<p>As Hanna said, this is pretty much a regular day in the park at Princeton. It seems weird to me that someone wouldn’t have an intimate connection to famous faculty or would be limited by funding or have to compete for money or would not have specific scholarships and fellowships after graduation.</p>
<p>Anyway, I think highly of Duke and the education the OP will get there, but I’m skeptical that the quality of educational or post-graduate opportunity is really going to break the tie. There are other things I’d encourage the OP to think about: campus culture, nature of social life, nature of specific departments, location, etc. as he tries to pick the school best suited for him.</p>
I am saying that the OP would be a top student at Duke and an average student at Princeton NOT BASED ON HIS ACADEMIC APTITUDE/INTELLIGENCE but rather based on the TYPES OF OPPORTUNITIES that he would have as a Robertson Scholar or a typical Princeton student.</p>
<p>
Alexandre, the key difference here is that amazing opportunities would be guaranteed at Duke if he were a Robertson while he would have to take some initiative to receive those opportunities at Princeton. We’re talking about 2 organized summers of funded summer civic engagement, special advising, instant access to top faculty, special scholarship dinners and preferential treatment for special fellowships NOT TO MENTION access to another world-class university, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Robertson program has an endowment of over a billion dollars for 140 scholars, which means more than $7 million per capita as supposed to Princeton’s $1.9 billion as warblersrule86 has pointed out.</p>
<p>
This is frankly a pretty sill and elitist statement to make. First off, I can almost guarantee that the resume of a Robertson Scholar from Duke would be a lot stronger(2 summers of funded travel, extensive research opportunities, access to special programs, etc.) than the resume from a normal Princeton student who would have to take some amount of initiative to achieve all of the above.</p>
<p>Also, I really doubt that grad schools and corporate recruiters would differentiate a Duke and a Princeton degree to the degree that you claim they would. I would agree that Princeton is more prestigious overall but they both have the definite “wow” factor. Parsing the differences between a top 5 and a top 10 university like you like to do is an exercise of futility for 99.9% of Americans.</p>
<p>
Wrong, the AVERAGE Princeton student will probably be searching for a job right after he/she graduates or work at a lower-tier consulting firm just like the grads of every other elite school besides the Wharton program(M&T or Huntsman in particular) at Penn.</p>
<p>but lesdia, as has been told to you many times on this thread, Princeton students all get the same opportunities as your Duke scholar, nothing special there …</p>
<p>lesdia how wrong you are again…I would give the Princeton student the upper hand in this case, mostly because **he took the initiative **to obtain the special experience mentioned…</p>
<p>Well, not the kid of resources that the Robertson program because the average Princeton student does not work in MBB, a top bulge bracket/boutique, go to a T14 law school, go to a top med school, Harvard 2+2, Teach for America, etc. etc. etc. These are elite opportunities reserved for the cream of the crop of America’s top 25 universities, not for the middle dwellers or the bottom feeders at Princeton.</p>
<p>I’d like you remind you that “middle dwellers” at Princeton are still Princeton undergraduates, attending arguably the #1 undergraduate education institution in the U.S. :)</p>
<p>The Robertson scholars are still students among other students. Please keep that in mind.</p>
<p>The difference is that the Robertson atmosphere is confined to that program, whereas its equal analog at Princeton applies to the whole campus. </p>
<p>And you are very narrowly defining those opportunities that you consider “elite.”</p>
<p>“the average Princeton student does not … go to a T14 law school”</p>
<p>If we’re talking about the average Princeton student that applies to law school (most of them don’t), I think that’s factually wrong. The average Princeton student who takes the LSAT gets around a 168. You don’t need to be the “cream of the crop” at Princeton to get into Georgetown or Cornell…the cream of the crop at Princeton gets merit money at schools like that.</p>
<p>Coming from Harvard College, a sizable majority of the students that go to law school go to the Top 14. By my count, roughly 20% of my college classmates who are lawyers are YHS graduates. When my classmates had to go to places like BU and UCLA for law school, that was seen as a disaster and borderline embarrassing because T14, and really T6, were seen as the norm. I have reason to think that Princeton’s results are similar, although I’ve never seen data, as I have for Harvard.</p>
<p>I don’t think you realize how lucky you are to have received Robertson… it is definitely considered one of the most prestigious merit scholarship programs in the country. You have so many extra opportunities with this program as well (and you would just be part of the crowd at Princeton… you would have no special perks to attend), such as additional research opportunities, research stipends, summer abroad stipends, etc. And to be honest, I think it is more impressive for someone to be named a Robertson Scholar at Duke (a top 10 university) than to be a Princeton graduate. Being a Robertson Scholar is just as impressive, if not more, to employers than a Princeton degree. An upperclassmen at my high school turned down Yale for Duke Robertson. Plus, Duke is such a fun school with a lot of chill, laid-back, spirited students and one of the best college basketball teams in the country. I would choose Duke Robertson (and probably Duke in general) in a heartbeat over Princeton. </p>
<p>If you can, visit both schools. I’m kinda surprised you didn’t visit Duke because they do the Robertson interviews on campus generally.</p>
<p>Good luck with your decision! Can’t go wrong.</p>
<p>Just the mere fact that there are so many people engaged in a very heated argument over the merits of the Robertson vs. Princeton indicates how very similar, if not equal, they are in how people perceive them. THUS, go with the school you’d feel more comfortable at. I understand you can’t visit campus but go on the websites, look at possible courses you’d take or the faculty bios, see if you can get in touch w/ current students and ask them questions, look at pictures of the campuses, etc. etc. Go with your gut on this one–not which school is ranked 3 or 5 or 6 higher on some stupid ranking system.</p>
<p>Being a Robertson is different from being a Princetonian - the vast majority of Princetonians wouldn’t have qualified for the Robertson. If you’re a Robertson, you’re automatically labeled as one of the best. And that means one of the best out of even HYPSM, let alone Duke. Keep that in mind.</p>
<p>Btw, JohnAdams, your claim that the top Duke student would only be average at Princeton is incredibly overstated and exaggerated, not to mention incorrect. </p>
<p>1) There are top students who don’t apply to Princeton. Not everyone flocks there.
2) While rarer than with a merit scholarship, there actually ARE kids who choose Duke over Princeton without a merit scholarship. </p>
<p>So no, the top Duke student would be more than average at Princeton. While Princeton is arguably a more selective school, I’m pretty confident that the top Princetonian wouldn’t blow the top Dukie out of the water.</p>
<p>Since you are all basing the judgements of future employers and grad schools as a criteria here, let me remind you of this: YOUR AVERAGE EMPLOYER, EVEN AT AN ELITE FIRM, HAS NO IDEA WHAT A ROBERTSON SCHOLAR IS. It’s not like a recruiter from an investment bank or a law school admissions officer writes down the name of all the nation’s top merit scholarships on their hand and anxiously looks for them as they read applications. You’ll probably have to explain what it is to them, and might end up sounding desperate. By contrast, the Princeton name speaks for itself.</p>
<p>There is also a more basic decision you have to make. Do you want to go to a school where you already know you are one of the best, or do you want to go to a school where you risk not being one of the best? I suggest you risk failure (failure in relative terms) for once before you get out of college and into less controllable environments. But it’s up to you.</p>
<p>eatsalot, JohnAdams was not stating that top Duke students would only be average at Princeton. In fact, it is several Duke fans who have been saying that the OP would be a top student at Duke but only average at Princeton. Ironic huh?! I personally agree that if the OP is a top student at Duke, he would also be a top student at Princeton. Top students at Princeton are all but guaranteed placement into top 10 graduate programs and the most exclusive of firms. </p>
<p>But when all is said and done, the Duke brand, although powerful in its own right, is not as impressive as the Princeton brand. The academic opportunities afforded to top students at Duke probably match those afforded to students at Princeton, but the Duke brand doesn’t match Princeton’s. Duke’s reputational peers are schools like Brown, Cal, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Penn, UVa etc… Those schools are all awesome, but they are not on par with Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford or Yale.</p>