<p>I was recently accepted to Duke's Trinity and Cornell A&S, and I'm having a hard time decide between the two. My declared major for both is biology, and I'm leaning towards pre-med at this point. However, I'm really interested in music and visual art (also accepted to Rhode Island School of Design) and I want that to still be a big part of my college life.</p>
<p>It would be very helpful if I could get some input about the pre-med, music, visual arts programs at both schools, their environments, social life, etc.</p>
<p>Also, I'm considering attending the Blue Devil Days and Cornell Days, but it costs a considerable amount. Can anyone give me some insight as to how helpful these days are and whether they are worth it?</p>
<p>Cornell is an Ivy League school; im not sure if that influences your decision but…
DUKE is pretty good in bio but not great at music and other things. Cornell is more well
rounded because of its wider variety of colleges. Cornell also seems to have a lot of internship opportunities.</p>
<p>Lastly, if ur asn (or a minority) from West Coast, Duke can be a big change. Its pretty conservative. Cornell seems more liberal in my opinion.</p>
<p>IIRC fine arts programs (painting, etc) are associated with the Architecture school, I knew a few people taking classes there, back in the day.</p>
<p>I do not know much about Duke, none of my family applied to anyplace in the South, we are “Northeast” kind of people. (I can say this more confidently, having now lived in the midwest as well) One time I was considering a job in NC, and looked it up, turned out there were only 10,000 people of my particular ethnicity in the entire state of North Carolina. So the school may be fine, but we never looked.</p>
<p>The visual arts at Cornell is pretty strong. Students in any college can take courses in painting, drawing, structure, etc. They give preferences to students in the BFA program, but I never heard of students having much trouble getting into desired classes:</p>
<p>One of my roommates at Cornell was a biology major who spent a lot of his time doing intaglio printing. He loved his art courses. And the Johnson Musuem is a national treasure. On a whole I would wager to say that Ithaca is a a more artistic community than Durham.</p>
Enough (probably too much) has been said on these boards lately about pre-med and the social life at Duke. Search for posts by me, eatsalot, SBR, or others. These “vs.” threads have been popping up faster than kudzu.</p>
<p>As far as visual arts at Duke go, it depends on the medium. Duke has quite a good film and documentary production program, arguably one of the best among the elites after the more specialized programs at Northwestern and Michigan. Photography is also good, from what I’ve heard through the grapevine. The undergrad bulletin says that the department also offers drawing, painting, sculpture, and costume design, but how strong those are, I have no idea. I suspect the offerings are not extremely strong, though the facilities are quite nice. Duke has a Selective Living Group (themed housing) devoted to the arts (Arts Theme House), which might be of interest to you.</p>
<p>One of my close friends is a music major and has never had anything but good to say about the department as well as the ensembles and choirs he’s involved with on campus. Cornell’s program is also excellent, from what I have heard; I think he was considering it for graduate school at some point. </p>
<p>
First off, I must point out that Duke is not an acronym. Why people feel the need to put Duke and Penn in all capitals, I have no idea.</p>
<p>More to the point, Duke is indeed great at “other things.” It’s top 10 in the humanities, top 10 in biology, and top 20 in the social sciences (top 5-10 for the big 3 majors). Its only real weak points in Trinity are chemistry and physics, and its strengths run the gamut from biological anthropology to religion to dance. </p>
<p>I won’t disagree that Cornell has much broader offerings, because Cornell and Penn are my favorite schools in that respect. Suggesting that Duke is weak for all subjects except biology, however, is misleading.</p>
<p>
I’ll address the Asian part first:</p>
<p>Duke: 21.4% Asian <– Probably more. 19.6% refused to identify.
Cornell: 17.7% Asian <– Probably more. 17.4% refused to identify.</p>
<p>Now to address the political leanings:</p>
<p>As someone who attended one and was heavily recruited for grad school by the other, I think you have it backwards - Cornell is slightly more “conservative” than Duke, though both are certainly quite liberal. I am admittedly heavily biased by the much lower profile LGBT students have at Cornell than at Duke, which is something I always note; I was not terribly impressed by the offerings in that respect, particularly for a school its size. </p>
<p>A survey of Duke students a few years ago found that 36.3% classified as “extremely liberal,” with an additional 36.7% identifying as “liberal” and 22.2% as “moderate” or “conservative.” (The article was centered around Horowitz and complained about the number of liberals on campus, so it annoyingly didn’t bother to separate moderate and conservative.) </p>
<p>In contrast, the *Cornell American<a href=“which,%20granted,%20is%20a%20conservative%20newspaper”>/i</a> reports that 55% of Cornell students are “moderate” or “conservative.”</p>
<p>Along these lines, Cornell has Risley Residential College, which is an awesome living-learning environment for anybody interested in the Arts at Cornell.</p>
<p>I would agree that Cornell tends to have more conservatives than your average top school. That said, I’m not certain I would trust that Duke survey – anybody who doesn’t separate moderate from conservative probably isn’t the best survey developer.</p>
<p>One of the awesome things about Cornell is that, unlike most other private colleges, Cornell makes dozens of surveys about its students freely available to the public.</p>
<p>48.7 percent of entering Cornell freshman classify themselves as liberal or far left, as compared to 52.2 percent of Cornell’s peers (e.g. Duke, Northwestern, Penn, Georgetown) and 51.8 percent of schools preferred to Cornell (Harvard, Yale, Princeton).</p>
<p>At the same time, 1.4 percent of Cornell students classify themselves as far right, moreso that Cornell preferred, peer, or preferred to.</p>
<p>Duke’s conservative reputation definitely comes from its Southern location and its strong sports culture. Cornell’s liberal reputation definitely comes from Ithaca. I would also argue that Cornell probably tends to be more economically liberal and socially conservative – it has to do with the fact that Cornell tends to draw more heavily from the lower and middle classes than most other top schools.</p>
<p>Cayuga - thanks for the link. Duke is entirely too close-fisted with their data, in my opinion.</p>
<p>It must be noted that the area surrounding Cornell is probably slightly more liberal than the area around Duke. Durham and CH are dark patches of blue in a light blue state (formerly red), but Ithaca is well-known for its artsy feel and highly educated denizens.</p>
<p>As are most other private colleges. Makes you wonder what they are trying to hide. Cornell’s openness speaks to its strengths as an institution and its enduring values.</p>
<p>I also got accepted by both. I am, however, choosing Duke.
First of all, it seems less stressful(considering Cornell is notorious for its grade deflation and harsh classes).
But all in all, they are peer institutions and are academic equivalents. There is no use arguing which one is better.</p>
<p>Bet it’s not true, IIRC norcalguy has posted links to cornell’s average grades before, said they are basically average.</p>
<p>Lots of people at Dook are striving for good professional schools afterwards you think they are reclining on their Lazyboys to accomplish that, well I don’t.</p>
<p>^Why do you have to bash Duke like that?
Would you like me to bring up Cornell’s recent sucides and murder?
Duke is ranked higher than Cornell in many rankings, and it ultimately depends on your major. Don’t let the “ivy” label grab you, because you might be depressed in an environment that doesn’t suit you.</p>
<p>70% of my classmates in med school come from Top 15 colleges. The average college GPA of my classmates and I is 3.7-3.8. I earned a 3.94 at Cornell. After 1.5 years, the only thing I can conclude is that we’re all about the same in terms of intelligence and work ethic (1 std. dev on med school tests is around 6% so that should let you know how close the scores are). If Cornell is soooooo much harder than peer schools like Duke, I should be creaming the competition in med school but that’s not the case. I’m slightly above average. Too many students at Cornell think their peers at Harvard or Yale or Duke are just coasting through college while they have to scratch and claw. That’s not true. Premed is difficult at any school. And if you think premed is hard, wait till you get to med school ;)</p>
<p>Anyone who cites that WSJ “study” should be banned from ever posting again. We’re currently in our biostats unit where we read multiple published papers a day and tear them apart (these are not flimsy papers but rather papers good enough to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, etc.). Let’s just say the WSJ survey has a really really BAD study design.</p>
<p>Anyways the OP should post this on the Duke forum as well…because this forum is obviously biased and because the natives are getting restless. haha…</p>
<p>"@monydad, I don’t even understand what you are trying to say, "</p>
<p>I was trying to say that Cornell is actually not grade-deflated, and that other top schools will also be challenging, People seeking top subsequent destinations will be trying hard to do relatively well at their school, irrespective of what "relatively well’ means at their school, and unfortunately there will be associated stress there as well. Therefore the so -called “notorious for its grade deflation” comment is without substance. </p>
<p>The average grades don’t tell the whole story though.
For example, certain majors are known to be tougher than others, in general.
At Cornell, engineering has a lower dean’s List cut-off than its other colleges, indicating it gives lower grades than the others. And Cornell’s engineering school is large, constituting 1/5 of all undergrads. Cornell has a relatively large proportion of science-y majors. There is no data to indicate that, say, a Government major at Cornell has lower grades than at Duke. Even if there are different proportions of such majors.</p>
<p>But I imagine the big prof. schools are able to sort out what they think about any grading differences at the various schools, anyway. My guess is Princeton students are still getting in to good grad schools.</p>
<p>I don’t know what wsj has to do with anything I was talking about, but since you brought it up: Cornell will never show up as well as it should on any ranking that shows a % of student body, because it has a highly diverse student body, with students studying across 7 colleges with different objectives and capabilities. Only 1/3 of Cornell undergrads are studying in its liberal arts college; this # is much higher at virtually all the other institutions it is compared to. Destinations for students of its individual colleges by themselves are not available.</p>
<p>The question that should be before a matriculant is not whether the aggregate is homogeneous, in both their capabilities and objectives, across seven different colleges with diverse missions. It should be if I do well can I expect to do well subsequently, in whatever path I may choose. The answer at cornell is yes.
You are not an aggregate.</p>
<p>As a CAS major applying to law school, you will not be negatively impacted because there are other people on the same campus, who are not you, who are studying Agriculture, Architecture or Hotel administration and are not applying to law school. Their physical presence on the same campus is irrelevant to your efforts. However all these other students will be thrown in to the denominator on a statistic that uses % of the whole university student body.</p>
<p>I think he meant in relation to any feeder school numbers. Not that those majors are entirely irrelevant.</p>
<p>The WSJ study really doesn’t account for the fact that, unlike traditional universities, Cornell has a more complex college system than simply the standard liberal arts/engineering system. Certain colleges within Cornell send almost no kids to med or law school. Thus, you can’t simply use the # that ended up entering grad school without accounting for how many actually wanted to go to such grad schools.</p>
<p>Secondly, their choice of Top 5 grad schools is rather arbitrary. I don’t know many people who wouldn’t consider Stanford Law to be among the top 5 law schools or why Yale and Columbia were included as Top 5 med schools instead of WashU or Cornell or Penn or a dozen other medical schools. By selectively choosing which grad schools you include, you reduce your sample size and thus your data is more subject to chance variation. I personally think they should’ve included data from the top 14 law schools and the top 20 med schools but that would’ve involved more work for them.</p>
<p>Lastly, they didn’t account for differences in the quality of entering student body. It’s no surprise that the grad school success rates are higher for Harvard than for Duke because the student body in general is better at Harvard. You need to have some sort of control based on average SAT scores or acceptance rates.</p>
<p>You need to be able to critically analyze anything you read. This is an important skill whether you are going into medicine, law, or any grad school. That’s why people who’ve been through college tend to regard rankings as worthless. It’s really only the high schoolers that hold US News or WSJ rankings with any kind of weight. You won’t see me or Cayugared or monydad use US News rankings to say why Cornell is great. We always bring up specific knowledge that comes from actually having attended Cornell.</p>