Choosing Between Schools

First off, congrats. 

Candidly they're all great choices, but off the bat, I would probably seperate Cornell A&S as a tier below the rest. Some may come at me and say an Ivy is always > a non-Tier 1 non-ivy (in this case Duke), but for placement into any industry and overall reputation I think its fair to say Duke is at least on par (domestically) and your short experiences there have been overwhelmingly positive. Also student life for 95% of students will be better than Cornell for like 10 different reasons.

So now between Columbia, Penn and Duke. Again, all great options, but purely from a birds eye view I would like to say both Columbia and Penn being firmly mid-tier Ivy leagues will always hold just a slight edge/aura over even one of the best non-Tier 1 (MIT/Stanford being the Tier 1) non-Ivy league schools, being Duke. However, because Duke is no slouch and you're not going into Wharton, there is a lot to unpack instead of just saying 'oh go to Columbia/Penn 10 times out of 10 over Duke'.

Firstly, let tackle Columbia. Columbia's culture and student body is a weird one. I would say an acquired taste would be a bit harsh, but candidly its a NYC uni with a highly international and almost 'public uni' feeling student body. And when I say that, I mean the type of vibe you get at Columbia is more akin to other schools that are anchored in their own countries' biggest and brightest city. The personality and type of person at Columbia is very simliar to, say, a kid from University of Toronto in Canada or UCL in London (again probably a higher quality high school student at Columbia vs those 2 but I digress), in that they wanted to go to the BEST overall school that was going to give them the 'big city' experience, and that they were going to roll with the good and bad that comes with living in London, Toronto, NYC etc. So ask yourself, are you going to fully embrace NYC for NYC while you're there? For better and for (expensively) worse? If not, I would not recommend it over at least Penn. NYC as a student means essentially no traditional campus life, no campus town perks, no real sports atmosphere (even less so than other Ivys), and it will cost u 1.5x for everything else (not even discussing rent as idk if its covered for u or not). However, if you are thinking to yourself that you would love to have a taste of NY at your age then I don't think the rest of what i'm going to say matters - go. If you're an 'I LOVE NY' person, go and do it and you wont regret it because if thats your personality, you will like it and get a great degree out of it.

If you read that and decided that you're not totally a NYC or die person, then let's think about Penn. I did not go to Penn so I don't have a 1st hand experience, and my only experiences are from the very small group of friends who went there who happened to be in Wharton and not A&S, so I can't really speak on the tangible difference Wharton vs A&S will have on your short-medium term career prospects. I can tell you that the sentiment on this site and elsewhere is that Penn A&S is still very much enough to land you the career path that people on this site want, it is just moreso that Wharton does have an edge in some of the upper-quartile outcomes like specific pipelines to buyside FT programs, maybe an edge in trad SA programs, and overall reputation within the finance world and beyond. Penn has a great name and I think a lot of what you want out of a traditional ivy league student experience (think the Harvard/Dartmouth/Yale greek life and sports etc) you can get out of Penn that you won't find as much at Columbia. One thing to think about is that while A&S will not stop you from achieving your goals, you will need to accept the fact that one in every 10 people within this industry are idiots and will say 'uH WhY DiDNt yOu gO To wHaRtoN'. Also philly is cold.

Now to Duke. Yes its a non-Ivy. But its probably the 3rd(?) best non-Ivy league school in the country behind MIT and Stanford (idk about Caltech, maybe U Chicago). Fun school if you love sports. Fun school if you want a traditional american college experience while having a balance of academics. Not any particular grade deflation that occurs at a place like U Chicago and at times Columbia. Very good weather. And does have a recognizable brand name that speaks to your competence. You like the people you'e spoken to so far, and it seems like you would enjoy being there. I personally am a massive college sports fan so that is a bias for me to choose in your shoes. BUT. I would be lying if there wasn't a value of having an ivy, especially of the Penn-Columbia variety, on my resume as my bachelor's degree. If you were from an east asian family, you would know exactly what I mean, and Duke is no slouch in those households. Career wise, you can do very well from Duke, but you could probably make the argument (less so now post-COVID) that being closer to NYC at both Penn and Columbia (ofc) could be more beneficial from a networking perspective. But all in all, Duke is great, and you clearly have a good feeling about it.

You can't go wrong with any choice (maybe except for Cornell - mostly joking). Best of luck