<p>give her a true feel for student life beyond studying. Also visiting UNC and Wake - would appreciate same info for those. Thanks!</p>
<p>I went on a tour over summer. Make sure you visit the Duke Gardens. They’re absolutely breath taking. Also, as far as food goes, if you like Mexican food, go to Cosmic Cantina. It’s kind of hard to find if you aren’t looking for it. It’s on the second story of a building. You walk through a door and up a flight of stairs and it’s through an unmarked door on the right. Best burrito you’ll ever have.</p>
<p>Ninth Street is a great place to hang out (it’s right behind East Campus, so there’s a lot of first years that walk over). Good food (like Cosmic Cantina), and Elmo’s Diner at the end of the road is absolutely fabulous. There’s also Vine’s Sushi right next to East Campus. A Durham favorite (that’ll take reserverations but is so worth it) is Dame’s Chicken and Waffles, which is a good Southern treat that is SCRUMPTIOUS.</p>
<p>Definitely go walk through the Duke Gardens. Take the bus system and walk around East. If you have time for two meals, have one at the East Union Marketplace. Spend some time in the Bryan Center student-watching. If your D is into sports, the Cameron Hall of Fame is a good place to stop. </p>
<p>thank you!</p>
<p>Good morning. To begin, all three universities are excellent (although, UNC-CH’s current, intertwined academic/athletic scandals will certainly require years to fade from public consciousness). You and your daughter should enjoy the trip, and I will offer a few recommendations (you may also wish to utilize CC’s search/archives function, since several of us have addressed your request previously):</p>
<p>For all the universities (a willing undergraduate or two, who your daughter knows from her secondary school (etc.), would be very helpful);
- Visit notable campus/town venues (more on that for Duke later), but not only to “sightsee;” in addition, converse concisely with students, faculty, staff and alumni.
- Take the admissions’ provided campus tours.
- Relax in the union(s) and the libraries (all, I suspect, have coffee shops), but again this is an opportunity informally to meet, converse with, and assess a wide variety of campus community members and, therefore, to evaluate the school’s "culture.’
- Attend several classes.
- Possibly, spend a night or two in a dorm.
- Eat a few meals in several campus eateries (again, the overriding goal is more-fully to appreciate the school and its “culture,” beyond the statistics, the “pure” academic, and the common myths.</p>
<p>For Duke (in addition to the foregoing suggestions);
- On campus, visit the Chapel, the Gardens, the Nasher Art museum, Bostock Library (Perkins is closed for major improvements), the Bryant Center (Main West Union likewise is closed for major enhancements), Cameron and Wilson Rec, East Campus (dorms, library, union/marketplace, and Baldwin Auditorium), the Washington Duke hotel (excellent dining, either in the bar or in the Fairview), several of the major science and engineering/Pratt facilities, and a few of the large, prominent professional schools’ "mini-campuses’ (Medical, Law, Business/Fuqua, Public Policy/Stanford, Divinity).
- In town, visit Ninth Street, Brightleaf Square (Satisfactions is an enduring, quintessential college resturant, with good salads, pizza, burgers, beer, etc.), and the American Tobacco Campus.</p>
<p>Crucially, while the obvious purposes of these visits and tours is “seeing” the university, much more important is assimilating the institution’s “culture” (through many, brief and informal discussions with faculty, students, staff, administrators, alumni, etc). Your daughter will, I strongly suspect, be well served – academically, socially, and professional – by attending ANY of the there fine universities. However, the truly germane question is which “cultural fit” best suits HER? That’s vital, and it is also the real purpose of ALL the suggested chats and on-campus/town opportunities.</p>
<p>TopTier has given you some excellent suggestions about how to really get a feel for campus. The only thing I’d add there is to look past the construction cranes and talk to people. The construction is temporary, and most of it will only benefit your daughter if she ends up at Duke. But the feel of the campus has been much the same for years. </p>
<p>When I’m down there these days, I frequently end up spending a couple of hours in the Perk (the cafe built into an alcove of the library) catching up on work emails and watching the scene. Two things I think you’ll notice about Duke students are that they collaborate a lot and seem to be in constant motion. Even by college campus standards, Duke is a <em>busy</em> place. </p>
<p>Off campus, a few years ago, Bon Appetit named Durham “America’s foodiest small town,” and there are lots of great local restaurants in both Durham and Chapel Hill. One that is somewhat off the beaten path but terrific is Gugelhupf, a German bakery-cafe about three miles south of campus. </p>
<p>As for barbecue, folks in North Carolina can argue that like a second religion (which it sort of is). The classic Duke hangout is Bullocks, but the Q-Shack, and Ed Mitchell’s both serve good stuff. Ed Mitchell’s is downtown near the baseball park, so that would give you a chance to look around. </p>
<p>Ill chime in that the Duke Lemur Center is truly one of a kind facility that is well worth the effort to tour.</p>
<p>I can add a second for Elmo’s and time in the Perk. We go pretty much every time we are in town. We discovered a new place (well, new for us) on the way to Chapel Hill called Kitchen which was very good (the mussels and fries were great). Of late, we’ve also been doing Parker & Otis for sandwiches and Lilly’s for pizza. Enjoy.</p>