Incoming freshman here I know it’s a year later but figured I’d pop in and give my two cents and maybe someone in the future will read this. My college decision is all I’ve thought about over the past month so this will be long. First off huge congrats to your son- if he got into both gtown and duke there’s a 100% chance he does well no matter what. I just committed to Gtown over several other top schools including Duke. I love duke as a school and think for the right type of person it can be perfect. Actually have several good friends there and it was one of my favorites, will definitely visit.
Both schools are amazing with top profs, students, massive name recognition (although gtown a bit more internationally), etc so none of those were of much consideration for me- my reasoning for choosing Georgetown was primarily the location. I’m interested in Gov/IR/Politics and to me it just doesn’t get better than the best school in the capital of the most powerful nation in the world. For one thing, at Georgetown you can intern in DC every single one of the 8 semesters you’re there, in addition to the 3 summers. So you’ve got 11 total internships. Everywhere else you’re limited to just the 3 over the summer so in part, I chose here because 11>3. Also the 8 internships during the year are not competitive at all since you’re competing with like the 2 or 3 other schools in the DC area because they’re the only other people who can even intern during the year, and none of those schools are nearly as good as gtown. So you essentially have a near monopoly on a lot of really good internships for four years. And you can do these internships regardless of what school you’re at within gtown, with the SFS definitely adding that extra bit of icing on the cake for those interested in gov/IR/politics. And doing these school-year internships makes you more competitive for the summer ones. So it’s like 11 way more accessible internships at gtown vs 3 tougher ones at anywhere else. A friend of mine at gtown made that point, among others, to me when going over his rationale for choosing to go there and it really stuck. It also seems to be an incredibly popular reason people pick here. Personally I think when it comes to gov/IR/politics, no other school is even in the same league once you factor in location, like it’s not even a fair fight. It’s also great at other stuff (top feeder to wall street, top feeder to the best Law Schools/MBAs, 7 yr BS/MD program, etc), but I’m here to talk about my own personal reasons which involve my field.
Another perk of the location is their schedule of speakers/visitors is kinda ridiculous, campus is 10 min from the Capitol and a lot of really cool people swing by all the time. Last week when I was making my final decision they had Obama, Hillary, Jon Ossoff, and Biden and Kamala’s chiefs of staff Ron Klain and Tina Flournoy (these last three people are all gtown grads too, as well as Hillary’s husband and a lot of Obama’s cabinet), and that was one week, lol. Not to mention Biden’s son and Kamala’s husband went and teach there, respectively. And Biden succeeded Trump who sent half of HIS kids here! I’ll stop haha, anyway this place is insane. You typically also get to meet all these visitors as well as their staff and everyone too, which is always really cool.
Also apart from all that DC is just awesome. And it doesn’t have to be expensive. You can walk the Potomac, visit the National Mall or a Smithsonian museum, appreciate the colonial Georgetown neighborhood/town, etc. without going to dinner at the Ritz or something. You can have meals/rent fully covered by eating/living solely on campus and experience the vast majority of really iconic things that the city has to offer without paying a dollar, if money is any issue.
Also, the student body at gtown seems to really reflect all this and there is a lot of political ambition here. You can see this in the alumni too- 6 current heads of state (no other school even has 2), more current senators than any other school (last I checked gtown has 8, harvard has 5, yale/princeton/stanford/columbia have 3 each, everywhere else is 2 or less), more people currently in the foreign service than any other school (head and shoulders above the next best school), etc etc etc. Again I think duke is awesome but location with gtown is so huge. My final decision came down to Georgetown and Harvard and by the time I’d processed how valuable the location is here, especially for what I want to do, it was actually an easier decision than I’d thought it might be 
Now understand that I’m literally wearing a Georgetown sweatshirt as I type this so this is my personal viewpoint and you should definitely seek out others in making such a momentous and fortunate decision like this.
Basically I love my school and these are some reasons why. Hopefully at some point someone reads this and takes something from it. Congratulations again, and Hoya Saxa!