous. I've spent a month at gtown already-- it's tiny. They're not allowed to expand. It's actually a fairly dinky campus. The SFS building, Walsh, has really old classrooms. Duke= total opposite.
2) The academics are just amazing at Duke. In EVERYTHING (well almost, I think). At Georgetown, I would only go if I were for sure doing SFS and going into foreign service for sure, because the academics for everything else there aren't worth it for me to spend four years on a small campus in D.C.
3) Which brings me to my next point: the cities. Durham is a crappy city, I admit that freely. D.C. is also an amazing city. But this didn't make me want to go to Georgetown; it was actually the opposite. First of all, there are so many things going on at Duke that it's IMPOSSIBLE to get bored if you're an interesting person who enjoys learning new things. I love the location of Duke because it's NOT in a city. THe problem with city schools, in my opinion (not necessarily a universal absolute) is that students go for the city and not as much for the school. Case in point: Columbia. Why Columbia? "I love NYC!!!!!1one"
4) The PEOPLE. Okay. This is the most important part. The people ==> the environment and ambience of a school. Duke's students are by far the friendliest students at any of the schools I got into and was seriously considering (berk, chi, nw, gtown). I had a huge suitcase and was trying to get down stairs and I told the man behind me to go ahead, and he just took my suitcase and carried it down with him. Everyone opens doors for everyone else, and if you're a female, they walk you everywhere and wait for you to get inside before they enter... and they're not all from the south, so it's not just a southern gentleman thing! Everyone is soooo unpretentious and happy and laidback, but wildly intelligent at the same time. People here study hard, party hard. But even if you're not cut from that cloth, there are people here like you! guaran*<strong><em>inteed. I met sooo many different people here. White kids? Yeah there were a lot. There were a lotttttt of minorities too, though. The diversity is not necessarily in the racial breakdown of the school (although that is definitely not bad-- around the same white-preppiness to gtown); it's in the broad range of personalities and experiences among duke students.
5) Miscellaneous cool *</em></strong>. K-town, freshmen living on East Campus, the FOCUS program (I heard ambivalence about it-- i guess it depends on who you are and which one you pick), giving freshmen dorms a video camera to film a movie, the amazing study abroad, great personal connections with professors, the food (Marketplace at duke= O'Don at gtown; lackluster. but we're getting a better vendor for our year and with a better food point system), the WEATHER (can you really stand snow and swamp weather of DC? ew), Duke Gardens (it's breathtakingly gorgeous), the great rates of going to grad school, the amazing grad schools on West campus, the BASKETBALL TEAM (gtown beat us ONCE but it's all about the consistency), I could just go on and on. </p>
<p>Go to Duke.</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>I'm sorry, but I just have to smile -- it's so great to see someone who feels the exact same way after his/her Blue Devil Day as I remember feeling after mine. Before coming to visit Duke, I was sold on going somewhere else -- after my BDD, I also cancelled all of my other college trips because I knew that I would never be as happy anywhere else.</p>
<p>pri430, I've been here 1 year now and I'm still very much in love with it. Even after thinking that I couldn't love Duke any more than I did after my BDD, I'm still constantly finding new reasons why I think it's amazing. Best of luck to you next year, and I'm so glad that you've chosen to spend your next 4 years at Duke!</p>
<p>Hi pri,</p>
<p>I don't suppose I could ask you to copy-paste that into our "Why Duke?" thread?</p>
<p>done.
thanks for everything; the posters on here really helped my decision.
:)</p>
<p>Welcome to the family. :)</p>
<p>I'm glad you decided on Duke...
As for Lex's comment "Odds are you aren't going to want to intern AND go to classes" -- yeah, one would think you wouldn't want to overextend yourself at Duke, but at Gtown it's almost expected. A friend was visiting me from SFS this weekend, and he felt peer pressured into getting a consulting job that he needs to COMMUTE to, solely because every other person he knew in SFS had some high power job. So on top of taking four or five classes, they're spending several afternoons a week on the Hill.</p>