<p>This debate is just getting started. Pizzagirl brings up valid points. I've been out of this thread far too long, EAD YOUR MINE :-)</p>
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Duke is the dog from the baked beans commercial!
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<p>We didn't choose the name -- he had it when we adopted him from the Brittany rescue and he was already three or four years old so we kept it. He is a great dog and can do a number of cool tricks but he can't match the talking dog trick of the Bush's Beans Duke!</p>
<p>Duke is often perceived as a school with a stuck-up and pivilaged student body, and from posts I've seen from Duke students on CC, it's easy to see why. Take EAD, for instance. He/she likes to assert that Duke is better than other schools that everyone else would consider peers. But he's not alone in this opinion - it seems a lot of Duke students here share it. Most of the people from other schools though realize that the difference between their school and their school's peers is marginal.</p>
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Only on CC would someone make such a patently stupid remark. </p>
<p>Would you say that about Chicago? Swarthmore? Johns Hopkins? I personally don't give $0.02 what Duke's reputation is, but it has earned its place as one of the world's best universities. </p>
<p> [quote=xiggi] "I highly doubt admitting 200 more students will make Duke lose its highly selective image."</p>
<p>Cannot lose what you don't have.
Come now, xiggi. Could you name more than 15 or 20 colleges (out of 4000+) that are more selective than Duke? </p>
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I think of John Wayne, personally.</p>
<p> [quote=coolman123] Most of the people from other schools though realize that the difference between their school and their school's peers is marginal.
Except for HYPSM students, of course. Apparently they are capable of walking on water.</p>
<p><a href="Why%20I%20am%20always%20the%20one%20stuck%20defending%20the%20underdog%20on%20these%20threads?%20I%20didn't%20even%20apply%20to%20half%20of%20these%20colleges.%20:confused:">i</a>*</p>
<p>EAD (and other dookies)...you can use any numbers you want and any arguments you want to try to proclaim duke as superior to any other university you wish...but, in reality, duke is what it is...a top 15 national university...and that aint bad. It is not 'superior' in any manner to any other top 15 or 20 university, just as I do not believe Princeton is really superior to MIT, despite being ranked 6 spots higher in USNWR, for example. Every school will have relative plusses and minuses, and every student will be looking for something different in a university. The fact that this thread and many similar others exist is mostly because of 1) rabid duke supporters with delusional and unwarranted superiority complexes trying to push their 'agenda' of promoting duke as a superior academic experience, and 2) the manner in which they do it. </p>
<p>My main issue is that there is no other peer school that has so many people compelled to do this, and no other peer school that has people that do so in such an aggrandizing (and annoying) manner. </p>
<p>In summary, duke is a great school...there are many great schools...there is nothing inherently 'special' about duke...S. T. F. U....</p>
<p>No. To defeat this new direction before it's argued, I'll admit there are special things about Duke. But there are special things about many of the USNWR top 20. Assuming Duke is comparatively better because it has those special factors while maintaining a very respectable academic atmosphere is illogical.</p>
<p>You know, some of the things said about Duke in comparison to its "peers" -- if applied to Stanford -- would easily push S over the top of the HYP triangle. I doubt you'd agree with that.</p>
<p>CDK, I completely agree with you. Dukies (not all, but many) on CC desperately try to raise up their school by bashing others.</p>
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You know, some of the things said about Duke in comparison to its "peers" -- if applied to Stanford -- would easily push S over the top of the HYP triangle. I doubt you'd agree with that.
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<p>What do you mean 'over the top of the HYP triangle'?? Where is this triangle? Where can I go see it?</p>
<p>Oh wait...you mean that fictional ranking system where everyone tries to pigeonhole the top 10 universities in a country of 300 million people and try to sort out which one is better than all others in the land...my bad.</p>
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I'll admit there are special things about Duke. But there are special things about many of the USNWR top 20
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<p>-exactly...Duke is not special because all schools have special qualities...thanks for clarifying my point...</p>
<p>Hawkette's original post could have been said about any top 20 school. Each of those schools has unique and special facets to it, whether it's an athletic team tradition, a unique campus feature (the gorges at Cornell, the lakefront at NU, being able to have NYC at your disposal for Columbia, etc.), and they all offer incredible opportunities. In fact, one might even say that of the nation's thousands and thousands of colleges, these are the best 20 in the country!</p>
<p>^^ exactly.....</p>
<p>Duke is in the same league as every other school in the top 20. Each has its own distinct qualities to offer in addition to an outstanding education. I sincerely hope that the people here shamelessly putting down other schools in order to promote Duke are not representative of the entire Duke student population. </p>
<p>I will be attending Duke this fall, and I have nothing but respect towards all of its competitor schools, including the ones that I turned down in favor of Duke. My decision not to attend Cornell, my other top choice, over Duke was one of the most difficult in my life, and I still believe that while I felt I'd be happier at Duke, Cornell offers just as excellent (and much more diverse) an education.</p>
<p>And please, somebody slap me in the face if once I go to Duke, I start posting like EAD or one of the other fanboys.</p>
<p>^^will do. Have fun at duke...and if you ever meet EAD, slap him hard for me....</p>
<p>This, my friend, is what we call an analogy.</p>
<p>It's just as foolish to propel Duke over its peers based on the few "special qualities" stated in previous posts, as placing S above HYP based on those differences.</p>
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Where is this triangle? Where can I go see it?
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It's the triangle of SYPH. :eek:</p>
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I will be attending Duke this fall, and I have nothing but respect towards all of its competitor schools, including the ones that I turned down in favor of Duke. My decision not to attend Cornell, my other top choice, over Duke was one of the most difficult in my life, and I still believe that while I felt I'd be happier at Duke, Cornell offers just as excellent (and much more diverse) an education.</p>
<p>And please, somebody slap me in the face if once I go to Duke, I start posting like EAD or one of the other fanboys.
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<p>You sound like a class act. Best of luck to you and enjoy your time at Duke!</p>
<p>People on this site are so frustrating. SO FRUSTRATING. I'm so glad I did Policy Debate in high school and I can answer arguments line-for-line here without resorting to using Straw Man arguments. Seriously, all of you are manipulating everything I say.</p>
<p>I honestly don't care to answer each and every stupid and repetitive claim that Pizzagirl says. I don't even have a problem with her. She just can't respect others who share a different opinion than her own.</p>
<p>Here's what it boils down to:
All of the top 20 universities, heck lets say even top 50, in the US offer a great education for students and each have their own pluses and minuses. On a general level, you can succeed wherever you go among the top schools and your success is dependent on your initiative and effort. However, HYPSM have stronger student bodies and offer a better undergraduate learning environment than other schools. The same can be said of Duke in comparison to Cornell, Michigan, Berkeley, JHU, etc. etc. All of objective data available support these claims. However, I REALIZE that not everyone here evaluates colleges in the same way. If we're talking about reputations among academics, then certain state schools like Michigan and Berkeley are better than some of the elite privates. I'm fine with people who evaluate colleges in that manner. With regards to admissions to top grad schools and employers, I think there is a somewhat clear difference between the top 10 schools and the rest of the top 25 schools and especially between the top publics and top privates.</p>
<p>If you think like pizzagirl does, and believe that every top school from Harvard down to NYU are all equally great and similar in education quality, then fine I WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree with that. However, if you want to draw a difference between Harvard and Duke, then you better separate Duke and Michigan as well because otherwise being logically inconsistent based on the data presented. Even if you believe that data doesn't matter all, you would then think that all top schools are equally similar in the first tier. However, the fact that people on this site separate HYPSM from Duke, Penn, Columbia, etc. and then pair these schools up with Michigan and Berkeley is just idiotic.</p>
<p>I know most of you don't really like me and I could really care less. Honestly, rankings and stuff don't even matter. You are all free to do whatever you want in your life, whether it be an elementary teacher or a doctor. Whatever. What I'm really upset about is the level of Duke hatred on this site. It's almost ridiculous. Hawkette posted this thread because she wanted to paint Duke in the positive light it deserves to be viewed in amidst the current hatred of the school. However, this thread itself has shown clear, clear, beyond doubt blind hatred of the school. Phrases/comments like "The Plantation", "Dookies", "elitist stuck-up kids", "Puke", etc. etc. are taking a simple discussion of university academic quality to a whole new despicable level. One poster even linked the Rolling Stones article to this discussion. A ROLLING STONES ARTICLE?</p>
<p>If you're hatred of Duke is newfound and is only because of me, then fine. You obviously have a pathetic existence if you change your entire view of a school based on what one person posted. However, we all know this is not the case. I'm being used as a scapegoat. I know I'm not being poltically correct, but I know that most things I post have factual basis to them just like what Hawkette always posts does. You guys just can't stomache the fact that such a well-rounded, incredible school exists in the South. Truly sad.</p>
<p>BTW, pizzagirl, learn how to concisely present arguments in one post instead of posting 6 times in a row, sometimes out of order. You need to learn how to organize your thoughts before you drop some incredible knowledge of the "real world" that you apparently have.</p>
<p>How does duke offer a better learning environment than Cornell and Hopkins, and where is this objective data that supports this claim?</p>
<p>Duke has a smarter student body, more faculty resources and a more laid-back environment(especially or premeds and engineers) than Cornell and Hopkins.</p>
<p>That's rediculous. You can't quantify which student body is smarter if they are so similar. If you are measuring it by SAT scores, then your method is flawed. Cornell has 5 more undergraduate colleges than Duke, all with different missions and criteria in the asmissions process. Compare apples to apples. And how could you possibly know Duke is more laid back? Is that your experience from attending all three schools?</p>
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Duke has a smarter student body, more faculty resources and a more laid-back environment(especially or premeds and engineers) than Cornell and Hopkins.
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<p>i think such thing shouldn't be said by a person who only pulled 3.8 UW GPA and 1460 (math+CR) in SAT (yes, i looked at your profile). some of my cornell friends and myself included (Class valedictorian) had both higher GPA and way higher SAT than you. so stop pulling your ass*s and say stuff thinking you're smarter than us somehow. Because if you are measuring intelligence by SAT scores, you are basically arguing you are stupider than me and most of my cornell friends (mostly in CAS and Eng) basically. Cornell's eng median SAT was 1470 (so based on your SAT-intelligence argument, you are stupider than 50% of cornell students in Enginering)</p>
<p>And our overall median SAT grades are pulled down by non-private parts of Cornell such as Hotel and Agricultural, unless you really want to go as far as arguing your superiority to Hotel students in Cornell based on SAT.</p>
<p>Just for CAS + Engineering combined, we do have higher median SAT than some of other ivies (according to collegehelp's recent post)
Duke has only those two colleges anyway so aren't you suppose to compare just those two schools if you are really in for apple-and-apple comparison and don't argue stupid things like "i had higher SAT than Cornell Hotel students."</p>
<p>and you are arguing especially for engineers? what the heck. both our engineering ranking (only ivy to be in top 10) and reputation far exceeds that of Duke's Pratt.</p>