09

Seven of yesterday's top 10 threads, including the top three were ones that I've already discussed and will skip today. That means that I will start with the fourth most active thread yesterday which was titled, "Off the waitlist at Duke - unsure what to do" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster says that her son who had previously committed to attend the University of Pennsylvania was just accepted off the waitlist by Duke University. She says that he will study math and statistics and asks if anyone has experience with the two schools. The number one thing that those responding emphasize is that the schools have very different atmospheres. The campuses and surrounding areas are very different from one another and, as a result, it is important to determine which is more appealing to her son. Many posters stress the importance of finding the right fit. In terms of academics, posters didn't  think that there was much to distinguish one school from the other. A poster who has a child at each school agreed that there is not much difference. Another poster similarly argued that little separates the two schools academically, but that same was true of most of the top 20 schools. As such, everything kept coming back to whether the original poster's son would prefer a large campus to a compact one,  an urban location to an isolated one, or a northern climate to a southern one. One problem with threads such as this in the college forum is that so many posters respond who might not have firsthand experience with either school, let alone both. Their responses tend to reflect their personal biases and priorities. For instance, many posters suggest Duke between the two universities simply because they prefer warm weather. Others are angry about Penn because of the recent demonstrations against Israel's war in Gaza. Several posters appear to base their judgement entirely on their opinion for or against the Ivy League. Over the years DCUM has managed to attract a large collection of strange posters. If nothing else, running this site has taught me that there is no limit to idiosyncrasies. One example was represented in this thread by a poster who wrote, "Duke. Many people confuse Penn with Penn State." This probably would not be notable, but therex is a poster who posts this in almost every thread dealing with Penn (I can't confirm that is this poster, but it is probable). To make things worse, multiple posters thought this was a legitimate point. I loved the response though, "Many confuse Duke with dukes of hazard." There is also always a poster who shows up to comment on the physical appearance of female students and has a strong personal preference for southern women. In this thread, such a poster, probably the same one as always, opined, "Duke has prettier women by some margin". Several posters claimed that despite the differences in atmosphere, Penn and Duke attract very similar students and more than one poster said that they knew of multiple couples made up of alumns from each school. So based on the logic of this thread, the original poster's son should go to Penn with the expectation that he will eventually marry a more attractive Duke graduate.