Oh, and since you asked for personal, I will share that my D just finished first year as a bio major at Davidson and found it excellent. Her first semester bio prof just won the (or at least ‘a’) national undergraduate teaching award for bio. He developed a two-semester spiraled curriculum. They have excellent new facilities and a big department. It’s prolly more well known as pre-med rather than pre-PhD. My D is the latter but she likes having a less crowded swim lane.
She was accepted to do a paid REU (through NSF support) this summer in bio and math – which is her current interest. Basically it’s math modeling of bio structures/environments. It’s pretty unusual to get one of these after first-year so she’s excited!