<p>I know this thread isn’t about bashing Stanford for being the epicenter of political correctness, but for some reason this article cracked me up:</p>
<p>[Caveat</a> Parens by Karin Venable Morin on National Review Online](<a href=“http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTk5NGFjOTY3YjFmYmIxNzY3NThmMWJjNTU3OTMyMTM=&w=MA==]Caveat”>http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTk5NGFjOTY3YjFmYmIxNzY3NThmMWJjNTU3OTMyMTM=&w=MA==)</p>
<p>Hope “gender-neutral” housing hasn’t made it’s way to Duke yet.</p>
<p>No, seriously I am not flaunting that fact. Or any fact, whatsoever. But, biomed really didn’t have to go that far into word-play. I just asked some simple questions.</p>
<p>What’s wrong with what he said? I thought it was humorous, and only a tiny bit, if at all, condescending. He answered your questions, anyway.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, whatever. End of story.</p>
<p>I hear someone once turned down HYPSM even for CORNELL…</p>
<p>Plenty of people choose Duke over upper and lower Ivies, and for plenty of good reasons!</p>
<p>Wait. What reasons specifically?</p>
<p>Read the second post on this thread…</p>
<p>I can tell you from personal experience (I transferred out of Duke), there are too many people at Duke who lament the fact that they did not get in to HYPSM (by the way, many Ivies are as good if not better than Duke in undergraduate premedical studies and biomedical sciences–the undergraduate biomedical engineering program at Duke is stellar, however, second only to Hopkins). Duke students and administrators are constantly comparing themselves to the Ivy League, unlike non-Ivy peer schools (Stanford, Georgetown, Rice, Chicago, etc.)–this is sad–perhaps it is a consequence of being a relatively young university without much tradition/history to define itself. </p>
<p>From my personal experience as well, Duke’s academics are not top-notch at the undergraduate level–there is a lack of intellectual curiosity and engagement, and the preprofessionalism at Duke seems to prevail (people are overly concerned about their GPAs and their chances of being admitted to graduate schools). The students are clearly bright and engaged, but the academic environment of the university directs that engagement in a preprofessional as oppose to intellectual/reflective fashion.</p>
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<p>Although there is some truth in this claim, most value judgments about how dedicated students are to “intellectual” pursuits are very subjective. In my experience, although not all students are very curious/intellectual, there are certainly a fair number of such students, provided that you are willing to go out and find opportunities to engage with them. Moreover, the competition and fixation with GPA that’s linked with “preprofessionalism” you spoke of is only really apparent in the lower level intro classes, where the curves are stringent; however, I found that as I got into the higher level courses and seminars, most of the competition that you described faded. At the 200+ level, most classes are dedicated to exploration and intellectual engagement with the field of study, as opposed to shoving introductory material down an unwilling student’s throat. I suspect that the introductory courses at most top ranked schools are the same, and the opportunity to actually express intellectually curiosity is rather limited in such courses. I also suspect that the preprofessionalism you described is also ubiquitous among top ranked schools.</p>
<p>someone here accepted Duke over Princeton. I’m sure there are a few.
You will come to realize that the college does not matter as much once you are dealing with a certain tier.
It is what you do with your undergraduate experience that matters. We can both agree that there are plenty of public school kids getting admitted to top ivies. Was this because they went to a top private school/top public school? No, this was because they had the drive and motivation to take themselves to that level. As long as you go to a decent school and take advantage of your resources and show your determination, you will not have a problem finding a job. Prestige only plays a small factor once you are dealing with schools within 10 ranks of each other.</p>