<p>Of the three schools, Duke, Emory, and Washington University in St. Louis, which is seen as the best to graduate schools? I am leaning toward majoring in biology or biomedical engineering or something like that. Which is the best overall school? What are the pros and cons of each school in comparison to the others?</p>
<p>You know you could have condensed those three threads that you just made into one</p>
<p>All three are absolutely excellent (and I really do mean that). Attending either of these universities would look good to graduate schools. In terms of ranking, all three schools are ranked between 10 and 20 (inclusive). Duke is ranked the highest out of the three but the number of places separating the highest and lowest ranked of these schools is only 7 and that is not a significant difference. So in terms of overall school, all three are great.</p>
<p>Now, for the specifics. All three are known to have great bio programs. Wash U. and Emory are extremely pre-med oriented with a significant percentage of the undergrad population following a premed track. Specifically for biomedical engineering, Duke is one of the best in the nation so if you specifically looking into that, then Duke would be the best option. For bio, however, I would say that all three are great and differences in ranking would not be too significant.</p>
<p>
I agree 100%.</p>
<p>
Although I would not call Duke “pre-med oriented,” many Duke students apply to medical school.</p>
<p>Duke 387 (24%)
Emory 310 (18%)
WUStL 294 (20%)</p>
<p>
First I’ll point you to my post about ecology/environmental sciences at Duke:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063058900-post2.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1063058900-post2.html</a></p>
<p>and my post about the sciences in general at Duke:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/4722123-post9.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/4722123-post9.html</a></p>
<p>Now for the more subjective part…</p>
<p>Personally, I think biology at Duke is amazing. I won’t get into detail about the facilities (see the links above), but the facilities are amazing, and the faculty are extremely willing to work with interested students. Many of the biology faculty members, most of them well-known scientists, teach only undergraduates, and all of the instructors who teach grad students teach undergraduates as well. </p>
<p>I am more familiar with the ecology/evolution side of things, so I’ll mostly have to speak from that perspective. Duke has an absolutely bewildering array of courses in ecology, primatology, evolutionary biology, phylogenetics, forestry, environmental sciences, marine biology, entomology, herpetology, botany, and more every semester. Walking down the hall, you’ll find scientists working on everything from elevated CO2 levels in the Duke Forest to stream ecology in the nearby Eno River park to mosses from Czechoslovakia, and there will be undergraduates and grad students right in there doing work as well. It’s incredible to be able to feed and monitor endangered monkeys without leaving campus. </p>
<p>I’m less familiar with the genetics/biochem side of things, but it’s every bit as strong as the ecology side. One of my close friends discovered a new strain of bacteria, was published as first author in *Nature<a href=“!!!”>/i</a>, and won a Goldwater Scholarship her junior year and a Marshall Scholarship her senior year. </p>
<p>Duke has produced more Goldwater scholars than any university except Princeton, and it has produced nearly twice as many NSF award recipients as WUStL, its nearest competitor among the three. I know of many others who went on to superb graduate programs…so generally biology majors do rather well.</p>
<p>Graduate from all three at the same time.</p>
<p>don’t be ridiculous Duke is in the top 5 for feeding their students into the most elite med schools.</p>
<p>Although this is slightly controversial, WSJ has a good metric measuring for something along these lines:</p>
<p><a href=“WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights”>WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights;
<p>Duke #6
Emory #36
Wash U #47</p>
<p>In my opinion, that’s a significant gap between Duke and WashU/Emory.</p>
<p>I know you aren’t asking about Rice, but Rice is extremely similar to Duke, Emory, and WashU and boasts a 90%+ acceptance rate to medical schools. </p>
<p>Emory has a 50-60% rate and Duke has an 85% acceptance rate. Not sure about WashU. Take that for what it’s worth.</p>
<p>In addition, Rice is literally across the street from Texas Medical Center, the world’s largest medical district complex.</p>
<p>Take a look into Rice, which is very undergraduate-oriented and offers many undergraduate research opportunities as well.</p>
<p>I second that. Rice is nearly as strong in BME as Duke, and it has a reasonably decent biology program.</p>