<p>I was hoping I could get some opinions of Duke's bio/premed track in terms of breadth and competition.</p>
<p>I have toured at Duke before, and I believe it is one of my top choices for next fall. I was hoping to know what people think of :</p>
<p>1) Competition. Since most of the students are strong in their fields, how much harder does this require another student to work for an A? (Assuming grades are graded on a B- scale.) What is the average GPA?</p>
<p>2) Breadth. Compared to AP biology, how intensive are introductory biology classes and higher up classes? How much reading work is required per week? Around how much time outside of the classroom would a student need to devote to their courses? </p>
<p>Feel free to add additional opinions as well!</p>
<p>I know, and I have already seen a few posts in Duke’s section regarding premed. I wished to get more of student’s opinions, in hopefully two more specific sections. (The other posts do cover a good overall amount, but I was hoping for more specific responses for the two questions listed above.)</p>
<p>1) It ain’t easy. I mean, your performance is dependent on a number of factors, such as talent, perseverance, and luck. As much as I hate to say this, most of the earlier biology classes are heavily memorization based; if you are good at that kind of stuff, you should be fine. Grading wise, most intro level bio classes are curved to something like a B/B-, which makes getting an actual A somewhat difficult. Classes like Orgo and Math are not as memorization-dependent as the average biology class; however, there is still a great deal of work involved in making a good grade in those classes. I think some statistics are floating around for average GPA, but if I had to guess, I would say 3.3-3.5ish.</p>
<p>2) Again, breadth and width varies heavily based on what class you’re taking. Bio 101 and 102 (the bio major pre-reqs) will give you a pretty wide coverage of all the important aspects of biology (genetics, molecular biology, and some ecology). You also have to fulfill a diversity requirement, which is basically taking bio 26L (phylogeny). However, if you want to get really in-depth with your study, higher level classes definitely let you specialize heavily. For example, there are like 4 separate classes concerned specifically with Developmental Biology, along with the possibility of independent study. The amount of work you have to do varies on a class-by-class basis. Some classes like cell and developmental biology require a heavy dose of reading everyday, whereas your signal transduction seminar may require only you to read a paper every week. This same trend is recapitulated in lower level classes:I heard molecular biology has a fair bit of reading, whereas ecology doesn’t even have a textbook. </p>
<p>Hopefully that answered your questions. If not, feel free to PM me or ask more questions.</p>