<p>Hi there, and it is good to meet all the other undergrad and grad students around here.</p>
<p>Some things I was wondering about Duke, since I admit I have always found these Southern Ivy League Universities to be fascinating and wanted to understand more about their culture and the kind of students they have.</p>
<p>One thing I wondered is, is it true that Duke is conformist and forces students to conform to certain image and a culture? I have heard that if you are a typical nerd type intellectual, like that which would be found at MIT, or, say, a free spirited musician-activist type of intellectual from the West Coast or a Jewish or Asian quiet intellectual type from, say, new York or Philadelphia, or especially if you are gay, lesbian, black or Latino, indeed anything other than the rich, wealthy Southern prep in polo shirts and designer jeans that you will not fit in at all and will not be seen as conforming enough and will feel forced to change your clothes, your demeanor, the kind of music and movies you like to talk about, your hairstyle, everything. And that the students are often very judgmental towards others who do not conform to what they think an ideal college student is. Is this true or is this merely a misconception?</p>
<p>And as far as the social scene, it has been said that Duke has a reputation for being an out of control, binge drinking "party school" while maintaining a great academic ranking. As for the party school thing, I had always wondered about that because for starters Duke has never made the Playboy list of top 10 party schools and on this list : Top 100 College Party Schools for 2013-2014 -- NEW YORK, Aug. 8, 2013 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- it is not even in the top 100. In Duke, roughly speaking, what percentage of the students do not partake in the party scene at all, what percentage partake 1-2 times a week as a casual social partier, what percentage have 1-2 nights a week where they binge drink and use every drug they can find and are out of control in an Animal House on Steroids fashion and what percentage are binge drinking and doing the out of control thing at least several times a week to as much as every day of the week?</p>
<p>I wonder because I know that Duke has been given a reputation as a school that is not merely a school with a great social scene but a school with an obscene, destructive, out of control social scene that the majority of students feel pressured to get involved in. After the Lacrosse Rape Case and certain magazines attempting to weight in on it: Sex</a> And Scandal At Duke | JANET REITMAN that reputation magnified. It seems like there are two possibilities: 1. That while Duke does have a great social/party scene, at least by top 15 school standards, the out of control partying, I Am Charlotte Simmons type stuff is completely blown out of proportion for media hysteria purposes and most duke students either abstain entirely or have maybe 1-3 times a week where they are involved in social partying within reasonable limits and causal, social drinking and not binge drinking. 2. All the hysteria is true, which means that if is true at Duke, that would mean that at larger, rural state schools, like Florida State and Arizona State where it is no doubt way worse, it would have to be considered a true national emergency that needs to be addressed. So which depiction is true, is it more 1 or more 2 in this case?</p>