<p>I don't know if I just get this feeling, but I get the impression that it is harder to do well at Duke than at other peer universities (more or less) such as Brown, Stanford, etc. esp. in science classes. Does it have to do with the grading system at Duke, the decisions of teachers at the different universities, or just something erroneous on my part? I'm just hearing that the science classes at Duke are deathly hard but that may be true at the other universities. Any clarification of this would be great.</p>
<p>errr bumpity bump bump</p>
<p>Well, your classmates are smarter at Duke (if you're judging purely by SAT scores) so the competition is harder.</p>
<p>From whom are you hearing this? Science classes here will be hard, because we don't want to waste 3% of your in-class time on something that's not going to push you to learn; but the goal is to push to learn and not to weed, if that helps.</p>
<p>It's never fun until it gets challenging. :)</p>
<p>I dont think it is harder to get higher grade in math and science classes comparing to Stanford. My friend at stanford said that his math class is full of students who got into USAMO or even IMO..this also applies with his science classes....it is obviously alot harder to compete with those students at Stanford than the students here at duke..which has lesser USAMO or IMO level students..</p>
<p>Erm - poppop - upon what do you base those particular conclusions? I would posit that depending on the Math class here, a friend could say it's brimming with USAMO / IMO folks as well, especially given Duke's performance at competitions such as the W. L. Putnam.</p>
<p>I mean.. it is very easy to tell where those IMO people are at... go to like IMO website... copy paste the name of those people who got medals into Facebook.. and see which college they are in... I only see Harvard, MIT, Caltech, and Stanford</p>
<p>Duke gets a few USAMO people through the AB scholarship.. definitely more than its peer schools academically (if you consider Stanford to be a level up and Duke to be on par with Penn/Columbia..)</p>
<p>His point is that, on average, Stanford is going to have more "flat-out geniuses" than Duke, which is probably true. Although being the Duke forum nobody is going to admit to that...</p>
<p>Haha, you got that right! :D</p>
<p>Problem is, this thread is a bit mired in hearsay and such, which makes it difficult to answer the OP's question. For example - elpope - how would you compare and contrast the existence of "flat-out geniuses" at any two schools? And what would their concentration be in typical math and science classes?</p>
<p>however, I would agree that Duke has better math/science oreinted students comparing to Columbia and Penn which are on par with Duke, not Stanford which I feel that it is one level above Duke (I feel that it is at Harvard Mit Yale Princeton level.. )</p>
<p>Yale DOES NOT have more accomplished math/science folk than Duke guaranteed. Duke would win the battle of math/science over Yale anytime hands down.</p>
<p>I wonder how anyone here can be so sure in their statements lol.</p>
<p>I'm going to Duke so I think it would be awesome if Duke had the best math/science people. But I think it would be more realistic if we gave the heads up to HYPS or at least not say anything. I don't know how anyone can assuredly place Duke higher than any HYPS</p>
<p>DukeEgr93,</p>
<p>Doing well in Putnam doesn't neccesarily mean you have to most number of talents. Coaching is a huge factor for Putnam also. WashU had a pretty good run (multiple 1st and 2nd) between mid-70s and 80s when it was pretty easy to get in. The 5-th place finish in 1997 is the last time they had the top-5 finish even though WashU has gotten even harder and harder to get in since then.</p>
<p>As in cases for all competitions, in many ways, access and coaching provide a huge difference. You'll note the comparison I was drawing was with respect to other kinds of competitions, which are similarly influenced by the environment in which participants have learned their trade.</p>
<p>This thread is stupid.</p>
<p>Math competition winners probably won't be in Calc I, II, III, linear algebra, or intro chem or intro bio...whereas the poster is probably most concerned about regular level classes.</p>
<p>The middle 50% of students at Stanford, Duke, Columbia, Penn, Yale, etc. aren't very far apart from one another.</p>
<p>DukeEngr93,</p>
<p>FYI: I went to WashU and Northwestern. When I was at WashU, I saw fliers about Putnam training sessions and subsequently, I attended the first couple. The coach was a very dynamic and charistmatic physics professor and was one of the leading experts in mathematical physics. When I was at NU, no Putnam training session was ever advertised. Because of that, I think at NU, even if they have a team, it's probably comprised of a group of math students practicing exams on their own. The difference is day and night.</p>