<p>I’m interested in applying to Duke (obviously). After college, I’m planning on going to med school. My questions are-</p>
<li> What is the acceptance rate into med school from Duke?</li>
<li> How are Duke’s psychology and biology programs?</li>
<li> Is it likely that I’ll get financial aide from Duke?</li>
<li> How is Durham?</li>
</ol>
<p>Thanks for any help. =)</p>
<ol>
<li> 85% +/-</li>
<li> a current student can address this</li>
<li> Knowing nothing of your family financial background, we wouldn't know =)</li>
<li> Search this forum for "durham" and "town-gown relations" and you'll see a myriad of other threads relating to Durham.</li>
</ol>
<p><em>bump</em></p>
<p>Thanks for the information.</p>
<p>Does anyone else know more about psych/biology?</p>
<p>my fav. teacher at duke thus far was the intro. to psych teacher. his name is adriel boals. unfortunately, he left duke - so no dice. overall though, the psych. department is quite strong and popular. i'm a psych major and i love it.</p>
<p>i want to know more about the biology department too. for example, how are the professors. do they go out of their way to help you? how intense is the workload compared to other top schools? etc.</p>
<p>me.duh, you might want to check out Princeton's financial aid calculator and U Chicago's data table. Although not exactly the same as Duke's financial aid, it should give you some idea of where you stand.</p>
<p>The Biology program is BIG. With 150+ graduating majors each year, it's one of the biggest departments at Duke. This means, of course, somewhat big classes. Bio 116 Ecology & Evolution and Bio 118 Genetics, required for the major, usually have 80-90 students. Other popular classes, like Bio 103L Microbiology or Bio 119 Cellular Biology, can be pretty big too (and sometimes hard to get into). The upside of a large department is that Duke offers courses in pretty much every of biology (and offers concentrations in 10 areas). You're assigned a faculty advisor in your area of interest, which is really helpful if you plan to go to grad school (or med school). I don't really know much about the workload at other schools, but Biology isn't a killer program, although it takes effort to get a good grade. There is certainly less grade inflation in the sciences than in the humanities, but about half of all students tend to get an A or B in biology classes, which isn't bad at all. Professors will not go out of their way to help you- you have to go to them. In some cases, you might have to go to your TA (an unfortunate result of a large department). Research experience is relatively hard to get freshman year, but you have plenty of chances once you have a bit of coursework under your belt. Usually bio majors complete research in an independent study, which is actually published in some cases. Biology is a big enough department at Duke that it actually varies in quality of teaching depending on your area of interest. The marine biology and botany professors are awesome, but I've heard some of the molecular biology professors can be hit-or-miss, for example.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot. =D This really helps.</p>