Duke University

Date: Aug 04 2005
Major: Psychology (This Major's Salary over time)
No dating, just hooking up. I was looking for something a bit more old-fashioned. The harsh stance on alcohol has pushed the parties off campus and into surrounding neighborhoods; freshmen tend to get intoxicated before leaving dorms and the campus has been described as more lackluster than in my days there. (I still live in Durham, btw.)

All freshmen are now housed on East Campus about a mile from West and the rest of the students. This is to encourage class unity and bigger giving to the university later. I considered my freshman year mixed with upperclassmen a big plus and feel the current plan is like extending high school another year.

On a more positive note, my brother and I, my husband and his 2 siblings all attended there and found it an excellent base education for our future endeavors…none of us are working in our fields of major, even though we all also have graduate degrees! The hype about Durham being unsafe is just that. No one should leave his laptop open in a library carols and expect it to be there when he returns. Most campus criminals are oppotunists and students here living in a bubble are easy prey…Durham's crime rates are higher than some surrounding areas but it hasn't made me move yet!

All in all, the sports are great, you can find "Hogwarts" in many areas on campus, readers will fall in love with Perkins Library, the Duke Gardens are beautiful, sometimes it snows (yes, and Durham sometimes doesn't get all roads passable and electricity restored for over a week—but that's Durham and that's another story altogether), and, finally, if you attend Duke, you are allowed to someday wed in Duke Chapel!