<p>Hi,
so I got waitlisted from Duke. and they called me today that they can give me an OFFER!!
i should be excited, but i don't know. i'm now in UC Berkeley. being here for my freshman year was not a great but not that bad experience. and i have a job and get familiar with the campus now. so i'm hesitating if i should transfer... </p>
<p>okay, so my concerns about duke are that it's not near a big city. so is it hard to find internship? and is the econ major good there? or it's better in berkeley?
if i stay in berkeley, i'll apply for the business school and double major in math, i think</p>
<p>should i go? i got a week to think about it... pls gimme some advice. thx (:</p>
<p>What are your out-of-pocket cost differences going to be?
If you’re doing well in your classes at Cal, I would tend to stick with Cal…unless Duke is super cheap for you.</p>
<p>Having lived in Durham, NC, Duke and Berkeley are two very different schools. Durham is a big city, mind you. You’ll find an internship pretty easily. Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill is a research triangle so there are plenty of jobs and things you can do. I don’t think you can really compare their econ majors, although I am sure either schools will prepare you well. Btw, if you want to attend Duke, get ready to survive some seriously hot weather. Both of them are nice schools and I don’t think you can go wrong with either one. Good luck!</p>
<p>I had a similar dilemma to you. I was accepted at Cal and Duke and they were my top two choices. It was very close. Differences in prestige are rather negligible between the two schools so I would caution you against taking sunnydays’ or anyones advice based on rankings, whichever way they lean. Duke is ranked higher as a school but Cal has many individual graduate departments ranked very highly.</p>
<p>I visited both and Cal’s vibrant metropolitan atmosphere just seemed to fit me a lot more than Duke’s southern feel. However, everyone I met at Duke was much more friendly, social, and fun, than the people I met at Cal, a lot of whom were, to be blunt, nerds. That’s just the impression I got, though. Duke’s student body is much more attractive than Cal’s also. I ended up picking Cal for its environment and the money, because I’m instate and receiving no financial aid at either. But then it became moot when I got off Yale’s waitlist.</p>
<p>Since money isn’t an issue for you, I’d urge to go to Duke. It offers the same great academics with much better personal attention and counseling than an overcrowded public school. You’ll also have a much better time with its generally more sociable student body and the stress level and workload is a lot lighter at Duke. You will end up the same or better opportunities there after graduation. </p>
<p>Have you visited Duke yet? I didn’t see you mention it anywhere. I would strongly recommend flying out there and visiting if you can afford it. It shouldn’t be too expensive, cheapest would probably be through Southwest. I just checked and you can get their “wanna get away?” rate if you book today or tomorrow. You’ll be able to fly roundtrip, leaving Monday and returning Tuesday (or Monday if you want a REALLY long day) of next week for a reasonable price. That’s within your timeline.
I found visiting campuses HUGELY helpful in picking my school and I recommend it to everyone.</p>
<p>coolwhip, yea i got the same impression about cal. but i didn’t have the chance to visit duke. if it’s really like what you said. i’ll leave because the most thing i care is the student body. i want to meet cool and fun people for sure.
btw wat’s ur major?</p>
<p>My intended major was pre-haas. That didn’t really matter ppl-wise though because I was just with the general L and S population. Duke was loads better. Many more attractive, outgoing, fun, and generally well-adjusted people. It’s not that they don’t exist at Berkeley, but the frequency is much higher at Duke. </p>
<p>As for your major, I’ve heard from ppl I know in haas or pre-haas that it is a nail-biting pain in the butt to get in. There is a 45 ish acceptance rate among the most competitive Berkeley students. Once you’re in, the class sizes get smaller and their career services are great, though. Haas is definitely one of Berkeley’s stronger departments.</p>
<p>However, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Duke etc. obviously don’t feel the need for an undergraduate business school. Every top-tier college, with the two exceptions of Penn and MIT asserts that an undergraduate business degree isn’t necessary. This takes a lot of competition away from Haas in undergraduate business rankings because most of the top schools are conspicuously absent. From what I’ve heard, you can get just as many great opportunities in the business field out of undergrad studying econ, math, or even engineering. </p>
<p>Just my two cents. I made the wrong decision to save $80 K, which was reasonable, but since you are paying out-of-state at Berkeley, I feel Duke is a much better choice.</p>
<p>Stay at Cal if you are serous about getting into a good grad school and beyond.
Go to Duke if you want to relax and get some (much, much) easier grades than at Cal. In fact, I think I heard Duke has one of the most inflated grading policy along with Brown and nobody really cares. Having a good basketball team is a plus if you care about sports. Compared to SF and the Bay Area, Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill is a mundane place, but I couldn’t find anywhere else in U.S. where people are nicer and more genuine.</p>
<p>^ That’s a bogus ranking. Haas is superior to Fuqua. Boalt is superior to Duke Law. UCSF is superior to Duke Med and so on. Most top-rated graduate schools in the West were excluded in that survey.</p>
<p>Dude, choosing a school just based on ranking is so high school days… I actually recognize almost all the 40 schools before Berkeley, and a lot of them are liberal arts school with fewer than 2,000 people. I mean, I don’t even know how can you compare a small liberal arts school with < 50~100 professors to Berkeley. I’m not saying either one is better, but they’re just incomparable.</p>