Anonymous
Post 01/30/2026 21:56     Subject: Thoughts on UPenn and Duke
Duke’s closest peer school is Northwestern.
Anonymous
Post 01/30/2026 21:52     Subject: Thoughts on UPenn and Duke
Anonymous wrote:Duke is the go to school and has been for decades. More like Princeton pre 1990s. Agree somewhat like Dartmouth, bigger Willams or Stanford. Penn is comparable to Colimbia and Brown. Very little similarities between 2 schools.


Hardly.

Princeton is much more of an academic and intellectual heavyweight than Duke. And suggesting Duke is anything like Dartmouth, Williams, or Stanford - three very different schools - just underscores some indiscriminate clout-chasing on your part.

Penn has some similarities to Columbia and Chicago, but is nothing like Brown.
Anonymous
Post 01/30/2026 21:07     Subject: Thoughts on UPenn and Duke
Anonymous wrote:Duke is unfairly still associated with entitled White Southern preppy males. Most coeds would not want to be alone drunk with one.


Coeds?? 🙄
Anonymous
Post 01/30/2026 20:50     Subject: Thoughts on UPenn and Duke
Only ivies better than Duke are HYP.
Anonymous
Post 01/30/2026 19:25     Subject: Thoughts on UPenn and Duke
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Duke is still test optional. Anyone know why Duke went so deep into the waitlist last year? Many kids received admission offers through July! Just curious....


I think they offered admission offers into August even. The answer is the same as always: money of course.


Yes, it was 2 weeks before freshman move in. As a long time Duke employee, I was absolutely stunned.
Anonymous
Post 01/30/2026 18:00     Subject: Thoughts on UPenn and Duke
Duke is unfairly still associated with entitled White Southern preppy males. Most coeds would not want to be alone drunk with one.
Anonymous
Post 01/30/2026 16:55     Subject: Thoughts on UPenn and Duke
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Duke actually has a stronger brand with the general public. Everyone knows Duke because of basketball and it isn't confused for another school like Penn is with Penn State.


And people know Bama because of sports. Not a valid reason to pick a school.


And yet schools like Notre Dame, USC and Florida have been able to leverage the exposure (and money) from football into academic credibility.

I wouldn't be surprised if Alabama becomes more academically selective in 40 years.

With that said, I would still pick Penn. If it was Dartmouth of Cornell, then Duke would be the pick but Penn is a second tier Ivy and Duke is a second Tier Ivy+ and the ivy draw is still significant.
Anonymous
Post 01/30/2026 16:19     Subject: Thoughts on UPenn and Duke
Anonymous wrote:Duke is still test optional. Anyone know why Duke went so deep into the waitlist last year? Many kids received admission offers through July! Just curious....


They expanded the freshman class.
Money.
Anonymous
Post 01/30/2026 16:07     Subject: Thoughts on UPenn and Duke
Anonymous wrote:Duke is still test optional. Anyone know why Duke went so deep into the waitlist last year? Many kids received admission offers through July! Just curious....


I think they offered admission offers into August even. The answer is the same as always: money of course.
Anonymous
Post 01/30/2026 16:01     Subject: Thoughts on UPenn and Duke
Duke is still test optional. Anyone know why Duke went so deep into the waitlist last year? Many kids received admission offers through July! Just curious....
Anonymous
Post 01/30/2026 13:32     Subject: Thoughts on UPenn and Duke
Duke is the go to school and has been for decades. More like Princeton pre 1990s. Agree somewhat like Dartmouth, bigger Willams or Stanford. Penn is comparable to Colimbia and Brown. Very little similarities between 2 schools.
Anonymous
Post 01/30/2026 13:07     Subject: Re:Thoughts on UPenn and Duke
Anonymous wrote:Have you visited both? If not, I highly recommend you do that if your child gets into both. They are both great schools but the environments are very different. I loved Duke but my child did not like Durham and strongly preferred Penn due to its city location. Child also noted that Duke and UVA felt far more alike than Duke and Penn.


Duke is not quite the intellectual vibe of Penn. Admitted days made it obvious: current students and professors focused on academics at Penn, collaboration, study groups, and high % involved in student research. Duke mentioned sports especially basketball much more than academics, and the undergrad research participation, which was asked by a student, was much lower than Penn, Princeton, MIT, Stanford. That being said, med, law, phd outcomes for top places are similar: both feed into T5 programs
Anonymous
Post 01/30/2026 13:01     Subject: Thoughts on UPenn and Duke
Anonymous wrote:Duke actually has a stronger brand with the general public. Everyone knows Duke because of basketball and it isn't confused for another school like Penn is with Penn State.


And people know Bama because of sports. Not a valid reason to pick a school.
Anonymous
Post 01/30/2026 12:59     Subject: Thoughts on UPenn and Duke
Duke actually has a stronger brand with the general public. Everyone knows Duke because of basketball and it isn't confused for another school like Penn is with Penn State.
Anonymous
Post 01/30/2026 10:00     Subject: Thoughts on UPenn and Duke
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Is Duke a rich kids school? Are there any middle class kids?


The data is 4 years old but Duke has fewer pell grant and highly aided than ivies and also has a larger percentage of the class in the top 2% than the ivies. Ivies have been purposely increasing the % on aid to 55% and above since 2021. Yale just announced what Harvard, Penn and Princeton(and MIT) already have: free tuition for families with income under 200k. The other ivies, similar to Duke, do not have the funds to get to that point yet. These same schools (HYPPM) also give the best aid to families between 150 and 250k, sometimes some aid offered up to 300k.
Funded summer programs, fellowships/research $ for undergrads is also best at these schools.

The trick is to get into one of them.
For anyone who is not full pay, Penn is the move here. Even for those who are, the undergrad opportunities are more robust at Penn.


Duke got railroaded on that poll about pell grants and highly aided and then the NYT decided to make an example of Duke. The difference between Duke and most of the other Ivies wasn't statistically significant, and they cherry picked a year.

In response, Duke created programs to make it super cheap for kids from the Carolinas to go there. Unlike Ivies, they didn't feel the need to turn it into a total PR stunt (I got a NYT alert blasted on my phone earlier this week about Yale - really? That merits an urgent news alert?).

All of these schools are definitely squeezing the middle class. Rich kids to pay the bills and poor kids to feel good about themselves. But any analysis differentiating them is bogus - they are all basically the same.


There's nothing that Duke wouldn't turn into a "total PR stunt" given an opportunity.