thoughts on duke? what are schools of prestige equivalence
Duke is great. Schools in the top 20 USNR (or your preferred ranking system) are its peers.
There are plenty of threads for Duke. Read them! Read the internet. Industrious students tend to be the best students.
Are you really asking about comparable prestige? Or are you asking about similar culture? If it’s the former, then yes, you can look at the ranking lists and pluck names at random for the top 30+. If you are asking about culture, there are a number of similar schools. But it would help if you specified what exactly about Duke (other than prestige) appeals to you…
duke is freakin awesome.
I’d say Duke is an amalgam of Penn and Stanford.
Duke embodies the following attributes of other universities, but with a resulting mix that is uniquely Duke:
- Strength and depth of academics, as a broadly based research university built on a liberal arts foundation, is similar to Yale.
- While all student bodies at elite academic institutions are overwhelmingly liberal (as are the faculty), similar to Princeton the pocket of conservative students is larger than most creating a more diverse base for constructive and informative "real world" dialogue.
- Among academically elite universities, Duke and Stanford have the most successful broadly based D1 sports and a school pride that goes with supporting premier athletic programs.
- Strength of "pre-professional" grounding and graduate school/job placement is perhaps similar to UPenn, which has Wharton and a strong engineering program, and HYP.
- "Gothic Wonderland" campus is in some respects similar to Princeton, but IMO more beautiful.
- Weather is much better than at the Northeastern Universities, but perhaps not quite as nice as Stanford.
Duke also has an “Outrageous Ambition” and emphasis on serving others, that I have not seen as strongly held at other academically elite universities, that is propelling the university forward.
^ great post!
“I’d say Duke is an amalgam of Penn and Stanford.”
@NerdyChica In what way is Duke similar to Penn? Many people say this but I believe they don’t know what they are talking about or are just echoing what others say without thinking it through.
For the record, I don’t think Duke is similar to Penn at all.
“- Strength and depth of academics, as a broadly based research university built on a liberal arts foundation, is similar to Yale.”
Absolutely inaccurate. Overall Yale has greater strength and depth of academics but Duke is better in the sciences while Yale is better in the humanities.
“While all student bodies at elite academic institutions are overwhelmingly liberal (as are the faculty), similar to Princeton the pocket of conservative students is larger than most creating a more diverse base for constructive and informative “real world” dialogue.”
How is this any more similar to Princeton than the other elite schools? How is Duke’s contingent of conservatives any larger than the other elite/top 10 schools?
" Among academically elite universities, Duke and Stanford have the most successful broadly based D1 sports and a school pride that goes with supporting premier athletic programs."
Correct
“- Strength of “pre-professional” grounding and graduate school/job placement is perhaps similar to UPenn, which has Wharton and a strong engineering program, and HYP.”
No, Penn is much more pre-professional (although not necessarily better at job placement rates) and HYP is in a league above Duke in terms of job placement and grad school admission.
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@Jwest22, I respectfully disagree with some of your assertions.
Saying that “Duke is better in the sciences while Yale is better in the humanities” does not negate that they both have “strength and depth of academics, as a broadly based research university built on a liberal arts foundation.” A key reason Brodhead was hired was to champion a stronger liberal arts foundation, which he has done at Duke and more broadly in his role as Co-Chair of the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences (created by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at the request of a bipartisan group of Congressmen and Senators to bolster teaching and research in the humanities and social sciences). Is the foundation at Duke yet as strong as at Yale? Probably not. However, the gap continues to close.
Time spent on the campuses of HYP (attending, at reunions and speaking) with the students, parents of students, alumni, and the faculty and administration, quickly supports the assertion that as a Southern (vs. New England) based university, Duke’s contingent of conservatives is larger than at most of the other “elite/top 10” schools. Frankly, our children viewed this as an important consideration in choosing a college. Rather than being drowned out by political correctness, they wanted to be able to engage in an open reasoned discussion of ideas with other bright students (which is what a liberal arts education should be about).
I fully support your assertion that “Penn is much more pre-professional” than Duke. My comment related to the effective grounding for job/graduate school placement. Duke should be applauded for having graduate school/job placement that is as at the least equivalent of an Ivy that has been recast around that objective. Where I would differ with you relates to your statement that “HYP is in a league above Duke in terms of job placement and grad school admission.” This may have been true historically, but again, the gap is closing. My perspective is derived from having hired hundreds into professional positions, having an HYP degree and having over a dozen graduates or current attendees at elite/top 10 institutions in the immediate family (with most with degrees from HYP).