<p>Thanks Mondo :) I'm actually very interested in the Greek life- I consider a healthy social life a must. It's just that my current HS is overly insane... and well known for it too. </p>
<p>Oh, and I wanted to do a humanities major.</p>
<p>Duke is competitive, which is a given considering the type of student that attend there. Each student is extremely driven, focused, and wants to push him or herself to the max. Multiply that by 6,000, and you get your student body. </p>
<p>It plays on you mentally more than physically. For instance, no matter what time of the day or night, or which day it is, you will find somebody in the library studying his or her rear end off. It plays on your mind because, often, you may feel guilty that: a) you're out having fun, while others are working, b) you may question your own work ethic ("am I really as driven or working hard as I should be?"), </p>
<p>Also, you are never graded on your own abilities or merits. You will ALWAYS be graded in comparison to your classmates!! You can have an outstanding paper, but if it's average among your classmates, you will get a C! If you ask the professors for help, why you didn't score higher, or what you can do to improve your grade, they will always use your classmates' papers, tests, etc for their benchmark. Professors justify this by telling you: "Well, Duke is one of the top 10 schools in the country; you are among the top 1% of students in the country. If you are 'average' within the top 1% of students in the country, you are doing pretty good. Keep it all in perspective." Or... "This is how it works in the real world. When you get job offers, promotions, salary, bonuses, etc, you will be rewarded for your work among your peers, not on your individual merit..." </p>
<p>Of course this is total BS, because grad schools and potential employers aren't going to have this rationale whenever they see your transcript with Cs and a low GPA....</p>
<p>However, I will say that although students are competitive within themselves, they are very supportive and will be more than willing to help you (study groups, quiz/test review sessions, etc). It's not a cut-throat environment, where you are constantly looking over your shoulder, will find pages torn from books in the library, worrying about people sabotaging your labs, etc.</p>
<p>Now if you want to talk about how the competitive environment leads to the cheating that goes on? That's a whole new thread to start.....</p>
<p>re competition at Duke...my son did not come from a good high school (50% drop out). He had a total of four APs when he showed up...his friend who came here for Fall Break had 10.<br>
My son has to step up his game for a B average at Duke, and some As. You will be bell curved in math and science intro courses so if you want a high GPA for premed or whatever your goal is...be ready to do cumulative testing with people who are great at testing and experienced at prepping. Many of my son's peers went to great publics or great privates. If you had a tough high school, kiss the ground..you are probably going to be fine in college.</p>
<p>I don't buy into the Duke stereotype of the spoiled rich kid. Yeah..there is a small percentage of the uberprivileged but you will meet them at UVa or Chapel Hill as well as any top 20 college. </p>
<p>I have awesome level respect for my son's peers. One of the things you get out of a place like Duke is the opportunity to be among rugged tough individuals who have laser vision about their future goals...and most of my son's friends are good hearted, dear people who want to do tough hard things in life like operate on brains and save children from cancer. The business majors are global thinkers, the engineers are multi faceted and go abroad. Being the son or daughter of parents with high achievement in their careers does not equate into being spoiled, it can also breed idealism and work ethic to steer through tough classes with. My son's friends are inspirational and his teachers..even the one or two who gave him Cs..are also inspiring.<br>
My son does say that scores of other Duke students outstudy him and that is is hard to go take a night off when a study group is doing Chem in your freshman lobby...but he learned how to study harder and to think more broadly and had vastly increased his sense of confidence by knowing his peers.</p>
<p>Well I will have 12 APs by the time I graduate and I'm a full IB diploma student, so I hope I'm somewhat ready for a tough college. The competitive grading sounds harsh.. reminds me of my physics teacher. </p>
<p>I'm looking forward to an environment where students actually discuss in class, are intellectually engaged, and know how to have fun. My HS isn't terrible by any means but most of the kids here are so competitive they don't have a life! It's really frustrating, especially when you're one of the social, ASB-type kids. </p>
<p>I'm not trying to start a new conversation by any means, but I'm debating on Duke or Pomona for ED. They're completely different I know, but I love both of them. I just hope I can get into one!</p>
<p>"Also, you are never graded on your own abilities or merits. You will ALWAYS be graded in comparison to your classmates!! You can have an outstanding paper, but if it's average among your classmates, you will get a C! If you ask the professors for help, why you didn't score higher, or what you can do to improve your grade, they will always use your classmates' papers, tests, etc for their benchmark."</p>
<p>This is not necessarily true. There are many classes where things are graded with no curves. Psych rarely has curves and some of the language departments also do not. Also, many professors (at least in seminars) actually want you to do better and they might grade you on an individual level based on your progress and potential.</p>
<p>A lot of classes have students with a wide variety of skills and they can't always be directly compared. If you put in work over the semester and respond well to feedback that you get from professors, you can get rewarded in the end. But if you have a lot of potential and turn in a paper that's disappointing relative to past work, it could be graded in a harsh way, regardless of how good it is compared to the rest of the class. Again, all of this could be different in a larger class when professors don't grade and work with students individually. But it certainly isn't true that all professors grade you against the whole class with no focus on the individual.</p>
<p>A lot of classes are relatively easy A's at Duke, the secret is finding them. ;)</p>
<p>This is true for Psych. There is so little truth and so few concrete facts in Psychology that most of the classes are just so freaking easy and the majority of classes don't have you write papers. </p>
<p>A lot of paper writing classes have medians of A-/B+.
Same with a lot of higher-level math/science classes. </p>
<p>It's only the intro-level classes where you have averages of C.</p>
<p>The secret is to study and become interested in the material.</p>
<p>I had a poor freshman year (sub 3.0) because I didn't think I had to study for anything. </p>
<p>I didn't go to a difficult public school and coasted- despite ending up with 13 APs- that was more so due to being crazily accelerated in high school (Calc in 10th grade, for instance) than taking on a lot of work in high school.
I was the kind of person who wanted to party through high school, to have fun.</p>
<p>Getting a 5 on an AP is incredibly easy.
Think of it like this.</p>
<p>You need 60% of the stuff right on Calc BC to get a 5. In most Math 32 classes, a 60 on a test puts you below average and Math 32 tests are a lot harder than the AP Calc tests.</p>
<p>From what I've heard, the IB program is a lot more intense than AP classes.</p>
<p>Ok, I'd say you'd have to slack off pretty badly (or be taking a really hard class, like P-chem) to get a C in a class. I have not really met anyone who got below a B in a class and didn't acknowledge that it was their own fault for being lazy.</p>
<p>I agree with godevils2011 about grades.
Most of the people I know who have a couple of C's definitely didn't (or still don't ,lol) make academics their top priority. It's easy to get sidetracked here.</p>
<p>Actually, I disagree. I personally, worked SO HARD in classes like Physics 53/54 and Math 103, and still managed to get C's. Some classes are hard, some people get C's. Sometimes you just DON'T GET IT. I've had tutors and studied like crazy and everything, and failed miserably at half my science classes, so I don't think it's correct to pass judgement that all of us who have received these grades have "slacked off." It happens. Yeah, you have to slack off pretty bad to get a C in like, Intro Art History or something.</p>
<p>Actually, IMHO it's easier to get a B in PChem than it is to get a B in Physics if you're really just not a science person! Oddly enough.</p>
<p>Some classes and Duke are hard, you may not click with the material, etc.</p>
<p>On some of the classes, I could see where you're coming from.
I struggled with Orgo AND didn't work very hard in the class (8:45 AM lecture, first semester freshman year=not attending many lectures) which accumulated to disaster. I think I could have gotten at least a B if I was smarter about attending classes though..</p>
<p>However, I found Math 103 to be much easier than Orgo but some of my less mathematically-inclined friends had the opposite problem. I also attended more 103 classes than 151 simply because it was at a better time, lol.</p>
<p>A lot of it definitely matters by your strengths.</p>