Incoming Duke freshman, math major, curious about grad school prospects
Hi everyone! I’m an incoming Duke freshman planning to major in math and eventually go to grad school. Of course Duke is a great school, but I’m second-guessing myself a bit (e.g., should I have tried for MIT, Princeton, or Chicago? Will Duke be respected by top math PhD programs? etc. etc.)
Questions:
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Does Duke send math majors to T10 math PhDs? Frequently? Or like one student every couple of years?
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Roughly how many math majors go onto math PhDs each year? According to this data (https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1jf0pbn/ranking_of_undergraduate_mathematics_programs/), the median seems ~5, but anecdotally, is there a decent group interested in academia and not just industry?
P.S. I don’t mean to come off ungrateful -- I know Duke is strong. I’m just trying to get a sense of reality and stop overthinking “what if.” For context, my main worry comes from this data (https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/296e60/universities_attended_by_math_phd_students_at/), which seems to show Duke has relatively weak placement into top PhDs.
Posted Feb 15, 2026, 10:49 PM UTC