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I too thought Duke would be a great fit, but I was afraid that was my bias speaking. </p>
<p>Duke is great for the sciences in general. Only Princeton and Harvard have produced more Goldwater Scholars than Duke, and it’s comfortably in the top 10 for NSF production. </p>
<p>Duke really shines in biology and environmental science, however. Its biology program has more concentrations – animal behavior, primatology, plant science, marine biology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, biochemistry, pharmacology, genetics, and more – than any other top private university except Cornell. I’ve waxed eloquent on biology and earth science at Duke in past posts.</p>
<p><a href=“Duke Biology - #2 by warblersrule - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>Duke Biology - #2 by warblersrule - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums;
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/4722123/#Comment_4722123”>College List for a Science Major - #9 by warblersrule - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums;
<a href=“strongest colleges undergraduate enviromental sciences - #5 by warblersrule - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>strongest colleges undergraduate enviromental sciences - #5 by warblersrule - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums; (Ignore the weird formatting; the new forum has messed up some old posts.)</p>
<p>Duke’s marine lab allows students to spend a summer, fall or spring semester, a full year, or even a year + summer at its wonderful campus in Beaufort. (I could write a very lengthy post about only the marine lab. I’ll refrain for now.) It has been trying to appeal to a wider audience than just marine biology undergraduates, so in addition to oceanography it offers policy courses and general courses like molecular biology and physics. If you’re going to prep for med school, why not do it at the beach?</p>
<p>DUMB is relatively laidback as marching bands go (4 hours of practice a week, compared to ~8 at Michigan), but students take it seriously. It’s a good, tight-knit group. I don’t know about its current policies, but when I was a student it was required to play for football games in the fall if you wanted to play for the basketball games in the spring. (Needless to say, that was back when Duke went an entire season without a single football win.)</p>
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To be fair, Lake Michigan could pass for an ocean. Northwestern even has its own beach.</p>
<p><a href=“Northwestern University Recreation - Official Athletics Website”>Northwestern University Recreation - Official Athletics Website;
<a href=“http://www.nusoccercamps.com/Assets/NU+Soccer+Camps+Digital+Assets/NU+Soccer+Camps/Beach.JPG”>Error Page;
<p>It’s definitely lacking the other two criteria. </p>