<p>Financial aid isn't a determining factor. But I toured Emory and loved the campus as the location (I think it was just being right outside of Atlanta) but I felt the school spirit was a little lacking. However, having the CDC on campus was positive. I'm going to the Duke Blue Devil Days in 2 weeks but I'm not touring Vanderbilt. I think I would like the city of Nashville but it just isn't possible to get there before the deadline to tour. One factor however is that Duke has the major in which I am highly interested in, being Evolutionary Anthropology while the other two do not. Also I was wondering if "Brand" name connotations would be a factor later as I plan to apply to medical school with Duke being the best followed by Emory possibly? I was just wondering what do you all think as far as the social scene goes for Duke and your opinions on my options.</p>
<p>EDIT: I also would do track and field at Emory but I would have to walk on to continue to at Duke, i was wondering if anyone could attest to the difficulty of this.</p>
<p>I would go with these in this order:
Duke, Emory, Vandy.
To me Vandy was not what I thought it was going to be…don’t get me wrong, it’s a superb school…but it seemed to bland and average. Emory is a nice school as well but to me, I see it as a back up if one were to get rejected from Duke. At Duke you get the full college experience, global connections, huge alumni support, amazing academics, great sports, and a taste of southern culture!
If there are no financial limitations then I would choose Duke-this is my main point
However, I am a strong believer in going to the school that fits the individual. Don’t choose Duke because of its ranking. Choose the school where you feel your undergraduate years will be the most memorable time of your life–when you arrive on the campus that makes you feel this way, you will instantly know “this is where I belong!”
If you are unable to visit Vandy, then I would rule it out completely.</p>
<p>BTW: I saw your post on the FB page…and I agree withe the first girls comment!</p>
<p>Whoa there, Darth! Trying to convince yourself that Duke is something it is not? Duke is EXACTLY the same as Vandy academically. “Not in the same league” type of comments reveal an insecurity that is confirmed by your many other posts about Duke being a magically superior place. Not at all credible!</p>
<p>Ashton…for someone who got it into these 3 schools, you seem to hold some curious views about their relative excellence. Good luck with your choice, though.</p>
<p>wow…even more insecure than I thought. Vandy has higher admission scores than Duke, and students are exactly of same caliber. The rest is your fanciful thinking, which you are welcome to. Good luck!</p>
<p>I would have to disagree that Vandy is EXACTLY the same as Duke. However, I also don’t agree that Vandy is not in the same league as Duke. I think Vandy is pretty comparable to Duke in terms of academic strength. Is it as prestigious? Probably not. Vanderbilt is still something of a regionally recognized school vs a nationally or internationally recognized school (though it is becoming more nationally known). However, I would say that it’s on the way up along the same trajectory as Duke except it’s at where Duke was probably 1-2 decades ago during Nan Keohane’s tenure as president.</p>
<p>Of course, Duke also benefits from the national recognition it receives as a basketball powerhouse, something that Vanderbilt is lacking which could explain Duke’s more rapid rise compared to other top southern schools like Vandy and Emory.</p>
<p>Back to the OP: it seems like Duke would be a great fit for you. Both in terms of the atmosphere and the available majors. As for med school. I would say that while school choice does have some weight (eg. HMS is known to favor Harvard grads), that is a very minor factor. I’ve known plenty of people (myself included) who were accepted at these schools and went to another of these schools or chose one over the other.</p>
<p>Darth your comments come across as a bit arrogant, condescending, and elitest.
No one school is “the best” for all students.
Good luck trying to prove satistical significance differences in academic quality between universities in the top 1% of all US schools.
Your objective measures quoted all include subjective parameters.
Princeton review reports academics at Vandy higher than at Duke and Vandy’s students test scores are a bit higher. The differences are tiny so I’m not saying Vandy is better but it seems reasonable to put them in the “same league”.
If the discussion is limited to “academic quality” there are 30-40 schools in the same league as HPYS.
If we are talking about a holistic college experience HYPC, MIT, Cal tech, UofC can’t offer what Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, and Vanderbilt can.</p>
<p>I visited Vanderbilt. Liked Nashville a lot but didn’t like the feel of the campus. Don’t mind Greek but don’t want the environment dominated by it. Visited Northwestern and loved the campus but didn’t want to be that cold. Visited University of Chicago and it was my second choice even if I didn’t want to be that cold. They have a great physics department and really interesting professors. Visited CMU which has an education in my area of interest second to none and I wouldn’t go there for free. Visited Duke and everything felt right. I wouldn’t take anyone’s opinion as to what is a fit. It is about what works for you not popular opinion. And if you don’t visit you are missing input that for me was very important. Duke was not my first choice until after the visit. After the visit it was the only place I wanted to go. With different likes and dislikes I’m guessing you will end up with a different list and order of schools.</p>
<p>I’m assuming you are talking about Duke. Visited last July. Got in the afternoon before and toured informally East Campus on our own. Was fun and got to visit East Union and the library. Went to the recreation center and they let us in to look around.</p>
<p>Next day went to the presentation and the tour in the morning and went to the chapel, library, engineering buildings, a dorm room on west campus, the athletic area and the Bryan Center. Went to lunch with my parents then toured campus on my own until the afternoon engineering tour. The tour sealed the deal for me. Liked the labs, liked the way they do a lot of group labs across disciplines, just liked the feel.</p>
<p>I left knowing this was the place for me. Have friends who went to campuses I didn’t like and they loved them. All about what works for you.</p>
<p>I think that I might also argue against the slightly pompous attack on the other two schools.</p>
<p>Duke definitely has the greatest prestige out of the three. However, I don’t think I would say that it completely transcends the other two, and is in some sort of academic paradise completely out of their bounds. We are not talking about Cambridge compared with Vanderbilt and Emory; we are talking about Duke, which has had its own questions on campus about a lack of intellectualism. Vanderbilt, Duke, and Emory share more elements than simply geographical placement. In my experience deciding between Duke and Vanderbilt last year, the campus atmospheres were quite similar.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt specifically is undergoing a process of prestige expansion that is the greatest in its history. It is actually very much like the process that Duke went through 5-10 years ago. Just like Vanderbilt, Duke’s greek scene used to be pretty dominant, and then was gutted by the university. Right now, the head of the Vanderbilt inter-fraternity council is the same individual who completed that process at Duke. Currently, the Vanderbilt fraternities are being slowly choked back by a very tight leash. Although this does not mean that the schools are somehow equal, I just meant it to show that schools can and will change over the time that you are there. I think that in about 5 years, Vanderbilt and Duke will be quite similar in academic recognition.</p>
<p>Ultimately, you need to visit the campuses to decide. If you can’t visit Vanderbilt, it will never be able to hold a candle to what you see at Duke, so you might as well rule it out already. Each school has its own unique feeling that you can only get by going there and seeing it. I had a hard time deciding, even with a significant monetary advantage in attending Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>Having recently visited Vanderbilt’s campus, I have to say I do like Duke’s campus better. Duke just felt bigger to me and I’m a sucker for big, expansive college campuses and gothic architecture. :D</p>
<p>I do agree that Duke has a great campus. I definitely miss the classic collegiate gothic look, with all the wooden doors and tall towers.</p>
<p>Somehow, I like Vanderbilt’s as well though. For some reason it felt very comfortable and reasonable to me. I also like being in a city area. I think a lot of it comes down to individual gut feeling.</p>
<p>I agree each person is going to see and feel a campus differently than the next person. We went to Vanderbilt last week, beautiful but not the academics or professors we expected. There was a passion missing from their work. Like I said, everyone has a different experience.</p>
<p>I also applied to Duke and Vanderbilt and was accepted to both, I just felt like Duke was a stronger school all around that seemed to share social advantages of Vanderbilt. Plus I’m a huge sucker for college basketball. So I am choosing Duke, but in the end it comes down to you, you have to visit and see which one you like better. Vanderbilt is a great school also and so you really can’t go wrong.</p>
<p>Sigh… Of the 3800 colleges and universities in the US only 15 (0.4%) are in the top 20 USNWR and top 50 world academic/reseach universities. Of these 15 great universities only 4, Duke, Vanderbilt, Stanford, and Northwestern, offer a “holistic” college experience to it’s students. That’s a very small league. The universities that can’t offer as much to 18 year old students claim to be more “intellectual”…sigh.</p>
Silly. Just silly. Its your opinion, but please dont throw rankings around. Theye are all comparable schools. No question about it. Love it when a new poster comes in with such adament posts. FIne to support your school, but the rest is silly.</p>
<p>FWIW, Emory is IN atlanta, not outside.</p>
<p>If you are really pulled by the major, go for it. Follow your heart. If you really want to do track and field. go for it. If you had to choose between the two, which would you pick?</p>
