<p>There’s already a Duke of college football. It’s called Notre Dame. And I don’t think the SEC is the place for Vanderbilt to follow the Duke model of growing academic prestige while pursing top DI athletics. A better place, perhaps the best place currently, for that would be the ACC.</p>
<p>Daddymac there is a lot of truth to your post.</p>
<p>Twenty years ago, Vandy was competing Wake Forest, UVA, Emory, and Rice for recruiting students; now its rivals are (according to Princeton Review) Duke, Northwestern, Harvard, and Princeton. Twenty years ago, Duke was out of Vandy’s reach in terms of refutation and prestige; now they are peer schools at least from the perspevtive of elite high school students. Duke-lovers are quite right that Duke is a better school than Vandy now; but Vandy-lovers are correct that the gap is narrowing–the defensive remarks of Duke fans only prove it. I hope that the friendly competition between Vandy and Duke, two best schools in the South, help them become even better, and eventually make them stand right on top of the stupid USNWR ranking, so that twenty years from now people would talk about Vandy, Duke and Stanford just like we talk about Harvard, Princeton and Yale now.</p>
<p>Just to clarify, I’m not a Duke student. In fact, I’m still in high school. Although, I’d like nothing more than for Duke and Vanderbilt to be the Y and P to Stanford’s H (hope that makes sense!). I just found out that the President of General Motors graduated from both, Vanderbilt and Duke!</p>
<p>Coming late to this debate of Vandy v. Duke–I would have to take exception to a few things you said earlier in post #20 curvyteen:
“Duke is currently in the midst of a $3.25 billion capital campaign.” --well it should be! most of the dorms are not air conditioned which has got to be ghastly in NC in the summer, fall and spring.</p>
<p>“Duke is located 15 minutes from research triangle park which is surpassed only by Silicon Valley.”–you are forgetting Route 1 in Princeton and Route __ outside of Cambridge/Boston; especially since some of the mainstays of RTP such as IBM and Glaxo Smith Kline are very far from where they were in their heydays.</p>
<p>"Durham is among the fastest growing regions in the entire country. " I’m not sure about this, but I suspect that the regional growth to which you refer is mostly happening in the neighboring towns of Cary and Morrisville; Durham is having a renaissance of sorts but you couldn’t pay me to live there, always news of violent crimes (shootings, rape, murder…) taking place in Durham, some rather close to campus.</p>
<p>On the other hand, curvyteen, you as a high school student, have managed to get the best of a lot of us adults in this debate; making us look petty and narrow minded–hats off to you :-)</p>
<p>Hey LHSCarry, thanks for the compliment! As far as Raleigh-Durham is concerned, it is one of the fastest growing urban areas in the country. Rankings by several prestigious publications corroborate this.
Furthermore, only 40% (or thereabouts) of Duke’s freshman dorms are not air conditioned. Virtually all of the upperclassman dorms have AC.
RTP has the highest concentration of MDs and PhDs per capita in the entire country. Companies like IBM and GSK have massive research facilities at RTP. In fact, IBM’s largest American campus is located at RTP.</p>
<p>Curvyteen: Are you sure you don’t work for Duke? :)</p>
<p>Only a Duke apologist would use the term “only” in front of a number like 40%.</p>
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<p>Haha, my thoughts exactly. “Only” 40% unairconditioned is like saying the violent crime rate in Durham is “only” double the national average.</p>
<p>haha, ‘only’ graduates/students of Vanderbilt would care more about being slightly more comfortable for a month than the academic quality of a university 
. Now that I think about it, the number is probably closer to 25-30% of one (the smallest) of Duke’s three campuses. If that is the only flaw that you can find with the entire university, it speaks volumes about the school in question.</p>
<p>That comeback doesn’t even deserve a response… I’ll save myself the time! No reason for straw man or ad hominem in this friendly debate, curvyteen.</p>
<p>No offense intended. It was all in good humor (hence the ).</p>
<p>Curvyteen, if you are a high school kid, you must be super smart. I begin to like you (minus your sarcastic jokes). Please get into Vandy; I’m sure kids like you will help Vandy catch up Duke sooner than later. There are a whole lot of things in Vandy that stats could not show, and you will love the place.</p>
<p>I don’t know… people who show any affinity for Duke aren’t really welcome here… Not that Curvy would even consider it short of a Duke rejection.</p>
<p>I’m definitely going to be applying. Although, my mum and both my brothers are Duke grads (which is why I am so enamored by the school). The school I like most after Duke is Stanford. However, Vanderbilt is definitely among my top choices along with Princeton and Yale.</p>
<p>Curvyteen, you just cherrypicked data that looks favorable towards Duke. Also, the WSJ article had flawed methodology and was written over a decade ago. Lastly, Nashville is a far more vibrant and desirable city than Durham. </p>
<p>Vanderbilt has rapidly closed the gap with Duke in terms of student quality and selectivity. As Vanderbilt increases its prestige on the west coast and internationally, the gap will continue to tighten. </p>
<p>One effect of Vanderbilt raising its national profile is students from peer colleges try to downplay Vanderbilt’s achievements. On the Vanderbilt board, we rarely get students from Harvard or Yale bragging about how great they are because they don’t feel threatened by us. Its schools like Duke, Northwestern, and Cornell that feel the need to downplay our rise.</p>
<p>Your reading comprehension needs work. I have nothing to do with Duke. Why don’t you provide data that looks favorable to Vanderbilt? That’s right, because there is none 
I also had no idea that 2006 was ‘a decade’ ago.</p>
<p>edwitten = curvyteen ?!</p>
<p>
I would say having three family members with Duke ties, along with your own state of being “enamored” with the school certainly means you do have something to do with Duke. Granted you don’t work there, but the question is one of bias. I think yours is more than obvious.</p>
<p>Besides, you took the entire thread off track when you brought up all that stuff about grad school placements. The topic was USNWR rankings. As far as I can tell, the amount that contributes to their ranking formula is 0%. That, plus the fact that you got it entirely wrong when you said that Vandy had zero alums in JHU med school. Where did you get that? Your own reference clearly shows Vandy grads in there.</p>
<p>BTW and FYI, having two identities on CC is a violation of their terms of usage.</p>
<p>The WSJ Feeder article was published in 2003 (making it over a decade) – just because another website posts it at a later date doesn’t make the information any more recent. </p>
<p>Also, you are being completely disingenuous saying you have no affiliation with Duke. One of your previous posts says “I almost can’t believe I’m saying this, but here goes nothing…I picked Duke!” :)</p>