<p>First off, please stop posting about being afraid and stuff. Everyone is nervous. Its expected. Posting about it isn’t going to do any good for anyone, unless of course you like looking like a pre-pubiscent girl. Didn’t want to have to go there, but needed to be said. Yea, I was nervous, but please SHUT UP!!!</p>
<p>Secondly, @ DREWALL, I know of an 1800 even. She’s a URM. Really nice girl and really smart, just not a good test taker. I think her GPA is higher then mine and I got a 2240. Goes to show you it isn’t that important.</p>
<p>1 hour to go. Keep breathing. You will make it. Good luck.</p>
<p>How bad of an applicant do you have to be to be in that bottom 50%? Because if that standard is rather low then I think that acceptance rate is artificially low.</p>
<p>Furthermore, how does that reflect on Ivy pools? I’d imagine many of the students who apply to Duke also apply to Ivies, so if Duke could reject half their pool without even discussing it, then strong applicants feel a lot more hopeful at other top schools along with Duke.</p>
<p>If you read the article, it says that 50% of the applicants were rejected without even being debated in committee. Two years ago it was 33%. Either the applicant pool got less competitive or they upped their standards for that cut-off mark. Or, even 17% of the people they used to debate in committee weren’t that competitive for admission, they just had time to find those diamonds in the rough (due to there being fewer applications). In other words, the acceptance rate may be low, but a strong applicant probably has a much greater chance of getting in than the 13% acceptance rate would originally indicate.</p>
<p>Yeah, I had the same question about all my schools. How many people are applying to Duke, Harvard, Cornell (top schools) just for the hell of it, and because they have done the commonapp anyway? Are 10% or Duke’s applicants people with 1500 SAT’s? are 10% of Harvards people who have no EC’s. If so, they are not really part of the applicant pool that us real contenders are competing against. So, they say “12%” or “7%” but how much higher is it when we take into account people who applied “just because.” This si an honest question, as I am an international, and so have no idea what sort of people are applying to these places. American’s thoughts?</p>
<p>@ fresca. From the articles it appears that committee is for about 35-85% people, but yeah, the idea is there. About a third immediately rejected, and about 15% immediately accepted.</p>
<p>This is a truly great article which sheds an enormous amount of light on the whole college admission process. I cant help but feel slightly taken advantage of however because I wish I read this prior to advising my daughter to apply.
Perhaps the following disclaimer should be added to the application:
<strong><em>Although the average SAT score of our enrolled student is between 1370 and 1530, if you are not a minority, athlete,performing artist, significant donor, North Carolina resident,or child of uneducated parents, the likelihood of you obtaining admission is slim unless you score significantly higher than 1530 because a large amount of preference is given to those in these groups.</em></strong></p>
<p>I wonder how many applications Duke would receive then?</p>
<p>^LOL
so true
I know a pianist (BRILLIANT btw, got into juilliard) who got into duke with a sub 1900 SAT. i didnt know duke doesn’t count writing…</p>
<p>Nosike: lolwut? your figures are complete BS and here’s why.</p>
<p>Duke typically has an incoming freshmen class of around 1650. So let’s be liberal and say 1700 slots available. </p>
<p>Duke has a typical yield of low to mid 40%. But let’s be conservative and say 30% because (as much as I hate to say it) Duke most likely does practice some sort of yield protection and maintains a massive waitlist. </p>
<p>So for the sake of simplicity, let’s assume that Duke has no ED (which tends to lead to low acceptance rates) and that all students are admitted competitively (no athletic recruits, etc) at 30% yield. Then, in order to fill 1700 seats:</p>
<p>(1700/.3)=~5667 admits required</p>
<p>5667/27000=~21% acceptance rate</p>
<p>So even with very very favorable numbers (Duke admits far less than 5667 applicants, is known to derive 1/3 of its class from ED, does recruit athletes, and underadmits and draws from the large waitlist) and calculation scenarios, the acceptance rate barely cracked 20%. So I doubt Duke’s RD rate is “over 20%” as you so blithely claimed. </p>
<p>But it’s ED rate is most likely 30%, it has been this way for at least the past 5-6 years. It’s one of the incentives of making that commitment.</p>
<p>Yes, but the chronicle uses published figures given by the admissions office, which has an incentive to give the lowest numbers possible to make Duke look better. The above calculation addresses some of the concerns that have been raised over the years on this board regarding those figures such as the impact of ED, athletic recruitment, waitlist, and yield protection measures. By eliminating those factors and using artificially liberal estimates that are favorable to the alternate hypothesis (that Duke’s acceptance rate is very high) and still ending up with a very borderline result, I’m showing that the above poster’s assertions are grossly inaccurate.</p>