<p>Interesting takes on OP’s question. My first thought on reading his post was the opposite - if I was on that tour, I’d be wondering why I would want to go to a school with a 6’5" blond haired condescending, racist jock. </p>
<p>No offense, OP, you may be a great guy and nothing like what you convey in your post. All we have to go on is what you said. I suggest you go read Tom Wolfe’s “Charlotte Simmons” and pick a stereotype from it, you might find one that makes you feel more welcomed.</p>
<p>No offense, and you call the OP racist? I’d certainly take offense to that. What if a black student was touring Duke and was worried that he was the only black guy there? Would he be racist as well?</p>
<p>Gotta love the double standards.</p>
<p>Not that I agree that the OP is a racist, maybe just a bit narrow-minded. But, I don’t think the black guy will be looking around at the other people and thinking that he’s so much better than them though…</p>
<p>First of all, call me racist, condescending, or whatever, I really don’t care what people on the interent think of me; I’m just looking for no BS information about what it’s really like. </p>
<p>I don’t recall ever saying that I am “better than them” SBR. I just said I’m worried I’ll be out of place. </p>
<p>I do like to learn (some subjects) but my life doesn’t revolve around it, and I want a place where the kids are…</p>
<p>smart, but not too smart
social, but not too social (if you know what I mean)
diverse, but not too diverse
open-minded, but not too open-minded
etc.</p>
<p>Just a bunch of down to earth, fun-loving, interesting kids. Maybe an “above average” school like Baylor, TCU, or Illinois (the others I am looking at) would be better.</p>
<p>Oy. while I give you credit for “being honest” about where you are at this point in your life…it is pretty canceled out by your inability to extrapolate from what everyone knows about Duke by doing just a little digging around (try reading the college newspapers like the Chronicle if you want a taste of sports madness, Duke Engage reports and editorial debates–hit youtube and type in Duke and watch K-Ville videos and Cameron Crazie videos) vs what it is like to walk around with parents and strangers who may or may not be admitted to Duke on a tour. It is sort of like judging Paris France by the people you met on a tour bus. </p>
<p>Duke is intensely high spirited. There are Amazon quality Division One super talent athlete scholars all over the place and it takes intense dedication and team spirit to perform at their levels. You could be busy seven days a week just showing up to root for classmates on many sports teams. Duke also has great Performance Arts …world class performers are there often</p>
<p>My son just graduated from Duke and bleeds blue. He was also a tour guide for special events and passed exams on Duke info to qualify. That said-- to be fair to someone still in high school, it rained on his tour date four years back… and was gloomy plus he didn’t think he would be chosen to be admitted to Duke so he didn’t attach to Duke at all. He expected to be wait listed and wisely focused on good match schools where he knew he would be wanted for sure. After the shock of being admitted although 15th in his class with no hook (and the two valedictorians we knew were rejected),he did what everyone does in April…visited where he was accepted to see if he could figure out if the place was a fit or not. He was cool towards Duke until he went to Blue Devil Days and sat in three classrooms.</p>
<p>On his overnight, the guy who kept him was socially strange and informed him that his frat “made him get a prefrosh” as a prank. His host promptly dumped him and he was left on campus without so much as a room key or a person to speak to him the entire night. He attended campus performance events solo, met other much more engaging friendlier Dukies out and about and managed on his own and realized he was in the right place by solo observations. He attended three classes in April on Blue Devil Days. He chatted up other admitted students, some of whom he never saw again because they went elsewhere. </p>
<p>It takes a lot of effort to find you fit. A tour is just the first step.</p>
<p>You are too hasty to draw conclusions at Duke or any other school without visits that get past the first levels. </p>
<p>Your expectations from touring Duke are unrealistic. Come back and attend classes. Spend time alone wandering around. Dine in unlikely places. Run, work out on campus. Eavesdrop a little. If you are admitted, it is a big decision where you hang your hat for four years.</p>
<p>He is still tight with a score of guy and girl friends from his freshman hall and his freshman FOCUS program. Duke is a very social school despite the intensity in academics.</p>
<p>Many many students at Duke are in the super smart category. Duke has an excellent first year program on East Campus that really brings the class together. Many of the super smart people also have super social IQs and very full social lives. My son thrived on knowing them and called them “his tutors.” They were anything but boring and often extremely generous with their time and talents. I don’t want to identify them but they have been doing amazing things already that required intense study, travel and service, summers of research and complete dedication in labs and in classrooms. </p>
<p>Diverse but not too diverse. OK, Duke may not be a place for you if this is your goal. Duke is intensely national and international in its character and reach. Duke is excellent exposure to a shifting planet and to what the world of work really looks like now. Duke Engage has amazing reach. My son went abroad twice and mastered a new language in great foreign study options. Even so, he was provincial compared to many of his biligual classmates who came to Duke from much further away, risking more and traveling further.</p>
<p>open minded but not too open minded.<br>
Duke may not be a school where you will be happy if you are serious about wanting to control the level of “open mindedness” among your peers. Duke students have vastly varied backgrounds so they bring very different perspectives to campus.</p>
<p>^I like that idea of spending a lot of time there, but a lot of us live really far away and can’t exactly do that.</p>
<p>To be honest with you I don’t think that Duke is the place for you.</p>
<p>If you are uncomfortable with a diverse student body then I really don’t think you’ll like it. Sure you can find white, tall, blond guys to hang out with but you’ll be missing out on a huge part of Duke life. </p>
<p>And for the person saying that there is a double standard that is absurd. First off, the OP didn’t say that he was surrounded by 20 Asians, or 20 Hispanics, or 20 black students, all he said was that he was the minority. So he could have been in a tour group with Asian (Indian, Chinese, Japanese), Hispanic, African, and black students and he would have been the minority. If you are uncomfortable being around a diverse population then you probably will not enjoy Duke, or many other top 10-20 universities.</p>
<p>Also, if you are judging people strictly by the way they look (carrying books, look “nerdy”) then again you are missing out on the Duke experience. When I attended Duke I met some quirky looking people and some of them loved the library and others loved to party. It was awesome to see my friends with 3.9-4.0 GPA’s let loose and have fun on the weekends, and for those that liked to stay in no one seemed to think twice about it. You are judging people strictly based on how they look, you know how bad that sounds right?</p>
<p>OP: of course you didn’t come right out and say you are better than everyone else. But you do know that the term “nerd” carries an inherent negative connotation right?</p>
<p>Ok, I’ll start over.</p>
<p>Things I like about Duke (on paper)
Well-rounded
Southern Charm and Hospitality
People of Character and Integrity
Public Policy school
CAMERON CRAZIES
Wild and Crazy Fun
Great Education
RESOURCES AVAILABLE
Small Classes
The fact it is ranked as a “jock” school
Diverse, but welcoming and everyone gets along</p>
<p>Things I saw (key word: saw) that I didn’t like so much
Completely school focused (nobody playing frisbee on the quad or things like that)
Self-Segregated
Durham sucks
It was a “nerd” (not meant to be demeaning, just the easiest way to describe it) school
Not focused on undergraduates
Not a “southern school” whatsoever</p>
<p>All I’m saying is that is what I witnessed while on campus. Being that I’m from Kansas, I can’t really go back and spend two weeks there to see if I like it, I HAVE to go by first impressions. </p>
<p>I promise I’m not a jerk or anything like that, I’m just being honest at what I saw.</p>
<p>I think you will definitely find you type at Duke. The scene is pretty jocky. I think its hard to assess just walking around campus one day. But you should maybe check out Vandy and Wake too.</p>
<p>Here’s what I think:</p>
<p>1) “Completely school focused” <– I won’t beat a dead horse but it’s a weekday. It’s like visiting a club during the day and saying it’s not fun…</p>
<p>2) Self-segregated: that’s a personal choice and it happens everywhere you go unless you go to a school with no diversity. It happens at Duke, that I won’t deny but just because it happens doesn’t mean you have to be that way. </p>
<p>3) Durham sucks: It’s not the best place to live, but you could do a lot worse.</p>
<p>4) It was a “nerd” school: again with beating the dead horse. Duke is a top 10 school that places a lot of emphasis on sending students to professional schools and other prestigious careers. You are not getting into top law/med/dental/vet/business schools or Goldman Sachs without good grades and students know that, so they do what they must to reach their goals. Plus it was a weekday during the day and they are students.</p>
<p>5) Not focused on undergrads: not true unless you are comparing Duke to schools without graduate or doctorate programs. As a major research university, Duke places a lot of emphasis on undergraduate education, support, and advising. Personally, I’ve never met anyone at Duke who is too busy to talk with an undergrad. </p>
<p>6) Not a “southern school” whatsoever: that’s because it’s a diverse national university. Just like if you went to Atlanta, you won’t really feel like you are in the south (except for the weather). Also, what is your definition of a “southern school?” People with strong southern twang walking around in overalls, plaid shirts, and straw hats chewing tobacco and eating chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Southern school=huge (traditional) greek scene, football, dressing up (guys wearing ties and girls wearing sundresses) for football games, Bojangles, camo, and Southern Tide.</p>
<p>Duke isn’t a southern school. It might seem lie it to a non-Southern observer, but it really is more of a Northern school with a southern location.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t call it a northern school per se…there’s a pretty strong Cali contigent also.</p>
<p>Duke isn’t really in the deep south so maybe the southern flavor isn’t as strong as say…UGA…</p>
<p>OP - Your “starting over” is well-stated and far less-offputting. Nicely done. The tenor of the posts that follow it I’m sure are far more helpful than what you got the first time around! FWIW, I agree with all the posts that follow your do-over.</p>
<p>I second the UNC suggestion
almost everything the OP has said fits carolina to a t</p>
<p>Truth is, those “nerds” and “Asian computer nerds” are the ones that set the curve in exams, and it’s the same story for pretty much every school in the top 10~15. You don’t usually see “smart football players” or “smart jocks” setting the curve in say, an econ or a polsci exam (altho I don’t wanna get too stereotypical here).
And you visited Duke during MITERMS. Seriously, do you expect everyone to walk around the campus with a can of Coors the day before an exam? Sure, Duke students party hard but that’s in comparison to some of the Ivies and equivalent schools. There is no doubt that it’s more “fun” than say Cornell of U of Chicago, but that doens’t mean we pregame midterms (well not all of us at least) or get high at like 1pm during the midterm week.</p>
<p>You want “smart, but not too smart people” <– you are kidding me, right? You are saying you are considering Duke when you feel uncomfortable around “too
smart people”? There is a reason that Duke is a solidly “top 10” (although I really don’t like this phrase) school that ranks like #5 or sth in the # of kids that it sends to the very best law/med/business schools. You can’t expect a school full of “smart, but not too smart people” that are just barely above average to be heavily recruited by big ass firms like Goldman Sachs and Bain.</p>
<p>And about you being worried that you will feel out of place- Duke has like 6500 undergrads. Almost everyone can find their own niche wen they are surrounded by 6499 other people. Sure, it’s a diverse school with many “Asian computer nerds” that you seem to look down upon, but heck Duke is like #13 or sth in world university rankings. It draws students from all over the world. You might find comfort in that Duke is probably a little less diverse (both in numbers and in atmosphere) than other schools at its level- Columbia, Penn, Cornell, etc. </p>
<p>If hot girls, people having fun during the midterm week, and jocks are that important for you, seriously, just check out U of Arizona or sth.</p>
<p>I have two kids at Duke. One is a freshman and one is a sophomore. I actually was worried last year that my child was partying way to much. This year she’s down to 3 times a week. Of course there are people there who go out much more and much less than that. At any of these top schools, if you want to be successful academically you have to put in the time.</p>
<p>You can, however, have fun. My sophomore is in club sports, a sorority and a variety of other activities. Some of her friends sing, act, or play instruments. College is what you make of it. </p>
<p>By the way, both my kids are girls are they are very pretty. If you’re looking for “Southern” than Vandy is much preppier but Duke is a very good, fun school. As a matter of fact, many of my kids friends from UNC and NC State come to Duke all the time for tailgate.</p>
<p>Just FYI</p>
<p>Duke is a terrific school for a wide variety of students, but it doesn’t sound like the right choice for the OP. We’re lucky to have so many different choices here in the US; find one that fits your version of “right” for you. Some options to consider might be Wake Forest, Baylor, Arizona, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Georgia.</p>
<p>Well, according to my niece, Duke University is a hotbed of radical Christian Conservatives and she wishes she had gone somewhere more liberal. So, it appears that Duke has many, many faces to each and every student.</p>
<p>The Class of 2013 is 45% minority - so Duke does has a very diverse population and the largest number of admits were from California.</p>
<p>One visit is not enough to base a decision on, but sometimes that is all that one has. So, if you do apply and are accepted another trip during Blue Devil Days is called for. But after reading these posts if you decide not to apply I certainly understand why.</p>
<p>Ouch Ringgold, while there is a fine line between school pride and intolerance, basing decision on these posts would be a terrible idea. </p>
<p>Posters on CC is a self-selected population to begin with, to add to that, such a sensitive topic, you are bound to have some radical opinions being aired. But to based application decisions off that? I’m speechless…</p>
<p>As for hotbed of radical Christian Conservatives, evangelical organizations certainly have a large presence on campus, but I would just note that I’ve never felt them to be pushy or intolerant. I have many friends in IV and Cambridge and none of them have ever pestered me to join after my initial refusal. You make it sound like Duke is a breeding ground for the next wave of crusaders or something</p>