Duke Supplement 1

Essay
If you are applying to Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, please discuss why you consider Duke a good match for you. Is there something in particular at Duke that attracts you?

Capitalism or Altruism

There is a pattern that men in my family follow: One should go to either Georgia Tech or the University of Georgia, earn a bachelor’s degree in an irrelevant science, then come home to the Georgia suburbs to join the family business, a real estate investment company. My grandpa, dad, two uncles, and several cousins have followed this model.

One uncle, though, has broken free from the pattern. Larry went on to Duke to get a Ph.D. in biochemistry, and then moved out to California to work at a company called Gen-Probe. While it may sound like an evil organization from a James Bond movie, Gen-Probe actually does good in the world, developing helpful technologies to screen blood and ensure transplant compatibility, among other things. Under my uncle’s leadership, a team at Gen Probe developed a quicker and more accurate test to screen for HIV-1 and the hepatitis C virus in blood samples, an achievement for which his team won the 2004 National Medal of Technology Laureate. Lives have been saved.

Though I’m intellectually competitive, I’d be eaten alive in the business world. Where the rest of my family is more capitalistic, I’m altruistic. I align myself more with my uncle’s motives than my father’s, and I believe there is greater potential to help people in the Biomedical field than… well… in real estate investment. Duke may see a majority of engineer enrollees in the BME field, but that is only appropriate: since being the first college in the U.S. to have its BME program officially accredited, Duke has maintained one of the strongest BME fields in the nation. These strong numbers alone could lead to a simple, yet earnest interest in studying at the Pratt School of Engineering. But my interest is compounded by the fact that I can actually get technical course credits from studying abroad (unlike in several other colleges I’ve researched). Also, the first year includes many shared, transferrable courses, should I become more interested in another engineering field. Finally, my uncle’s interesting tales of Duke life and (you can’t forget) Duke basketball games supplement this academic interest.

Credentials
SAT 2310 ACT 35