<p>I was recently accepted to Duke, Rice, and UPenn for chemical engineering at Rice and Penn and Biomedical Engineering at Duke and I can't decide where I want to go! I want to study chemical engineering, specifically the pharmaceutical aspects of chemical engineering, which is why I think Biomedical Engineering at Duke would be a good option too. After college, I plan on going to medical school, but since those plans could definitely change, I want to go to a university that will have a good pre-med program and would have good career placement programs should I decide to enter the workforce after I graduate. </p>
<p>The most important factor to me is the social scene of the school, since all three schools have great academic reputations. I care about having a really close-knit community and school pride. I want a social scene with a lot of options that isn't exclusive at all, and not a really intense greek scene. I hear that Duke has an intense greek scene, with the entire social scene revolving around that, but I have no idea if thats a true statement. The whole elitist vibe is a turn-off and I don't want an overly competitive academic environment. </p>
<p>I am a pretty athletic person and fitness is really important to me too. I could play a varsity sport at Penn if I wanted to, but I could play club at Duke, and Rice doesn't have the varsity or club sports that I play, but I hear the intramurals are really competitive because of the residential college system. </p>
<p>...So any suggestions and opinions are welcome. I will be visiting all three before making my final decision. It seems like everyday I have a different first choice, and the pros and cons just keep adding up. Help!</p>
<p>Duke - West Campus is gorgeous/collegiate. More of a laid back, southern vibe. No official frat houses, but social scene still revolves around Greek life. Durham is kind of boring after awhile. The weather is great.</p>
<p>Penn - Not as aesthetically/architecturally pleasing as Duke. Social scene = intense, more varied than Duke. In a major city - lots to do on and off campus. Students are primarily from the NE. Pretty close knit for a city school - big Greek scene.</p>
<p>Both are very elitist in their own ways. Can’t speak for Rice</p>
Not quite. 1,182 members of Penn’s Class of 2016–or only 48%–are from the Northeast as liberally defined, meaning all of the states stretching from Maryland/DC in the south to Maine in the north (the Census Bureau doesn’t include DE, MD, and DC in its designation of “the Northeast”):</p>
<p>Penn’s undergraduate student body is fairly diverse geographically, both domestically (significant numbers from CA, WA, AZ, TX, IL, MI, OH, FL, GA, NC, VA, etc.) and internationally (14% from outside the US).</p>
<p>Yes, I would agree with what you’re saying, but there is a much stronger NE influence at Penn than Duke. PA, NJ and NY are certainly more represented at Penn. Plus, I’ve met many kids here that officially live in Florida, but most of their family still lives in NJ (This is just one example). The stats can be slightly misleading.</p>
That’s for sure, especially given that Penn is in Pennsylvania and Duke is in North Carolina. For example, 13% of Duke’s undergrads are from North Carolina.</p>
<p>But on the whole, they both have geographically diverse student bodies, and are significantly more geographically diverse than Rice.</p>
<p>Well, let’s not overstate it. 10% of the Rice class of 2015 is made up of international students (as compared to 14% of Penn’s 2016). Also, people tend to get hung up on Rice’s in-state percentage (45% for the class of 2015), but it’s important to remember just how large Texas is. Area-wise, Texas is about 1.5 times the size of the Northeast, and it has a population of 26,059,203, which is smaller than the Northeast’s 55,317,240, but still significant. So while Penn is certainly more geographically diverse than Rice, it’s unclear whether it should be considered significantly so. I didn’t look up the number for Duke, but I’d guess they’re somewhere in between Rice and Penn.</p>
<p>^ Well, I guess we may just have to agree to disagree. :)</p>
<p>The 55 million population figure is for the Census Bureau-defined Northeast, which includes the states from Pennsylvania north. And only 44% of Penn’s class is from that area, which includes 9 relatively diverse states. Given that Rice has a similar percentage of students from a single state with less than half of the total population of the Northeast–albeit a physically large state with significant areas of low population density–I’d call that a significant difference in geographic diversity. And I suspect that the remainder of Rice’s class is less widely distributed across the country than are Penn’s and Duke’s. Not to suggest in any way that Rice is a lesser school than Penn or Duke, since it’s obviously their equal as an undergraduate institution. But Rice’s class is less geographically diverse than those of Penn and Duke, at least for now. ;)</p>
For example, 13% of Duke’s undergrads are from North Carolina.</p>