<p>I don’t see how anybody could see what I wrote as being obnoxious. I didn’t put down a single school or even sing Duke’s praises. All I said is that it’s a good school with a student body similar to that of many other elite private institutions, so why is it singled out by five posters above without anybody mentioning a single other school?</p>
<p>Thanks PandoraHearts, you actually provided a good reason and I think I agree with it. Those with over the top sports cultures tend to gain the ire of others. And even moreso, those with national relevant high profile sports (read football and basketball) tend to do gain even more attention. For these reasons, I see Maryland fans as “obnoxious” for throwing buses over after winning a single regular season game, giving Carlos Boozer’s mother a concussion after throwing glass bottles at here, etc. But if Maryland wasn’t relevant in basketball then clearly I wouldn’t have formed this opinion and I wouldn’t even think about the student body in any particular matter.</p>
<p>And johnnybegood, I realize that there is a distinction between “wants” and “goes” into i-banking. But if 100% of the student population wants to go into i-banking, typically a far larger than 5% ends up going into it. At Duke, the #1 employer is Teach for America. So, it’s not an i-banking centric student body and clearly not everybody wants to go into it.</p>
<p>Edit: I’ll stop replying in this thread, so you guys can continue the conversation. But I’ll just leave with one point. The majority of the top private institutions have similar student bodies with perhaps geographical differences. But the makeup of the student body from a racial/socioeconomic/religious standpoint is quite similar except in rare circumstances (e.g. Notre Dame for Catholics). Obviously, there are some exceptions and public schools are a whole different animal. But even though stereotypically, for example, Brown and Princeton may be seen as sooo very different, I think a student would easily find others that share similar interests than them and could be happy at either.</p>