<p>Your Dad is focused on US News Rankings, that’s just one ranking and a heavily criticized one at that. See lots of threads about it and do a little Google research. Other rankin systems which many others think are more reliable/sound (Barron’s or Fiske, as two examples, which use categories) both I believe put UVA and Duke in the same top category. So, it sounds like you need to educate your Dad about the fallacy that the US News rankings are accurate, meaningful, or reliable.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>