Go to Duke. Do well. Go to Stanford for grad school. Simple.
@Penn95 Duke decisively beats Williams in cross admit battles.
This is how you should rationalize it.
The average Stanford student will have a marginal edge over the average student at Duke.
You are unlikely to be an average student.
An exceptional Duke student will have a significant edge over a mediocre Stanford student.
Exceptional students at Duke and Stanford will have access to nearly identical opportunities.
Having money in your pocket is incredibly liberating.
If you attend Duke, you have access to tremendous opportunities and no monetary constraints in the future. That’s a potent combination.
Congrats on being accepted! I’m a current Stanford upperclassman studying humanities, and I’ll give you my $.02 for what it’s worth.
I am very happy with my undergrad education here so far, and I’m almost done with my degree. You are right in thinking that STEM is a huge proportion of the undergrad population here. However, Stanford’s liberal arts is incredibly strong as well, certainly among the best in the nation. The best part is that we have top notch professors in humanities, while most disciplines lack the number of students that Computer Science or Mechanical Engineering has. All the humanities professors I have had have been really enthusiastic to meet with undergrad students. Sure, some classes aren’t taught by professors - for example, I have taken a fencing class here, and the instructor naturally didn’t have a PhD.
If you’re planning on coming to admit weekend, I can message you a list of the professors I’ve thought were the best teachers I’ve had on a variety of subjects - I’m sure you could sit in on a lecture from one of them and talk to them after.
I’ve found the teaching here to be awesome overall - hell, my favorite class I have taken wasn’t even in my major - it was a Biology class taught by Robert Sapolsky.
@NerdyChica That’s actually really comforting. The more I learn about Duke the more I like it honestly.
@merovingian That would be very useful, thanks!
@ASJU9511 There was a poster here a couple of years ago (“terminator” something, as I recall—I can’t remember the exact name) who got a prestigious 4-year full-ride scholarship at Duke. It also came with many research benefits and a community of other students who’d received the same scholarship. The student was debating between taking that or going to Stanford or Yale, as I recall, which had offered significantly less money. Ultimately the student chose Duke and seemed to be happy with the decision. If you search the posts from back then, you can probably find the student’s posts.
That’s a good point about the merit scholarships at Duke (also at USC and some others). For someone who gets one of those but doesn’t qualify for need based aid at Stanford . . . especially those in the affluent but not truly rich category where 65k/year out of pocket is significant . . . it can mean a large financial savings to go to Duke. Same thing in the Ivies (good financial aid but no merit aid).
“Go to Duke. Do well. Go to Stanford for grad school. Simple”
Actually, go to Stanford then get accepted into the coterm program and get your masters and bs in a total of 5 years.
Easy Peasy.
Here is the link
https://undergrad.stanford.edu/advising/coterm/choosing-coterm
@Planner, the poster your refer to is @terminatorp, and he’s currently a sophomore AB Duke Scholar. He has posted on the Duke board fairly recently, and I believe he is very satisfied with his choice.
@ASJU9511, congratulations on your acceptances! You have some awesome choices.
As a Stanford grad (albeit from several decades ago) who majored in both humanities and STEM and did a masters in the social sciences, Stanford has tremendous strength in all 3 fields. {I didn’t have to take an extra year to get my master’s, either). I think the quality of undergraduate teaching is quite high. I’ll defer to those with more recent experience, but I never had a course taught by a TA, and most of my courses were small classes with extremely accessible, and highly dedicated professors. A high portion of my non-STEM courses were advanced or graduate seminars. I generally found the faculty extremely open and friendly, even some who were quite famous.
One area where I did find Stanford somewhat lacking was undergraduate advising. I’m not sure if that’s still the case, but I personally felt I could have benefitted from a better advising system, especially as my interests were very interdisciplinary. That’s one area where being at a smaller school like Williams might be advantageous, and the quality of teaching at Williams is certainly superb as well. It’s also an area where the Duke Washington Scholars program might be a huge advantage. I personally don’t agree with @Penn95 at all about never choosing Duke over Stanford except for financial reasons. I think Duke has a lot of what Stanford offers, but is a bit more intimate and accessible, and programs such as the Washington Scholars make it even more so. I think that the resources and mentoring available through such a program would really benefit students in terms of taking maximum advantage of the incredible opportunities available.
Personally, I’d keep an open mind and try to visit all 3 schools. They’re all amazing institutions, it’s just a question of finding the best fit for you, and finding which school will give you the best opportunity to thrive.
Good luck!
Thanks, @renaissancedad!
My sense as a freshman parent is that the advising system could be a bit better, though the advisors certainly try and are accessible. The setup, though, seems slightly disjointed, with the academic advisor handling many, many students, and the premajor advisor just a few. Having just one advisor might be better. I especially felt there needed to be more help at the beginning of the year, just with things like how to actually navigate Axess and SimpleEnroll and register for courses. There’s probably no way to really do this, but I sort of wish the advisors would walk individual students (or small groups of students) through this process—or at least demonstrate how it’s done. It was pretty nerve-wracking the first time, and neither I nor my son was sure what exactly to do. The process becomes even more stressful if you’ve never done it before and one or more of your courses is very popular and has limited enrollment. Being even a minute (or much less) late can mean the difference between getting in and not.
Re: 41
Actually, at least according to test scores, the average Stanford student is not marginally better than the average Duke student. (I’m going to check that after I write this; last I checked, that was the case… hehe)
Students are far more than their test scores of course… but test scores are one variable that is objective. 
All of the HYPSM schools, plus probably Chicago, Columbia, Penn, Duke, Caltech, and a handful of others, could admit exclusively kids with 2300+ SATs or 35+ ACTs… but they don’t. Now, of those superelites, Stanford has the lowest SAT average relative to the prestige of the school. To me, that means they are the most holistic, overlooking SAT/ACT more than the rest.
prezbucky, you’re correct that median SAT scores of matriculated students are slightly lower at Stanford than at HYP and University of Chicago - about 50 points lower on the overall score. So it does appear that Stanford weights things a bit differently.
To some degree I believe that difference is due to Stanford likely allowing somewhat lower academics for athletic recruits than those other schools, at least in some sports. Obviously those other schools don’t have athletic scholarships though they do recruit athletes. Recruits are about 15% of the Stanford class so it’s enough to have some effect on the overall averages, though I’m not sure if that’s enough to account for all of the 50 points.