Is Duke really better than UofC?

<p>congratulations daren! you are one of the very select few people who didnt call me cookiemonster!
im so very excited indeed! ready to leave this high school nonsense.</p>

<p>lol...well..high school's gonna be over soon..enjoy it when you still can coz come this fall high school will be our history..sounds kinda dramatic but it's true...haha..</p>

<p>lilpixytiff, I stand by that statement. 95% of Duke students wouldn't be happy at Chicago. I'll retract my statement about the reverse, since I'm not a Chicago student. I really do think one will fit much better than the other once it comes down to it (and it sounds like you picked the better fit). That said, I'll rob you of two delusions. ;)</p>

<p>1) UC Berkeley's law school ranked schools according to how difficult it was to get an A. Duke was #3. Chicago was #7.
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=167740%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=167740&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>2) Duke's Curriculum 2000 requirements are at least as annoying as Chicago's (well, taking out PE). The "matrix" we have to complete makes my head hurt. Unlike Chicago, Duke doesn't accept AP credit for the requirements. :(</p>

<p>That list is a little suspect, not because it is nearly 10 years old, or Chicago's score, but Reed College's sore. The average GPA for a Duke graduate is about 3.4 (only slightly higher than Chicago), but Reed's is 2.8. A's at Reed are nearly impossible to get.</p>

<p>I think that it depends on the student in the end, and what they prefer</p>

<p>The issue is grade inflation. Reed has kept the average campus GPA at 3.0 for over 20 years, and grad schools know it.</p>

<p>Just as they know that at Chicago, honors is set at 3.25 for good reason.</p>

<p>i chose duke over uchi, but partly for financial reasons.</p>

<p>I rejected Berkeley simply because a lot people, including those attending the school, posted so many "I am tired of it" thread on College Confidential. These comments are very helpful. Many of my friends went to Berkeley had similar experience. So, the comments on CC are fairly accurate. Without them, I would probably chosen Berkeley of University of Chicago.</p>

<p>daren_s - There is a phrase in the business world called "analysis paralysis". A person dissects and redissects; parses and reparses (if there is such a word) the same material until he/she is unable to move forward. Until you actually start your freshman year at U of C, you may have more bouts of "what if" and "what could have been" and other pangs of the buyer's remorse syndrome, but once you start taking classes and getting immersed in activities at the University come Fall, I believe many of the "what if's" will just melt away and your angst will dissipate. The University of Chicago will be as amazing and challenging as you've heard along with the sprawling, opportunity filled city of Chicago at your doorstep. Until then, angst away, but try not to give too much credibility to your current misgivings
until you have given yourself permission to become fully engaged at the University your entire first year. I think a positive experience at U of C will trump the misgivings hands-down!</p>

<p>I heard from a physics major friend of mine that honors in that subject is 3.00 or above. Then again, he said lingistics is something like 3.75 or above (which he claims everyone gets). The departments seem very different in terms of grading.</p>

<p>Honors in physics is 3.0. Honors in Linguistics is 3.5. Human Development is 3.6. I don't know of any major where "everyone" gets a 3.75. If so, I'm missing out on something. Departments are different. To understand why, consider this: A good physics student taking a challenging class, and a good Pyschology major taking a challenging class. When the exam rolls around, it's perfectly possible that the good physics student, either through bad study habits or just being overmatched could do no better than a bad student. He/She could simply be wrong. With a Pyschology class, a good student who might not know exactly how to respond to a certain question will still probably be able to come up with an asnwer that is at least kinda right. Thus, it's hard to completely bomb a social science/humantities class if you know what you're doing, while it's very possible to just be objectively wrong in a math/science class.</p>

<p>With no disrespect to Duke (Duke is a fine school), why the heck any one with some gray matters in his/her brain would choose Duke over Chicago ? Yea Duke has a fantastic b-ball team, and some respectable program, like law, but Chicago has absolutely fantastic reputation for humanities/social science/hard sciences/business and is widely known as THE "ivory tower" among the high intellectuals. Yes Chicago's academic rigor can be very hard and demanding for students. But why u going to college in the first place if u are afraid of getting challenged or exporing new things or expanding your thoughts/ideas ? Chicago is better</p>

<p>Rabban: Everyone deserves to have their own opinions on which school is better. That is why threads like this will make one's decision making easier. I understand you're trying to help and everyone appreciates that but you could have sounded a little nicer..=)</p>