Chances for Duke?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hi! Current Minnesota high school senior who just applied RD to Duke for environmental engineering. What are my chances?

White, female

ACT: Composite 35
Superscore: E36, R36, S36, M34, essay 8

I have always taken the most challenging courses offered at my school.
UW GPA: 3.94 (my school does not weight, also does not rank). I have an upward trend; I got a 4.0 for my junior year and so far for my senior year as well.

AP Stats: 5
AP US History: 4
AP World History: 5
AP Calc AB: 5
AP Physics 1: 4

Senior year classes: AP Calc BC, AP Bio, AP Literature and Composition, AP US Government and Politics, Wind Ensemble (the top auditioned band at my school)

Cross-country:
gr. 9-12
Varsity grades 11, 12
Captain gr. 12
All-Conference Honorable Mention this year

Track and field:
gr. 9-12 (assuming)
Varsity gr. 11, 12

Speech:
gr. 8-11

Jazz band:
gr. 9-12
Serving as Student Director this year

Job:
Server at an assisted living facility
gr. 10-12

Volunteering:
gr. 11 volunteered as math tutor

National Merit Semi-Finalist
AP Scholar with Distinction

My Common App essay was, in my opinion, pretty good, and my letters of recommendation should be good.
So far I have applied, and been accepted to:
University of Minnesota
U of MN - Duluth
University of Michigan
Colorado State University
Oregon State University
Purdue University

Duke is my #1 choice and I hope it showed in my supplemental essay. I chose not to write the essay about diversity because I am not a very diverse person.

2

I think you have as good of a chance as any at Duke. Your scores are great and you have a decent variety of ECs. Given you have good essays and LORs, it’s probably a low reach (esp. as a female going into a STEM field) :slight_smile:

3

ShawnLooch - Thank you! That’s reassuring to hear!

4

I’ll try to give you an accurate guess. But first a few questions:

What is your approximate class rank?
How many APs are possible to take at your high school?
Will your recommendations say 5) best in career 4) Best of year 3) Excellent/good student 2) Solid 1) bad
Essays: on a scale 1-5 (5 being best) what will your essays be like?

5

sgopal2 - My school does not rank. There are eleven AP classes available at my school, and I have taken nine - the only two I didn’t are AP Art (3D and 2D). My recommendations probably say that I am an excellent student (I did not look at them), but I don’t think I would be considered best of year or career. My Common App personal essay would probably be a 4 or 5. My Pratt essay would be about a 4.

6

Hello - I lost track of this thread. For future reference, please use the @ symbol to summon people back to a thread. I’ve taken a look at your profile above, and here are my thoughts:

Duke uses a 6 part scoring system as outlined in this article:
http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2015/03/ferpa-request-gives-inside-look-duke-admissions-process

Although you will have two readers, I am guessing you will be rated as follows:
HS Curriculum: 5
Achievement: 5
Recs: 3
Essays: 3-4
ECs: 2-3
Test scores: 5
Sub-total: 22-24

For Pratt, the two reader scores are summed. The scores for curriculum, achievement and test scores are also doubled. This means the max score for a Pratt applicant is 100. My guess is that you will be in the 86-88 range. This looks very good. My guess is that you will receive an offer of admission in the spring. Good luck!

7

^ @sgopal2, I didn’t know about the Pratt differences. Thanks for the insight.

8

Sorry I meant to say that the scores for HS curriculum and achievement are doubled, and the test scores are tripled. For Pratt, the max scores for each subsection (x 2 readers) are:

HS curriculum: 20 (2 readers x 2)
Achievement: 20 (2 readers x 2)
Reccs: 10
Essays: 10
ECs: 10
Test Scores: 30 (rating scores x 3)

This is all outlined in Rachel Toor’s book (its a bit old, but the process is fundamentally the same)

9

@sgopal2 Thanks for the info! It was really helpful! :slight_smile: