<p>Hello! I'm having a really tough time deciding between Duke, UVA Echols or the BC Honors Program. I'm interested in pre-med but also want to keep my options open for some sort of business degree. </p>
<p>I still did not file FAFSA and or CSS yet so financial aid packages aren't helping in making the decision. However, Duke is incredibly expensive and BC follows right behind. </p>
<p>What are the benefits of each of the schools/programs? Please help!!</p>
<p>Take echols, you’ll be an honors students at UVA not one of the masses at Duke.</p>
<p>I don’t really like it when people post these types of questions. </p>
<p>Honestly YOU have to determine which school you’ll want to attend. You’ll obviously receive several biased answers from each schools’ thread. I would go to **************.com and look at the reviews. Make a list of what you expect from the school you’re attending and decide based on which school satisfies the majority of your needs.</p>
<p>Also, submit your FAFSA and CSS profiles NOW! The deposits for a lot of schools are on May 1st. You’ll have to make your decision by then, unless you want to lose hundreds for your indecisiveness.</p>
<p>If you’re instate, and not eligible for financial aid, UVA is your best bet by far. If you’re OOS, I believe the tuitions will be roughly equivalent, so you should just pick the school you prefer. You can get a wonderful education at any of them. At UVA, especially given that Echols frees you from distribution requirements, you could work on fulfilling the premed requirements and qualify for the McIntire School of Commerce at the same time; you wouldn’t have to decide whether to apply to McIntire until the second semester of your sophomore year. You’d have to be strategic about your course selection in your first two years, though, so you should make your academic advisor aware of these ambitions right from the get-go.</p>
<p>“Take echols, you’ll be an honors students at UVA not one of the masses at Duke.” Do people really have this elistist attitude in Echols? Hmmm</p>
<p>I think a bunch in Echols might have that type of attitude before they get to grounds, but not long after. Most of the Echols scholars I met at UVa are smart, but the smartest people I know here are not Echols scholars.</p>
<p>Echols isn’t really a big deal. Most people won’t whether or not you are an Echols scholar. Even fewer will care. The program has some nice advantages, but don’t make too much of it.</p>
<p>Like the above poster mentioned, being an Echols scholar is probably a tad bit overblown… at least until you actually get to grounds. Yes, there are some terrific perks like no requirements (my favorite, since math classes slaughter me), but on the whole it’s not something that’s likely going to shape your academic (or even social) life at UVA. For me, it just seems like one of those things that’s added to my transcript/record/whatever that allows me a bit more freedom and a somewhat better chance of getting into classes I want. Other than that, there is hardly any reminder of being an Echols scholar on a day to day basis. It really isn’t a huge deal whatsoever, and it won’t necessarily make your experience at UVA notably different or ultra special. My attitude toward my Echols status is something like: “Oh. Nice. Okay.” And that’s about it. So the point of this spiel is that you should choose whatever school seems to be the best fit for you… unless you have some reason to particularly hate the idea of fulfilling core requirements.</p>