<p>Generally agree with all other posters, but you should know that Duke’s financial aid is terrible in comparison to Penn’s. I got almost 10,000 less in grants from Duke than I got from Penn and Columbia! And its financial aid office basically refused to match Penn and Columbia’s aid, leaving me no choice but to drop it from consideration. If you’re ED’ing to Duke and need financial aid, do keep this in mind.</p>
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<p>While that might be the case in your situation, I have a friend at Duke who actually wanted to go to Penn, but Duke gave her significantly more aid and Penn wouldn’t match it. So, it seems that they look for different things when calculating aid. I’m not sure what though.</p>
<p>Agree with everybody else saying prestige, academic quality, and job prospects are basically identical. Just choose where you think you’d be happier. I find Penn to be the #1 overlap school of Duke applicants. They attract very similar student bodies.</p>
<p>What’s more, since Columbia, UPenn, and Duke are peer schools, you could have used C and P’s financial aid awards as bargaining chips to force Duke’s hand. If you really wanted to go to Duke, you could have taken that small extra step, and everything would have worked out fine.</p>
<p>Also accepted to Duke and Penn. Duke’s financial aid sucks.</p>
<p>Duke = Penn in everything else. No difference whatsoever. Some might like sports, others the Ivy League label.</p>
<p>Wharton does offer better job prospects undoubtedly, but isn’t Duke better than penn college in this regard. I was under the impression that duke grads did phenomenally well on wall street. Also what about the WSJ feeders list for grad school Duke ranks 6th. Furthermore, Duke law grads have the second highest mid career salary and are most likely to pass the NY Bar exam in the first attempt. I vote Duke….though go to Dartmouth if you can its awesome.</p>
<p>“Wharton does offer better job prospects undoubtedly, but isn’t Duke better than penn college in this regard. I was under the impression that duke grads did phenomenally well on wall street.”</p>
<p>It is hard to compare without knowing how many qualified students apply to various jobs in various industries. </p>
<p>“Also what about the WSJ feeders list for grad school Duke ranks 6th.”</p>
<p>Again, what percentage of undergrads apply to Law School, Medical School or MBA programs? Looking at the placement rate into top graduate schools relative to the entire student population is not telling. Placement rates relative to the number of qualified students who actually apply is far more telling. </p>
<p>“Furthermore, Duke law grads have the second highest mid career salary and are most likely to pass the NY Bar exam in the first attempt.”</p>
<p>Most top Law schools have Bar passage rates that range between 92% and 98% and it varies for each school from year to year.</p>
<p>Duke and Penn provide equally good undergraduate educations. Attending one over the other will not make a difference where future success if concerned. All top universities will provide their students with equally excellent opportunities upon graduation and beyond.</p>
<p>Really? Duke is more prestigious than Penn? THAT’S why Penn continually ranks in the top five colleges in the US.</p>
<p>You definitely have that backwards.</p>
<p>Penn is not consistently ranked in the top 5 (just this year)… it’s more like consistently in the top 10. But so is Duke. They are virtually equivalent. This one-upmanship and e-posturing isn’t going going to change that.</p>
<p>@ philly bound.
I am sorry to burst your bubble but Duke ranks higher than Penn and every other school except HPYSM in the historic US News Rankings (from 1983 to 2007). So your comment is rather ignorant in that respect.</p>
<p>[U.S</a>. News Rankings Through the Years](<a href=“http://web.archive.org/web/20090223224705/http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/index.php?category=Universities]U.S”>http://web.archive.org/web/20090223224705/http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/index.php?category=Universities) check out the link if you have any doubts whatsoever.</p>
<p>So have you come to a conclusion.</p>
<p>“Duke ranks higher than Penn and every other school except HPYSM in the historic US News Rankings (from 1983 to 2007)”</p>
<p>I looked at the link … and since 1999, Penn has either tied with Duke or was ranked higher than Duke each year.</p>
<p>still philly bound you cant argue with fact; 1983 to 1999 16 years is nothing to scoff at. Also you mention the ties but conveniently forget to mention how many times a tie has occurred. I am unbiased and have no dog in this fight I am merely responding to your post about Penn being in the top 5 ‘continually’, I perceive it as being both arrogant as well as ignorant. Just for your information I was admitted to Penn but preferred my current alma mater to it. I know that one person cannot possibly be reflective of an entire student body but you definitely come across as arrogant and contemptuous and students like you make me thankful for not choosing to attend ‘UPENN’</p>
<p>If I had choose between the two, I think I would go with Penn without hesitation. Philadelphia is an awesome city, and Penn’s campus is perfect. They are in the city, but they also have a defined campus. Duke is a great school too, but Penn is just amazing IMO.</p>
<p>UPenn=Columbia=UChicago=Duke, these are four schools which are incredibly similar, except for campus setting and location of course. Also, considering you’re an international, you will most likely have a very difficult time getting into either school. You should also consider Dartmouth and Cornell, however Dartmouth is without question the most unknown ivy internationally.</p>
<p>Source: I was admitted to UPenn, UChicago, Duke, Johns Hopkins and Cornell Human Ecology. Duke’s financial aid was terrible compared to the other schools I was admitted to, I ended up choosing UPenn after comparing each school in terms of their offerings and financial aid.</p>
<p>At the outset I would like to thank everyone for their inputs. shaheirunderdog do you think that Duke generally offers poor aid or that you were an exception. Also consider hypothetically that you had no financial grievances whatsoever which school would you choose then ? I urge you to give me an answer that is as objective as possible considering that Penn is your alma mater. On a side note isn’t Dartmouth harder to be accepted to than both Penn and Duke (9% acceptance rate vs 12%) so wouldn’t I be more likely to be rejected at Dartmouth. Also can any Dartmouth students give me some perspective on Dartmouth’s relative isolation is it really a problem or do people on CC just exaggerate it. Some people on these boards do seem to have a penchant for hyperbole (the irony of that sentence is not lost on me). I look forward to hearing from everyone.</p>
<p>^ Acceptance rates doesn’t = Prestige, also the difference in acceptance rate is so small that it’s like picking hairs. Ivies have very large endowments so generally their financial aid is usually incredibly great on need-based circumstances, which is one of the many reasons people are attracted to Ivy League schools in the first place. Ivies are also very random in admissions, you might get into UPenn or Columbia but might get rejected by Brown and Dartmouth, or vice versa, each school looks for different students each year. Duke’s financial aid is usually comparatively bad to the Ivies, as it was in my case. </p>
<p>I would’ve still chosen UPenn, it’s an Ivy which is an advantage in itself and though the campus of Duke is really nice, the south wasn’t really attractive, and UPenn was a better fit at least for me. It depends on your personality and your opinion of the surrounding area of either school</p>
<p>Thank you for your insight. I wasn’t equating selectivity with prestige I was simply saying that being admitted to Dartmouth is a more challenging proposition because of the lower rates. In fact I would probably choose both Penn as well as Duke over dartmouth if I was to be fortunate enough to be admitted to all 3. Also adjusted for the number of undergraduates Duke and Penn have roughly similar endowments.</p>
<p>admit rates are hard to compare and shouldn’t be used without context as a measure of selectivity because not every school has the same applicant pool and each school admits a different number of freshmen</p>
<p>^ Exactly 10 char</p>
<p>@dartmouthman</p>
<p>I’m not exactly sure what you’re getting so upset about. There’s no need to call me arrogant and contemptuous when I’m just responding to the question. I don’t even like college rankings - it’s hard to accurately gauge a college’s “worth” as compared to others and more importantly it sends the wrong message to students. But that’s irrelevant because of the nature of this question since we’re directly comparing two schools. Many of the posters were simply bashing Penn and praising Duke when the “facts” (albeit if they’re biased rankings) don’t support it. Yes, historically Duke ranked far above Penn - but these aren’t the '80s and '90s anymore. Penn has undergone a massive transformation in recent years which has put it among the top universities in the nation. Couple this with the Ivy League status (yes, this is snobbish - but it’s the consensus of employers and recruiters) and it’s apparent that Penn is currently considered a slightly more prestigious school than Duke. But even this is largely irrelevant. Each student has to decide which school is the best fit for them - these slight differences in reputation are unimportant. I chose Penn because it best fit my personality and aspirations. And yes, I considered Duke as well because its an amazing school - and yes, it’s comparable to Penn. </p>
<p>And believe me Penn students are among the least arrogant in the Ivy League.</p>
<p>All I was doing was holding people accountable to the “facts” they cited.</p>