Imperial College London or Duke University?

I'm a final year secondary school student applying to both Inperial College, London and Duke University in the United States. I'm hoping to study Chemistry (although I may decide to major in a different science if I choose Duke) and I was hoping somebody could give me a fair idea of which university is "better" in terms of international reputation, unergraduate experience and teaching standards, as it is difficult to directly compare the two different education systems of the UK and US. I know it's all pretty subjective when it comes to comparing top universities, but would Duke and Imperial be comparable to places like Harvard, Yale and Oxford?

Imperial College London or Duke University?
Imperial has some of the top technical programs in the UK - in fact, it often ranks #1 in Europe, over Oxford - although I don't know their specific ranking for chemistry. It's an extremely good school. It also ranks in the top 5 overall, in the UK.





Duke is one of the stronger universities in the US. Its chemistry program ranks around top 40 in the country, but the university as a whole ranks well in the top 10. I don't know your other science, so I can't talk to that.





I consider both Duke and Imperial to be extremely prestigious universities. However, schools like Yale, Harvard, and Oxford have a cache to their names that transcends rankings. But if you're not looking at those schools, then honestly, places like Duke and Imperial come very, very close. But I do believe I'd rank Imperial above Duke, as a general university, and far above it in anything related to technology. Most rankings tables bear me out on this one - most seem to place Imperial maybe 2-3 rankings above Duke (more or less a dead heat) as an overall university, but in tech, they rank Imperial far ahead of Duke.





Comparable tech programs to Imperial, in the US, would be MIT, U Cal Berkeley, Stanford, Cal Tech, and Carnegie Mellon.





So, to summarize - if you're sure about chemistry, Imperial may be a better choice. But if you're looking at the reps of the schools as a whole, beyond major, I consider Imperial and Duke to be roughly comparable.





But do your local research as well. Which school is best known where you plan to work? Is it more impressive to have a degree from the US, or the UK? Etc.
Reply:Duke is very good school, and very much alot of colleges in US have a very good foreign relations. If I may suggest, here are a couple more colleges that have very good sciences program. Washington Univ. in St. Louis, Univ. of Virginia, Berkely-California, UCLA, U Penn, I mean, they are as good as Harvard and Yale by alot of standards.

scooter