Duke/Emory/Wash U

College Search & Selection
4

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I agree 100%.</p>

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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>

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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&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<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&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<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>