College Decisions + Ask Me Anything (From a current junior at Duke)

Colleges and Universities A-Z Duke University
1

I did this last year around this time, and got a small, but favorable response, so I thought I’d post it again this year. Anyways, here are my results and high school info (I’m a current junior) and I think it’s fun to do a Reddit style AMA. Literally ask me anything you want, about admissions (is what I’m expecting), about college life, or whatever else you want.

Results:
Accepted: Columbia, Duke, Georgetown, NYU, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Vanderbilt, Washington University in St. Louis
Waitlisted: Northwestern, University of Chicago, Yale (Deferred, then Waitlisted),
Rejected: Harvard, Stanford, Brown, University of Michigan

Chose Duke after a long and agonizing process

Stats:
Objective:
SAT I (breakdown): 2350 (no superstore, only took it once) (CR: 800, Writing: 780, Math: 770)
ACT (breakdown): 36 (took it twice, same results both times) (Verbal: 36 Math: 36 Sci: 36 Reading: 36 Composite: 36 Writing: 34)
SAT II: 800 Math 2, 800 Physics, 730 Literature
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 4.0
Weighted GPA: 4.889
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 99th percentile
AP (place score in parenthesis): 5 Physics B, 5 APUSH, 5 Language + Comp, 5 AP Calc BC, 5 Stats, 4 Physics C Mechanics, 4 Physics C E+M
IB (place score in parenthesis): N/A
Senior Year Course Load: Pretty difficult
Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): National Merit Scholar, AP Scholar with Honor, 6th place BPA Nationals (Legal Office Procedures), 3rd, 4th place BPA State (Video Production Team and Legal Office Procedures, respectively), Honorable Mention Toshiba Exploravision Competition (or something like that, I don’t really remember)

Subjective:

Extracurriculars (info in parenthesis):
Cross Country (was not recruited for any sport) 9-12 (JV Captain)
Varsity Tennis 9-12 (Team Captain, State Qualifier)
BPA 10-12 (National Finalist)
Quiz Bowl 9-12 (Team Captain and leading scorer)
Marching Band 9-12 (Section leader)
Concert Band 9-12 (Principal Saxophone player all four years, Principal for All-District two years, All State)
Tri-M (Music Honor Society) 10-12 (President, I organized and did a ton of volunteer work through this)
Classical Piano Lessons for 12 years, Saxophone for 7, Guitar for 5

Job/Work Experience: Coached Tennis for younger children
Volunteer/Community service: Volunteered at my local library, tutored math at school, organized and did music clinics at elementary schools
Summer Activities: Running, Tennis, Eat, Sleep repeat x4 summers
Essays (rating 1-10, details):

  • Common App Essay 8 : I wrote the failure prompt from that year and a lot of the people I showed the essay to said it was good. I wrote about how I learned that sometimes I wouldn’t succeed no matter how hard I worked, and how I learned to be okay with that, because the activity itself was enough

-Other supplemental essays: I really like talking about myself so I thought they were all pretty good. Highlights include my Yale supplement, which was about learning Parkour and how it changed the way I looked at the world, my Duke optional supplement which was about breaking the Asian stereotypes, and my NYU supplement which was structured around their admissions advertisement tagline

Teacher Rec #1: English Teacher (9) Had him sophomore year, so there was a bit of a disconnect there, but I think it was good. He was one of the best to testify about my personal growth from a smart but kind of bad kid (getting into trouble and stuff) to a better person.
Teacher Rec #2: Math Teacher (9) Again, I think it was good because my junior year math teacher saw a lot of my growth as a person, from being kind of arrogantly standoffish to a lot more willing to help my peers and collaborate.
Counselor Rec: (7) My counselor and I loved each other (not in a weird way) but I don’t know if she said anything particularly interesting

Other:
Applied for Financial Aid?: Yes
Intended Major: English
State (if domestic applicant): IL
Country (if international applicant): USA
School Type: Large Public
Ethnicity: Asian (Chinese)
Gender: Male
Income Bracket: 100-110k
Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): None

So, like I said at the beginning, ask me anything that comes to mind, it can have nothing to do with admissions, but if a specific piece of data catches your attention with respect to admissions, then by all means.

Extra note: This happened last year so I’m just going to throw this in: by no means am I trying to prohibit others from answering any questions in this thread. I just want to give this years applicants a chance to maybe compare themselves to me and ask some questions.

2

Do I have chances at Early Decision?

Pratt School of Engineering - Biomedical Engineering

Ethnicity: white
Gender: female
Country: Georgia(Republic of Georgia)
Komarovi School of Physics and Mathematics(The most competitive school in my country)

SAT: 1470 super scored (670 cr/e, 800 math)
SAT IIs: 800 (math II), 800 (physics), 800 (Biology)
ACT: None
Toefl: 108
UW GPA: 4.0
Class Rank: N/A

Honors:
Winner of National Math Olympiad and National Biology Olympiad.
Winner of English Language Olympiad
Competitor at International Biology Olympiad

Activities:
Math and Biology Clubs
Android App Developer; Winner of Technovation Challenge Georgia 2017
Winner of Junior Achievement Georgia 2015 - The Student Company Program
Private English and Russian classes
Volunteer and Organizer at Healthy Lifestyle Promotion Program
…

My recommendations must be pretty good.
Essays are strong as well according to my advisor at EducationUSA

I am an Internally Displaced Person(refugee) and have written about that in optional essay
I also apply for financial aid. My family can pay no more than 10,000$

3

@Tikuna

I’m not an expert, and the truth is that nobody can really say what someone’s chances are, but I’ll give it a go:

Being international always makes things complicated - the standard that international students are held to is just so much higher than Americans. Fair or not, that’s how it is. My international friends are some of the smartest and most accomplished people I’ve ever met, bar none.

That being said, you are clearly intelligent and accomplished as well. You’re grades and test scores are great, and you’re extracurriculars are strong, if a bit cookie-cutter. What I think is really going to put you over the top is the kind of story you can tell and the kind of passion you can demonstrate - What gets you out of bed every morning? What is it that you care so much about that you could do it every hour of every day for the rest of your life? Prove to the admissions committee that you have something like that (and I mean prove it. Don’t just tell them, show them), whatever it is, and you’re in.

Financial aid usually hurts as an international. I don’t know a single student here at Duke that is both international and on financial aid. However, as you’ve said, you’re a displaced person, and I think the admissions committee is going to be pretty open to someone with a great story like yourself.

Ultimately, you’re in a unique situation, which makes things harder to judge, but I’d say you have a strong chance. Good luck and let me know if you have any more questions!

4

Hi, thank you for making this discussion. What do you think my chances are for Duke ED (I just submitted last week!)

Chinese Asian Male (applying Trinity)

Grades/Classes:
GPA: 93.83/100 weighted with maximum rigor at a prestigious private school (a few high B’s…foremost concern)
Senior Classes: Linear Algebra/Multivariable Calculus, Physics Honors, English Honors, AP US/Comparative Government, Art History, Modern Middle East, Newspaper

Testing:
SAT: 780 Reading/800 Math/24 Writing
SAT Subjects: 800 US History, 800 Math II
PSAT: 1510 (National Merit Semifinalists)
AP: 5/5/5/5/4/4 (AP Scholar with Distinction)

Activities:
Student Council highest elected position
Newspaper Editor-in-Chief (nationally ranked publication)
All-State wrestling captain (2-year captain, 4-years varsity)
Artist, Teen Art Gallery Ambassador (3x Scholastic Honorable Mention for solo work)
Design/marketing jobs at two companies (both paid, one student-run)
Community Service (Project leader, President’s Gold Award)
East Asian Affinity Group officer/senior advisory board
Football (2 years, 1-year varsity)
Summer internship at fashion company, organized runway show at school
Freshman retreat counselor

Essays and recommendations strong (probably first or second best part of my application)

Thanks!

5

@dyan160

I wouldn’t worry about the B’s so much, I don’t think that’s such a big deal (though I didn’t get any…). Once you get to the tier-1 (HYPS, MIT, etc.) or tier-2 schools (Duke, Penn, Northwestern, etc.) it’s a lot less about grades and tests, and more about your extracurriculars. The GPA and tests just get you in the door.

So, your extracurricular’s look good. Lots of variety, and lots of interesting stuff. Are you being recruited for wrestling? That’s obviously going to make things a lot easier (bonus: if you are being recruited for wrestling, you’ll live in the same dorm I did freshman year!). If not, don’t sweat it. Your resume looks super strong.

I think there are two small weaknesses with your application. 1st, you don’t really have any national-level distinctions to your name. You do have your newspaper, which is nationally ranked, but I don’t know how the rankings work so I can’t say for sure if it fits what I’m looking for. Basically, I think it helps a lot if you can show that you’ve gone up against every other high schooler in the country in a certain activity and come out on top of them all. Whether that’s a scholarship, like winning the National Merit Scholarship, or a competition, like USAMO, or an extracurricular, like BPA, showing you were able to beat everyone else makes you stand out. I used BPA as an example because even though it’s not the most prestigious or well-known competition, being able to show that I could beat out almost everyone else at it went a long way for me, I think. So, your newspaper could be that thing, or your fashion internship could be it (depending on the prestige of your employer), but it’s not obvious, you know?

Second, your interests are very diverse, which is both good and not good at once. It’s not good because just looking at what you’ve shown me, I can’t really see what your “thing” is. Like, I don’t know what your number one passion is; if I had to guess, I would say marketing/publicity type stuff, but I can’t say for sure. That was something I think I was weak at: if you look at my resume up top, you would probably guess music, but again, it’s hard to say for sure, right? I think the very best applicants have both a wide variety of interests that they’re good at, but also that one thing that they’re really, really, interested in and good at.

All that being said, those are minor weaknesses, and I think you should have a decent shot at Duke, especially ED.

6

Thank you so much for such a thorough response. I am being recruited for wrestling to a few D3 schools, but not Duke, unfortunately. My national level awards are definitely lacking, but I think the newspaper could compensate a bit since we have won a number of major national awards. My main “passion” would probably be in the arts/design, but wrestling takes up a huge amount of my time and so do student council/newspaper.

Thanks again for your analysis!

7

Chances at Trinity? Not applying early but will in regular round. If you could give me a few pointers as far as strengths + weaknesses that need to be addressed in essays that would be awesome too.

Asian male from an average public school in California. >150k income bracket.

Stats:
GPA: 4.0 unweighted, 4.77 weighted, school does not rank but top 1%
Standardized Testing: 36 ACT
Subject Tests: 800 in Bio (M), Chem, Physics, Math II
Course Rigor: Maximum offered by school. Am physically taking a diff eq. math course at a local community college.

ECs:

  1. CEO of registered California 501©(3) public benefit nonprofit corporation. Host quizbowl-style competitions specifically targeting middle schools w/o much exposure to academic extracurriculars as a form of outreach.
  2. Model UN stuff (large umbrella)
  • Secretary-general for a city-wide middle school MUN Conference. Will not name for reasons of personal identification but it is one of the largest/oldest in the world and organizing it involves coordinating a 60+ person high school staff.
  • Director/founding member of an outreach program that connects experienced MUNers with schools that are just starting up/need help with their clubs.
  • Was heavily involved with the inaugural sessions of a local high school conference (Under-secretary general of logistics) my sophomore/junior years.
  • Club president. We help out a lot with our feeder middle school’s MUN club.
  1. Paid research at a local institution. Full-time during summer, part-time now. Very well known and am working on getting a publication, although I doubt it will happen in time for apps .
  2. President of Science Olympiad, Academic League, and Math Clubs, roughly in order of time commitment. Volunteer coach for middle school SciOly. Helped found a Chemistry Club and was president last year but dissolved due to lack of interest .

Awards: USNCO Semifinalist w/Honors, AIME qualifier, tons of state/regional level Science Olympiad medals, nothing particularly major or overtly prestigious. Would consider myself to be highly talented at MUN and have won Best Delegate/Gavel 6 times, but Model UN lacks a national circuit/culminating tournament where I could qualify that assertion.

In freshman/sophomore year I was part of JROTC (grants mandatory PE credit) and I won their national academic bowl championship. Team captain/top scorer at event. Not sure if this is significant given lower level of competition. I’m good - top 10 in my area, close to playoffs level at NAQT nats, etc in quizbowl - but not amazing or a standout by any means.

Recommendation: AP Lang and AP Bio teacher. Both should be great to excellent. Getting an additional rec from my research mentor.
Essay: No clue
Hooks: None? Don’t really have anything like USAMO that singularly drives my application. I think the depth of my commitment to service/educational outreach (through nonprofit and MUN) stands out but to top colleges I’m probably just another well-rounded applicant.

8

@thinkingfastslow

Your application as it stands looks pretty good to me. There are plenty of people at Duke who didn’t have what you have when applying. Then again, there are also a few people who get rejected with more than what you have.

Stats look good. Extracurriculars are diverse and interesting, as well as show high levels of achievement in a lot of areas. Your nonprofit is probably the single most attractive thing on your application. I would definitely talk about it in your essay(s) - focus on why you started it, and what you learned from operating it. You might be tempted to describe your (honestly pretty remarkable) achievement in starting and running your own nonprofit, but I would try not to. It’s impressive enough on it’s own; focus on yourself and who you are in the context of the work you’ve done.

Another note I want to give, it’s really not that related to you, but I want to say it because I have an axe to grind: letters of recommendation are fickle. Talking to admissions officers, a lot of them say that most letters of rec suck. They suck because the admissions officers have read them a thousand times over. A letter of rec talking about how you were the most gifted student they’d ever seen, were a perfect angel in the classroom, helped others like a saint, and generally were all around the most incredible human being ever to exist is going to do nothing for you. 1- it reads as overdramatic and unauthentic. 2- 10,000 (and I mean that number literally) other kids are going to be submitting the same letters. You might as well have not have even sent a letter in.

The letters of rec need to show who you are (if you read my other posts in this thread, you might be starting to notice a trend), not how awesome you are. For example, I think my letters of rec were especially strong because both of my teachers could testify to my personal growth, from being a kind of rebellious, troublemaking (edgy) kid to a much more conscientious one.

The problem is that you can’t see what your teachers wrote, so how do you know if they’ve made the mistake (in my opinion) of turning you into an academic superhero? Well, I would sit down with them and just be honest about what you’d like them to write. There’s no need to wax poetic on how smart you are. Just let the adcoms know, from an outside perspective, who you are, where you’ve been, and where you hope to go.

But again, I have no idea what your teachers are thinking or your letters of rec look like. I just have a personal agenda against “amazing” letters of rec that aren’t going to help in the slightest.

Anyways, your application looks really strong, and I would feel good about my chances if I were you. That being said, weirder things have happened than someone with your resume not getting into a school like Duke, so there’s that.

9

So, OP, of the many things that you did to prepare for college, which turned out to be the most useful once your feet were on the ground at Duke? That is, which pre-college experiences/activities/classes turned out to be the ones that were most important once the admissions process was in the rear-view mirror?

10

OP has been gone for a few months, so I doubt an answer is forthcoming.

11

@skieurope I’ll take full odds on that come bet.

12

@skieurope yo

13

@RustyTrowel

I wouldn’t say I really did anything specifically to prepare for college, but here’s what I can tell you.

Honestly, I had a somewhat difficult time adjusting to the rigor of the curriculum - I was used to breezing through all my classes, and Duke was orders of magnitude more difficult. My studying habits had to improve, time management, motivation, etc.

The thing I think that helped me most making the transition to Duke was my relative level of independence. In high school, I was used to taking care of myself, doing things on my own for the most part, taking my own initiative. That translated well to college, where you have to do everything on your own. I didn’t get as homesick as some of my friends, or struggle as much with living on my own, because I was used to taking care of myself.

14

My son is going to attend Duke in 2018. Can you please let us know if there are some places to go out in the weekend for fun or restaurants to eat out. When we visited and we were there for one day, it seemed like everything was quite far away from the campus.
How are the fraternities? I don’t think he will join because all the horror stories you read about them. I am talking in general for frat stories all across US.

15

@GammaDelta
Fraternities - Sizing up the Duke fraternities will require your S. to do some boots-on-the-ground research as it is very hard to generalize them. They come in all shapes, and some can work very well for some students. The question to join one will likely revolve less around ‘horror stories’ than a cold calculation on the student’s part about whether he thinks the yield on the time invested is likely to be high. Given the participation rates, many Duke students think the yield is high. However, there are plenty of students who think the opposite is true, and they largely avoid the Greek scene. It is very likely to be a mistake to make the Greek participation decision before getting there and investigating for oneself.

Social environment/‘places to go out’ - There is not some sort of shortage of fun on the Duke campus. Greek or not Greek, the place has a surplus of social riches. The issue is whether the student has (or can develop relatively quickly) the discipline @waitwhaat is describing above. The professors do not slow down the pace in the classes to make room for a little extra time for fun. Many classes are a little bit deceptive in that you think it will be much easier than it turns out to be. And so the conundrum–it is hard to fit everything at this giant Duke smorgasbord onto one’s relatively small, student-sized plate.

In the end, the student has to decide what they really want to get out of the experience.

16

@waitwhaat Thank you for the post.

Can you please help me decide between Duke and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) for my Masters in Data Science in Fall 2018, as you also went through same confusion last year:

Here are the key differences between both the programs:

  1. Duke will be having the inaugural class in Fall 2018. We would be entering into a completely new course at Duke University (www.datascience.duke.edu). On the other hand, UIUC has a pretty established program.
  2. Duke offers more flexibility and variety of courses, along with a capstone project in second year of Masters. The UIUC program is a little stringent one and doesn’t include a capstone project.
  3. UIUC is costing around $55000 for two years, whereas Duke would cost $94300 for two years.
  4. Class size at Duke would be 30-35 students, and at UIUC it would be 65-70 students.

So my main query is : Is it worth giving extra $40000 to Duke? Is the brand difference between Duke and UIUC worth this much amount?

17

^ An undergraduate won’t be in the best position to help you make a decision regarding graduate school.

18

My son is trying to decide between Duke and a state schoolfor Computer Science. We are trying to figure out how many of his AP credits (he has 47), will apply and if he may be able to graduate a semester early. Do you know anyone who has done this? Is it pretty hard to do?

19

Hi my son really likes Duke. What are his chances of ED to Pratt(EE) or trinity(Econ)? He goes to a competitive private school with all honors courses and took a challenging curriculum.

GPA3.75
SAT1580(one sitting)
SAT11 800/800(math,physics)
AP 5,5,4,4. (BC Cal, Phy E&M, Phy Mech, English)
They can only take APs in Junior year. Varsity sports at state level since middle school. Volunteer coach and volunteer mechanic in summer. NMSF. Founder of literary magazine at school. GPA low due to 9th grade.

Thanks