<p>Depends on what kind of person you are and your interests. If you are more of an intellectual and like that kind of discourse, choose UChicago. If you think you are a partier and like the frat sort of social scene, choose Duke. Definitely a ton more school spirit at Duke, but UChicago might have slightly better respected academics, especially among math/sciences like you mentioned.</p>
<p>Don’t mind ninetyfour. He’s a blatant ■■■■■.</p>
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<p>A fair assessment. Perhaps my comment about student happiness went too far. (I think I would have found a place at Duke as well, although the UChicago style was more to my liking.) Nevertheless, they have admittedly different “vibes.”</p>
<p>Go to Duke, you clearly feel like its a better fit. Trust your instincts. Also, take the claims made by Chicago grads with a pinch of salt. If you took everything they said at face value, you’d be inclined to think that Harvard and Princeton are backups for those ‘fortunate’ enough to attend Chicago ;)</p>
<p>goldenboy,</p>
<p>[Duke</a> ranks last in ACC football attendance ? The Blue Zone ? The Chronicle’s Sports Blog](<a href=“http://sports.chronicleblogs.com/2012/01/24/duke-ranks-last-in-acc-football-attendance/]Duke”>http://sports.chronicleblogs.com/2012/01/24/duke-ranks-last-in-acc-football-attendance/)</p>
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<p>I just don’t see how Duke athletic spirit is like Texas.</p>
<p>Sam,</p>
<p>Duke only enrolls about 1,650 undergraduates and has about 140,000 living alumni. How do you think those football seats are going to filled when Duke’s Football Team has not traditionally been good and there aren’t a lot of affiliated fans to begin with?</p>
<p>If Duke enrolled 50,000 students like UT-Austin, had a living alumni base of 400,000+, and had millions more “adopted” fans through satellite campuses/state school status (being the hometown team), then it too would be able to follow Wallace Wade.</p>
<p>Sports like Basketball and Lacrosse are better fits for medium-sized private schools like Duke and NU. Fielding a popular football team will always be an uphill battle for schools like these with strong academic standards.</p>
<p>Goldenboy:</p>
<p>That’s just the point: as Duke is a medium-sized university without millions of “adopted” fans throughout the state, its athletic spirit CAN’T compare with the large state universities simply because of the difference in size. </p>
<p>I’ve been lucky enough to go to football games at large state universities, and nothing really compares to that. A bunch of my friends attended Duke and they had a great time going to basketball games, but it’s much, much different to go to say Wisconsin on a Saturday for a Big 10 football game. There are just seas of people out and the entire town is taken over by football fever. </p>
<p>Duke has strong (but perhaps declining, as recent reports indicate) support for a handful of its teams, but you just can’t compare school spirit at Duke to the massive state schools. It’s like comparing apples and oranges, primarily just because the sizes are so different.</p>
<p>Also - as an addendum, I don’t know if school size specifically has much to do with attendance WITHIN the football stadium. Notre Dame gets 60k+ attendance for every game, and Stanford regularly got 50k+ attendance for every home football game this past fall. ND has great football tradition, but Stanford just has a good team nowadays. Attendance seems much more based on the strength of the team. If Duke didn’t have an awful football team, they’d probably get much better than the ~25k per game they’ve had this past fall.</p>
<p>(Of course, my greater point still stands - outside of ND, which is an anomaly, medium sized universities just can’t generate the crazy, take over the town atmosphere that big state Us have on football saturdays.)</p>
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Cue, I’m not comparing fan bases of universities but rather talking about the school spirit/sports loyalty that alums/students have for the school. In this regard, Duke is in the same league as Texas. If you walk around the campuses of any of the top 25 universities in the country, only USC students will be wearing USC clothing as much as Duke students wear schoool paraphanelia. </p>
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Cue7, Duke only lacks strong support for football; basketball, lacrosse, golf, tennis, and soccer matches are always well attended.</p>
<p>Check out these links:</p>
<p>[23</a> College Campuses With The Most School Spirit](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>23 College Campuses With The Most School Spirit | HuffPost College)</p>
<p>[10</a> Colleges with the Most School Pride | Online Universities](<a href=“http://www.onlineuniversities.com/rankings/10-colleges-with-the-most-school-pride/]10”>http://www.onlineuniversities.com/rankings/10-colleges-with-the-most-school-pride/)</p>
<p>[12</a> Colleges With Scary School Spirit - Online Colleges](<a href=“http://www.onlinecolleges.net/2011/05/25/12-colleges-with-scary-school-spirit/]12”>http://www.onlinecolleges.net/2011/05/25/12-colleges-with-scary-school-spirit/)</p>
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Notre Dame is the most renowned college football program and has a national base. Stanford has had a tremendously successful past two years and students love supporting teams that are winning constantly.</p>
<p>Goldenboy:</p>
<p>School spirit, as you’re talking about it, is very hard to identify. Unless you’re comparing size of fan bases, it’s really hard to determine school spirit/alum loyalty. Does Duke have considerably more school spirit than Stanford, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, etc? </p>
<p>Of the links you provide, it seems as if they are pretty subjective and arbitrary methods used to determine “school spirit.” I don’t know if Duke alums give back at a much higher rate than alums from other schools because of this loyalty or spirit.</p>
<p>I guess your argument just makes me shrug. This is very hard to quantify, and if you really want school spirit, it seems as if there are other viable top schools that offer that atmosphere (Stanford, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, some of the ivies like Dartmouth and Princeton have great support for their athletic teams). </p>
<p>The only point really where the idea of school spirit really proved to be a tipping point for me was at the big college football games in the fall. Football is the biggest sport in the country for a reason, and there are just orders of magnitude of difference between the big basketball games on small/mid-sized campuses and the big football games at major schools.</p>
<p>On a related note, while Duke might have a “ferocious” core of students who boil up the UNC-Duke rivalry, as UNC just has so many more students, the rivalry feels very different on UNC’s campus. I was at UNC once when they were about to play Duke, and the sheer numbers of people involved just makes for a different atmosphere.</p>
<p>Again, for school spirit, I think numbers matter a lot. If you’re bent on school spirit, going to a big 10 school seems like a great way to go. Otherwise, I’m not sure if the difference between Duke (#1 on your “ranking” of school spirit) and Stanford (#6 on the very same ranking) would be that different.</p>
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<p>This (from the OP) pre-emptively answered the question before the peanut gallery chimed in. I think the rest of the chatter that follows became, “Please validate my justification for liking one school over another,” which is totally fair.</p>
<p>Let me be perfectly frank in my personal bias: I do not like Duke as a school overall. I’ve spent some time there in a professional capacity and thought to myself nearly the whole way through, “Wow, people PAY for this? You’d have to PAY ME a LOT of money to GO here.”</p>
<p>However, I am not blind to the fact that a) there are bright, creative, interesting, outwardly cerebral, and yes, quirky undergrads at Duke, b) there are boozy, ditzy types at Chicago, and, perhaps most significantly to this conversation, c) I can sympathize when people’s reaction to Chicago is like my reaction to Duke.</p>
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Yes, it does and its not even close. Cue7, you have to walk around Duke in the Spring during Basketball season to see how pumped up the undergraduates are and how extensive the tradition surrounding the sport is. Notre Dame Football can compare but Stanford, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, etc. do not.</p>
<p>Unlike other schools, there’s a specific campus culture that surrounds Duke Basketball games including students tenting for the North Carolina game and sometimes the MD game. </p>
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Cue7, I think its important for us to differentiate between athletic school spirit and alumni loyalty. Michigan and Texas have athletic school spirit while Dartmouth and Princeton have tight alumni loyalty. Duke and Notre Dame have both.</p>
<p>I guess your argument just makes me shrug. This is very hard to quantify, and if you really want school spirit, it seems as if there are other viable top schools that offer that atmosphere (Stanford, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, some of the ivies like Dartmouth and Princeton have great support for their athletic teams). </p>
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Cue7, you need to come and watch a Duke Basketball game and perhaps come on campus for the UNC game to understand why the rivalry is considered perhaps the greatest college sports rivalry ever and why ACC Basketball is ferociously followed as Big 10 Football.</p>
<p>[Counting</a> down the most prestigious programs since 1984-85 - Men’s College Basketball - ESPN](<a href=“LIVE Transfer Talk: Man United, Liverpool, Chelsea eye Guehi - ESPN”>Counting down the most prestigious programs since 1984-85 - ESPN)
In the modern era, Duke has been the best college basketball team while UNC has been #3 according to ESPN. There is only 9 miles that separate these two college basketball powerhouses and all North Carolinians either grew up cheering for UNC or Duke.</p>
<p>Can the Cal/Stanford rivalry even compare? Maybe in academics…</p>
<p>[Dick</a> Vitale picks the best rivalries in college sports - ESPN](<a href=“http://espn.go.com/espn/dickvitale/story/_/id/7561633/dick-vitale-picks-best-rivalries-college-sports]Dick”>Dick Vitale picks the best rivalries in college sports - ESPN)</p>
<p>Duke/UNC is #1.</p>
<p>[Greatest</a> rivalries in sports](<a href=“http://msn.foxsports.com/collegebasketball/lists/Greatest-rivalries-in-sports#photo-title=College+basketball%253A+Duke+vs.+North+Carolina&photo=29726630]Greatest”>http://msn.foxsports.com/collegebasketball/lists/Greatest-rivalries-in-sports#photo-title=College+basketball%253A+Duke+vs.+North+Carolina&photo=29726630)</p>
<p>Duke/UNC is the first mentioned in the slideshow.</p>
<p>[The</a> Top Ten College Sport Rivalries](<a href=“Namecheap Education Program: Free Domains for Students”>Namecheap Education Program: Free Domains for Students)</p>
<p>Duke/UNC is the first mentioned in this random blog.</p>
<p>[Best</a> rivalries: Duke vs. UNC - College basketball- NBC Sports](<a href=“NBC Sports - news, scores, stats, rumors, videos, and more”>NBC Sports - news, scores, stats, rumors, videos, and more)</p>
<p>NBC says it might be “the greatest rivalry of all time”.</p>
<p>In California, UCLA/USC is considered much bigger than Cal/Stanford.</p>
<p>goldenboy wrote:</p>
<p>In the modern era, Duke has been the best college basketball team while UNC has been #3 according to ESPN. There is only 9 miles that separate these two college basketball powerhouses and all North Carolinians either grew up cheering for UNC or Duke.</p>
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<p>This is a huge overstatement: plenty of North Carolinians don’t really care at all, and plenty cheer for NC State, Wake Forest, or Davidson instead of Duke or UNC. My parents are both from North Carolina, and I lived in the state during HS and was an avid ACC basketball fan. At that time, I liked NC State. At different times, I’ve actually managed to like both UNC and Duke (I realize <em>that</em> is pretty rare.) And now my two favorite ACC teams are UNC and Boston College–not a powerhouse and not even in NC.</p>
<p>My cousins in the state, however, divide up mostly between NC State, UNC, Duke, and Davidson. But plenty of people in the Tarheel State could care less about college hoops. And (as with elsewhere in the nation) there are plenty who just seem to have a strong dislike of Duke (without liking UNC or any other Carolina team).</p>
<p>I know that’s a lot of nuanced critical thinking for a Blue Devil to take in, goldenboy, but show some school spirit and give it the old college try! :-)</p>
<p>^
Most people cheer for UNC, and a smaller minority cheer for Duke. State is noticeably less popular than either, and Wake is less popular still. Most people (even in nearby Charlotte) haven’t even heard of Davidson. </p>
<p>While it’s true that many don’t follow basketball, most NC residents at least have an opinion on the Duke-UNC rivalry. </p>
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Measuring by a college’s size is not terribly helpful, in my opinion. Despite UCLA being much larger than Duke and about the same distance from its rival, for instance, I’d be very hesitant to say it has more school spirit or even more energy during games.</p>
<p>In any case, we are not comparing Duke to UT Austin; we’re comparing it to Chicago. I usually find Goldenboy’s posts well-intentioned but a little over the top. I am completely in agreement with him here, though; Duke has an extraordinary amount of school spirit and loyalty exceeded by none and matched only by a few. In fact, this school spirit - often seen as being too “in your face” - is the reason many people find Duke off-putting.</p>
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For better or worse, these boards encourage everyone to share his or her opinion. No need to be snippy…you are more than welcome to go do something more intellectual like reading Homer in Greek if you are annoyed by Duke or the posters here. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>@warblers rule haha, naw, I wasn’t trying to bash the Dukies, I was trying to highlight that the OP’s decision-making method of “ask the internet” isn’t particularly helpful in this specific situation.</p>
<p>Duke away!</p>
<p>The most prestigious school with an athletic schools spirit… I think is Stanford?</p>
<p>Stanford doesn’t generate the frenzy Duke does. People are too mellow/smug/laid-back/confident to paint themselves colors and camp out for weeks to get tickets to ball games. Plus, there are more things to do that aren’t obsessing about basketball.</p>
<p>I’ve seen the frat-boy stereotyping of Duke in at least one post. I just want to say that fraternities are easy to avoid and in no way dominate the social scene. </p>
<p>Both schools are excellent. Go with your gut.</p>