Ana-Maria Benitez Graham, MD '04

Pharmacist, physician

"To us, Duke was almost like a fairy tale."

Ana-Maria Benitez Graham's parents couldn't read or write, but the Mexican migrant workers nevertheless instilled in their daughter a voracious desire to learn. Although she didn't attend an American school until she was 14 and soon had to drop out to support the struggling family, Graham managed to get her GED, put herself through community college and ultimately finish the University of Texas at Austin's pharmacy program. By the time she realized her true dream was to become a doctor, she was 27, married and expecting her first child. The cost of medical school seemed prohibitive.

"We wanted to go to a place where we wanted to live and that had a good financial aid package," Graham says. Duke fit the bill: a lovely campus, a small class—only 100 students—and grants that would cover 60 percent of financial need, says Graham, now a dermatology resident at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she's helping to establish a specialty clinic for people without insurance. She's also passing along her passion for success: "It's my No. 1 goal—to give my children an education."