Duke research

What do you do when you're down sick? Stay home and rest I suppose... I'm staying home researching Duke and burning my eyes into the laptop. With most of my US apps going in R2 I need to work hard on getting them out on time - there are 3-4 wit deadline of 4th to 6th Jan.
And in between one of my ex flatmates and a very good friend is visiting me for 20 days. She'll stay with me and work from here. We're meeting after I guess three years now so I'm guessing this will impact my apps plus its xmas new years time too so I need to work get most of my essays done before 15th which is less than a week away.
The first I'm working on is Duke.
First question I answer to myself is why duke? I have several reasons, my dream companies recruit here in the field I want to work in. Here's how I begin shortlisting schools step by step -

* Find someone I know in the school - there are three reasons to why i do this
1. I like talking to current students/ alums to find more abt the school
2. there are some prodigies around me and I can never hope to get into
schools they are in.
3. do I feel I will want to be where this person is or was? This may sound a
bit condescending but the truth is that I consider some people are not worth
where they are which tells me that either they bluffed thr way to the school
or the school did not take pain in selecting students. Okay this I take with
pinch of salt and don't get stuck to if I like other stuff about the school.
This friend of mine is at duke and he kept motivating me to apply and is helping me understand more about duke.
* Employment report - do the companies I want to go to hire at the school do they hire in my field of work
This fits at duke
* Curriculum - Duke has some electives I want to take up. Some are similar to what I liked at London Business School. They also do research in leadership and ethics which is perfect for me.
* Student life - I think most of the b schools do well in partying and extracurriculars. I look at them to get a feel of what I would want to do. This also helps me answer the question Why Duke?
* Faculty - There are professors who have written some great books and articles. I read through the book excerpts,will see if I can get hold of the book too.
* Other stuff - Duke has COLE Center on Leadership and ethics that drives some clubs and activities along with curriculums.

Right now I'm reading through student blogs, swarming my friend with questions, looking up youtube videos and answering the long essays.

My essays started bad - I couldn't go beyond half a page at first but now am catching up and writing more about how I feel and what I believe in. Hoping the draft is done by tomorrow.