<p>Why is Duke even being discussed on a thread titled “What’s the best college in the Midwest”? Because a Northwestern grad brought it up. The obsession with Duke on this board is very odd, in my mind. Personally, I find people (incorrectly) generalize student bodies far too often and the makeup of classes at Dartmouth, Columbia, Duke, UChicago, Northwestern, Hopkins, etc. are much more similar than different. I think people who characterize UChicago as full of nerds who have no social lives are completely off base. The most common schools that Duke applicants apply to are Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. With so much overlap between the applicants, if you argue Duke students are obnoxious, you’d also have to argue all private school elite students are obnoxious. The only small difference may be Duke students are more into athletics than their peers due to the high profile nature of the basketball team - but that’s the same at other high quality institutions like UMich, Notre Dame, etc.</p>
<p>A few Duke posters may come off as overly defensive because for some reason Duke is always brought up in a negative light from other posters. I could say the same with UMich/Berkeley posters, too. I don’t think anybody on this site refers to Northwestern students as “poo faces,” but routinely people use the derogatory spelling “Dookies.” That refers to crap and was created by UNC/Maryland grads. It’s offensive. The proper spelling is “Dukies.” As for the happiness of students, I’d look at transfer rates to see a more accurate picture. Duke’s transfer rates are very low and the vast majority of students have a great positive view of the school.</p>
<p>Getting back to the topic at hand, Wash U/UChicago/Northwestern/UMich/Notre Dame are all great and I don’t think any one of them is clearly better than the other. You’d be well prepared in life at any of these fine institutions and I’d choose based on personal fit. People on this site in general are very prestige obsessed, but in reality it’s more about the individual than the school you attend for the VAST majority of individuals. If you’re a student that can get into Harvard and instead attend Illinois (still a fine institution), you’ll probably be just as successful attending Illinois. This is based on academic research.</p>
^With all due respect, I don’t think you were being fair. It’s brought up because a Duke fan went out of its way to claim UChicago is “a cut above” others when just last week or so, he apparently had a different standard on a “Duke vs UChicago” thread. There’s double-standard and the related implication is this: if UChicago is “a cut above”, so is Duke since he was pretty much saying Duke was as good as, if not better than, UChicago. You wondered why Duke was brought up in negative light; well, perhaps here’s one example.</p>
<p>For any of you that listen to sports talk radio and live in Chicago…listen to the blowhard Dookie Dan Bernstein on WSCR…after listening to his show you will understand why many are turned off by Dookies.</p>
<p>My point is simply that that individual poster did not bring up Duke. You did. He stated his opinion (which was focused on the topic at hand). You are certainly more than welcome to disagree with it (I do; I don’t see UChicago as clearly a “cut above” the others) and then follow up your argument with why his particular post is flawed. Instead, you looked through that posters past posts and see that he/she is a Duke fan, so reply with this retort:</p>
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<p>That doesn’t lead the discussion to anywhere good and clearly causes it to the swerve off course. You expect the poster then not to respond to that? You think those comments are on topic? I understand you were trying to argue that there was a discrepancy in logic, but relying on childish insults doesn’t help your cause. </p>
<p>I worked in a lab under a Northwestern med school professor with another Northwestern student and also lived five minutes away from campus for many years, and know many people who attended. Based on my discussions with that select group, it came across that Northwestern students are routinely stressed out due to constant exams based on their quarter system and the support for the athletics program isn’t that great (according to somebody on the football team). However, I would find it unfair to characterize all Northwestern students as unhappy and stressed out based on my interactions with a few (15 or so) individuals. Obviously, Northwestern is a great school and attracts a high level of students from a diverse set of backgrounds (although I hear the fin aid is lacking a bit, but maybe it has improved in the last few years). By and large, I’d expect Northwestern students are a helpful, happy, intelligent group just like they are at most top schools. I don’t see why it’s so hard for posters to acknowledge the same of Duke students. In any event, I’m done with this. Carry on.</p>
<p>He lives on the northwest side of Chicago with his wife and two children, and is actively involved in fundraising for such charities as Children’s Oncology Services, The Michael Rolfe Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research, Blind Services Association and others.</p>
<p>Sounds like a terrible guy…what an embarrassment to Duke:rolleyes:</p>
<p>I want to reiterate what Bluedog said that the use of the term “Dookie” is offensive and used by Duke haters such as UNC/Kentucky/Maryland fans. I’m pointing it out since every Northwestern and Michigan grad on this thread has used that term so far and it doesn’t help your cause if you’re trying to convey that Duke kids are more arrogant and rude when you’re insulting the school every time you refer to it.</p>
bluedog,
I did not look through that posters past posts. I was on that very thread I mentioned and I remember it. </p>
<p>As “childish insult”, it’s meant to be half-joke but you took it too seriously. Why did you feel the need to use “childish”? You seem to be calling me such. If trying to lecture me not to offend, I am afraid you probably did just that (at least I didn’t call goldenboy names).</p>
<p>The OP might as well have asked “what is the best” city, state, restaurant, or spouse in the Midwest. It is a ridiculous question. Don’t feed the trolls.</p>
<p>Actually snarlatron, Chicago is the best large city in the Midwest and Alinea is the restaurant in the Midwest, quite possibly North America (sorry Per Se). Best state and best spouse will require more research to ascertain! ;)</p>
<p>Class size affects the quality of class discussion as well as the time a professor can devote to written assignments and other student needs. Carleton, Chicago, Northwestern, and WUSTL are all very strong by this measure.</p>
<p>As for library collections, it does not take too much to support typical undergraduate needs (though some are more attractive study spaces or social spaces than others). However, the best university libraries can help attract and support top faculty with a wide range of research interests. For this purpose, size matters. Chicago’s new Mansueto-Regenstein complex houses America’s third largest collection of books under a single roof (after the LOC and the New York Public Library). It’s big, glitzy, and high-tech (enough so that it might be a factor in swaying a few students’ choice of college.)</p>
<p>I wouldn’t lump these schools together in this regard. What really matters here is the percentage of large classes, and just how big the big classes are. The percentage of small classes considered alone can be very misleading. That’s because, by virtue of their being small, it takes a lot of small classes to equal just one large class in the amount of time each category represents in student schedules. By the same token, just one big class requires a lot of student registrations to fill it up to the point it becomes a big class. Consequently, you can’t just look at the percentage of small classes and say that represents how much of the average student’s time is spent in small classes. That’s an optical illusion. </p>
<p>Consider a concrete example. At WUSTL, 10% of the classes are 50+ students. At Carleton, that figure is 1%. That’s an order of magnitude difference. With 10% of classes at 50+ students, it could easily be the case that the average WUSTL student spends as much time in large classes as in small classes. That’s simply not gonig to be the case at Carleton. Here’s why.</p>
<p>At WUSTL 70% of classes have fewer than 20 students, and 10% have 50 or more students. But if the average class size for small (<20) classes is, say, 12, and the average size of the 50+ classes is, say, 85, then on average WUSTL students would be spending slightly more time in large classes than in small classes. [For every 100 classes, 10 are large with an average of 85 students = 850 student registrations in large classes; while 70 of the 100 are small classes with an average of 12 students each = 840 student registrations in small classes; therefore, on average students are spending more time in large than in small classes]. </p>
<p>This is simply not going to be the case at Carleton where only 1% of the classes have 50+ students. Carleton actually has a lower percentage of small classes than WUSTL: 65%. But if we make the ame assumptions about average class size at Carleton as we did at WUSTLL, we get a very different result. Then for every 100 classes at Carleton, 1 is big, at an average of 85 students = 85 student registrations. But 65% of the classes are small, with an average of 12 students per class = 780 student registrations. At Carleton, then, the average student would be spending a little more than 9 times as much time in small (<20) than in large (50+) classes.</p>
<p>Chicago (5% large classes) and Northwestern (6% large classes) fall somewhere in between these extremes.</p>
<p>Well, to be honest, the best college in the Midwest is Carleton by rankings, because University of Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, Northwestern University… they’re all universities. :D</p>
<p>Right, that’s the whole point. Rather than shrug it off and think, well, oh well, not everyone is going to like Duke, it was right for me but it’s doesn’t have to be right for everybody, the automatic next step is to come out with guns blazing to prove that Duke IS TOO the very bestest school on the planet. (See? Here’s THIS stat. And THAT stat. And people in Kuala Lumpur salivate over it! SEE?) That speaks to a certain character that is unappealing.</p>
<p>Look, there are plenty of people who don’t or wouldn’t like Northwestern and wouldn’t want to go there, it wouldn’t suit them, but eh, so what? Unless they are actively saying something that is factually untrue (“you can major in Physical Education!” “It’s 150 miles from downtown Chicago!”), I’m perfectly content thinking that I loved it, husband loved it, son loved it, it’s a great school but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. And importantly the fact that it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea doesn’t impact the actual high quality education and opportunities offered. Thinking that it’s *really important * that everyone agrees with you that your school is the very bestest on the planet is a mark of insecurity, and it’s tremendously unappealing.</p>
<p>^I agree Pizzagirl. If someone presents incorrect information about Northwestern though, its your responsibility as an alum to correct these inaccuracies since there are a lot of impressionable prospective students on this site.</p>