Duke or UPenn or UChicago

<p>So after receiving my acceptances and rejections from schools, it has come down to these three Duke, UPenn, and UChicago. I believe I plan to major in something dealing with biology and I might eventually be PreMed. So to anyone out there who has had to make a decision between these schools I would love to receive your reason for picking your current school or any other analysis of the schools.</p>

<p>Could you share a bit more about your interests outside of Bio? Both are respected schools academically, the big difference comes to where you would be more of a fit.</p>

<p>No big difference among these three for reputation. Duke, No. 10 (Top 10), UChicago, UPenn, No. 5s (Top 9) in last year’s USNWR.</p>

<p>Elsewhere on this board, a few current Chicago students complained about pre-med there. The major beef was that the GPAs are typically lower at UC than at comparable schools and med schools focus as much, if not more, on GPA than on college attended. The students there also did not like the advising. </p>

<p>Duke and Penn would both be terrific for pre-med and each have top med schools, which take lots of students form their undergrad programs. Your choice between those two probably comes down to life style – big v. small city, urban v. suburban environment, diversity v. sports.</p>

<p>muckdogs07, are you implying that Duke is not diverse? It’s one of the most racially diverse schools in the country. There’s a higher percentage of African Americans and Asians at Duke than Penn in fact.</p>

<p>I agree that there are no major reputational differences, although if you are really into rankings, Duke has been marginally higher ranked historically.</p>

<p>Duke’s pre-med is probably stronger than the other 2. In terms of social life, I’m sure Duke would absolutely DOMINATE those schools. I’d say, perhaps with the exception of Stanford, that Duke has the most rich social life of any top school.</p>

<p>Chicago is probably the best one academically IMHO…</p>

<p>Of course your entitled to an opinion. But for pre med, there is not a chance that Chicago is better than Duke and Penn. Chicago’s academic reputation in general is overblown. It doesn’t get enough credit for being an elite school from the public, so its spent years trying to cultivate this image of being a school for future academics. Frankly, its been over compensating for its low name recognition.</p>