Are students extremely competitive?
Well I guess I’d lead in with “tough”. Everyone here is the brightest of the bright and if you got into Duke, you were some of the top students in your high school. Here, everyone is the exact same – brilliant, driven, and talented extracurricularly. This all lends itself to an amazing environment that is just so much more stimulating than I imagine a state school would be. Now, it’s easy to get down on yourself because other people seem even more genius than you, but it’s all very chill. There’s an amazing work hard play hard ethic. I would say the main reason I chose Duke was because the competition here is less fierce than at Berkeley for example – kids work together here a lot and we are all pushing each other to succeed.