Get the inside scoop on jobs and careers with Vault career guides. Duke University Buzz Book is your complete resource to jobs, careers, interviews and recruiting.
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Duke University Buzz Book Get the inside scoop on jobs and careers with Vault career guides. Duke University Buzz Book is your complete resource to jobs, careers, interviews and recruiting. |
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Duke University Buzz Book Welcome to the first edition of Vault's Duke University Buzz Book. In this new and unique guide, we publish extended excerpts and sample admissions essays from surveys of students and alumni from Duke to bring you the inside scoop on its undergraduate program. The survey comments cover the following areas:
The guide is intended to serve as a complement to other references to colleges and universities currently available that utilize school-reported data. Unlike those guides, Vault's Buzz Books (which also include the College Buzz Book, Business School Buzz Book and Law School Buzz Book) are composed almost entirely of information provided directly to Vault from students and alumni. (We asked Duke to comment on the surveys after they were collected.)
We received comments from Duke, which we have included comments next to appropriate survey sections, offset with a different font and indented to be easily recognizable as school-provided comments. Corrections within the body of the comments are enclosed in brackets. Duke also provided separate narratives that have included them at the end of each chapter, under the heading "The School Says."
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Admissions: Students Speak
Status: Current student, full-time
Dates of Enrollment: 8/2004-Submit Date
Survey Submitted: October 2005
Extremely rigorous admissions process with hard application, interview and essays; very selective. Interview was fun and enjoyable, yet also stressful. Just be yourself, concentrate on your essays and personality. Duke is a social school, as well as being a competitive academic one. Duke seems to want the well-rounded student, so stay focused and have fun!!
Status: Current student, full-time
Dates of Enrollment: 8/2000-Submit Date
Survey Submitted: April 2005
Duke is one of the few top schools that is not exclusively obsessed with numbers. Duke is an institution that aims for a student who has both "breadth and depth" according to one admissions officer I know personally. The school certainly will demand a strong academic record, but other factors such as extracurriculars and your essay can have a major impact on your application. In my case, I had a prohibitively low SAT score but was largely admitted because of a special extracurricular I pursued in high school and because of a strong essay.
Academics: Students Speak
Status: Alumnus/a, full-time
Dates of Enrollment: 8/1994-7/1997
Survey Submitted: March 2005
It goes without saying, Duke is a topnotch academic institution. The professors are world-class--especially in the scientific areas (Duke is a major research institution). They are also very approachable and really look out for the students. Because Duke is relatively small (about 6,500 undergraduates), it's not too hard to get the classes you want. Most of the "popular" classes or core classes required for a major are offered every semester, so students shouldn't have any problems. Grading is fair, but there is a little bit of grade inflation at Dukemost everyone seems to have a 3.3 or better by the time they graduate. Definitely helpful for post-grad plans. The workload varies depending on your major. Pre-med is obviously more work than political science, but there really aren't any "cake" courses. Even the courses that you think are going to be easy tend to require a pretty good amount of work.
Academics: The School Says
Duke University seeks to nurture a learning community that encourages students to question their own assumptions and engage in challenging scholarship. Undergraduates can choose courses in nearly 100 different programs, from the humanities and social sciences to mathematics, engineering and natural sciences. Or, Arts and Sciences students may design their own major with help from a faculty advisor. Duke's exceptional academic opportunities, paired with a youthful sense of flexibility and a vibrant school spirit, make it unique among premier institutions.
Employment Prospects: Students Speak
Status: Current student, full-time
Dates of Enrollment: 8/2003-Submit Date
Survey Submitted: October 2004
Duke has an excellent alumni network and a very involved Career Center. Numerous recruiters visit the campus each year, to conduct interview workshops, internship interviews and job interviews. The Career Center assists students in locating internships and jobs in all fields and a career week during the spring semester draws numerous alumni back to campus to speak on career-related panels, attend networking events and offer assistance in any way that their experiences and current positions can.
Quality of Life: Students Speak
Status: Current student, full-time
Dates of Enrollment: 8/2003-Submit Date
Survey Submitted: April 2005
The quality of life at Duke is unsurpassable. Just come to campus one day, see the magnolia trees growing, the fresh grass around the chapel, the cherry blossom trees around science drive, the flower arrangements near the engineering labs, and you will realize that Duke caters to its students more than any other. Even Sarah Duke Gardens or the Washington Duke Golf Trail are often available to students for exercise or for doing homework. The athletic facilities are beyond compare. Wilson gym has three basketball courts, ellipticals, treadmills, large screen TVs, a delicious fresh fruit/protein shake bar and more. Housing is nice--double rooms are typically over 170 square feet large (mine this year is 226) and triples can be over 360 square feet.
Social Life: Students Speak
Status: Current student, full-time
Dates of Enrollment: 8/2003-Submit Date
Survey Submitted: April 2005
Duke's social life is visible as soon as you walk onto the quad. Weekend social events are advertised with cloth banners made by student groups and by wooden billboards. The campus is never dead on weekends. There are constant cultural activities, parties of every kind (fraternity and other student groups), movies at the student center and quad camping trips. There are several bars on campus--at the Washington Duke Inn and in the Interdisciplinary Engineering building--where you can use food points to buy drinks, and also many off-campus possibilities such as Shooters, George's Garage and Satisfaction's, among others. The Greek system can be dominant in your social life if you choose to make it so. Over 30 percent of women are in sororities because sororities are not housed together. Fraternities are housed together and over 10 percent of men decide to join. Selective houses, most of which are co-ed, provide a small group-living situation without the Greek affiliation and many people opt to join for the closeness of the house. The dating scene at Duke is what you want to make of it. Though "hook-ups" do exist, just like in any other school, many of my friends are in committed relationships or simply choose to date casually. With a 50/50 ratio of men and women on campus, there are definitely available dates if you are looking to find one.
