@FutureSurgeon97 : I will just speak on Duke vs. Emory since I don’t know about UVa. Duke is of course really good at medical things (at the grad level, better than Emory of course). Other than being pre-med, what do you plan to d?. Do you have a major/academic path in mind other than “take pre-med pre-reqs and get A’s”? Do you have AP credits that can gain you access to better than normal courses? What do you think you would want to take your freshman year. Without this, I cannot answer your question full, but I can begin. Conventional wisdom says Duke simply because it is more prestigious, but honestly that doesn’t really help for med. school admissions once you are already in the “selective school” range. Only HYPS may help. All that matters is the quality of instruction your receive (I think Emory has a lot going on here and often STEM courses are smaller than most comparable sized universities), academic environment (maybe similar at all 3, except Emory has no D-3, so may be more “academically” oriented student body, but at the same time there is a very strong Greek presence as there is at the other two). It just depends. I know that Emory is probably better than Duke when it comes to the chemistry courses taken by pre-meds. However, biology, I don’t really know. I once looked at science course content via just stealing stuff off of course hero and I find that Duke has as much hit or miss as Emory. I imagine that the introductory sequence matters a lot and there seems to be much similarity in terms of content (makes sense, many elite schools align their biology courses at the intro. level after the MCAT), but Duke at the time I checked did all multiple choice examinations (not the easy kind) for bio 101 (I think that is what it is called after they renovated its curriculum) whereas most instructors at Emory do both. In addition, many more instructors at Emory do case studies and stuff, so that’s cool if you like to see more applications in and out of the classroom. I think the 2nd semesters could be a little different in that Emory’s focuses on prokaryotic genetics (hence microbiology) a bit more than normal along with some non-Mendelian genetics concepts (like linkage, interference, gene interaction, epistasis, that stuff…stuff that should be in the new AP I think, but wasn’t really in the old one).
Physics and math are much better/superior (more rigorous) at Duke (more stratification, a larger UG emphasis, seemingly more resources), but you may only need intro. experience for those or nothing if you have AP calc. credit, though Emory has a life sciences calc. series, which when taught by the correct person can be more interesting without being overly hard (now only the 2nd half is offered and I suppose this would be similar to Duke’s intro. biostatistics course. You prep for it with AP or math 111 credit. It is required by the bio dept). They both have stats. depts but Duke’s has been around for much longer and is thus way ahead. Emory is just getting its QSS major/program off the ground (I’ve heard some good things about higher level courses and I head that the service course QTM 100 is mediocre like most service courses at medium/large institutions). This is what I will tell you for now (as this covers many of the pre-med pre-reqs/recommended courses). Until I know your interests, it isn’t worth telling much more.