What's it really like?

<p>When I was at Duke earlier this week, I stayed in Brown. For those of you who don't know, it's the substance-free hall. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I ended up playing board games and watching people play DDR and pool for 4 hours. And then I had to go to sleep because otherwise I'd be locked out of my host's room. I'm told that this is a very atypical Duke experience. If this is the case, what is the typical one?</p>

<p>i was hosted in brown too.
and that is EXACTLY what happened. </p>

<p>but the next day i met up with some juniors who are my brothers friends and it was SO much more different from the brown experience.</p>

<p>Did your host tell you to go to Yale? Apparantly mine told his first prefrosh to do that. </p>

<p>Could you elaborate on what your non-brown time was like? Feel free to PM/IM me if you don't want to do it out in the open.</p>

<p>gosh, that's horrible... my host didn't lock the door the entire time i was there, so i had no trouble going in and out.</p>

<p>my host was pretty nice actually, and he LOVED duke. didn't lock his room either..</p>

<p>it's strange that someone who volunteers to host should reccommend another school</p>

<p>was there any particular reason why he recoomended yale over duke?</p>

<p>well it really depends on what you are studying - in some instances i would definitely pick yale over duke</p>

<p>I'm considering CS ... or possibly some sort of neuroscience...I really don't know at this point. My other option is Brown, and they have a computational biology concentration which sounds pretty interesting.</p>

<p>Wow--sorry you had to stay in Brown. I don't think they should allow pfrosh to stay there because it is very unrepresentative of the Duke experience. Duke is a really fun place, with a lot of people who are really interesting AND not socially awkward. Unfortunately, this is not entirely true of Brown. Do you have any specific questions about Duke and the social scene?</p>

<p>Irony aside, as I said before, I'm choosing between Duke and Brown. How do Duke students compare in terms of the quirkiness factor which Brown students are well known for?</p>

<p>I would say that I know a lot of quirky people but they are quirky in a social, funny way rather than the weird, awkward way you see at Brown. There are a LOT of different personalities here, lol.</p>

<p>i have nothing against brown, but it is VERY unrepresentative of the Duke population. while there may be guys in GA playing halo, there will be other people downing beers, doing human bowling in hallways, rigging a pully system to lift a rival dorms bench into a tree. as i've said before, the whole party/drinking scene is always an option but never a requirement. as for quirky, there are enough interesting people around to keep life interesting, but i would say there would be more of such individuals at brown.</p>

<p>geez people, what's wrong with board games and ddr? -_- that sounds like fun to me..</p>

<p>but anyway, what i'd like to know is whether the substance-free dorm is populated by super religious people. i heard that this was true about a substance free dorm at another college and i'd like to see if it's the same at duke. does anyone know?</p>

<p>Some (as in 2) of the people I met in the dorm were talking about religous classes they took in High School, but that was the extent of it.</p>

<p>Actually-- from what I've seen of the kids staying in Brown, on a whole, they are more religious and conservative in their beliefs (personal, political, lifestyle, etc.) than the rest of the student body. It's actually this terrible representation of life and diversity at Duke and it just weirds me out.</p>