Duke Class of 2020 Waitlist

I thought I’d make this thread for those waitlisted at Duke, Class of 2020. Can anyone post if he/ she hears about the waitlist moving for this year? Thank you.

I am still waitlisted.

Please post if your status has been changed from waitlisted to accepted!

Still waitlisted. We toured Duke last week and were told no one was taken off the waitlist last year and to accept their second choice by May 1.

Also, we were told they would be reviewing all the waitlist candidates starting on May 1 and we would not hear till mid-May.

Thanks.

Any other intel from any other wait listed candidates?

was told Duke will start pulling people off the waitlist next week and the waitlist will be cancelled mid may.

@nolanconcepts Thank you. Did you get the impression that they will actually go to their waitlist or just that, if they do, it will be next week?

I was told that approximately they approximetly have the same yield of students as last year. So yes it seems as if they will go to the wait list next week.

Last yr the yield was higher than anticipated, the class was one of the biggest in history, and they took very few from the wl

I was also told that, if any spots are available, they will act on them quickly after May 1 to finalize this year’s class. Apparently last year no kids were taken from the wait list for Pratt Engineering and few, if any, came off for Trinity Arts & Sciences. Not too hopeful for wait-listed students. However, I also heard from a Duke rep that they were trying to avoid over-enrollment issues that they had last year, so they may have accepted fewer students initially this year in order to try to manage enrollment/yield to the exact number they want (and can support in housing/classes) through the wait list. It will be interesting to see what happens next week. My opinion is that these competitive colleges should not wait list so many kids - It is a bit of a joke, as they take so few off the wait list. Please post any wait list news that you hear. Good luck!

The yield rate for class of 2019 was higher than expected and resulted in a slight over-enrolment.

Now let’s look at the numbers:

For the class of 2019: 2650 were admitted through regular decisions, combined with 815 through early decision. A total number of 3465 admitted students and an exceptionally high overall yield rate of approx. 49.5% resulted in a slight over-enrolment as an entering class size of 1750.

For the class of 2020: 2501 (149 less than last year) were admitted through regular decisions, combined with 813 (2 less than last year) through early decision, and an additional 20 less students who were deferred ED but accepted later.

So overall Duke admitted around 160 fewer students than it did last year, with an overall number of admitted students of 3314. So suppose Duke has approx. the same yield rate this year, that says, 49.5%, around 1640 students were going to accept their offer. And this means Duke is likely to take 60-70 students off the waitlist, given that the yield rate doesn’t change dramatically this year.

FYI, all these numbers came from Duke Chronicle so they are accurate and official.

Thanks for doing the research and math above. I may have one possible slight modification to the numbers above. I read in a Duke Chronicle article that the number of ED Deferred students that were later accepted in the RD round was 49, not 20. A student/friend who was in that ED-deferred-then-accepted group also mentioned that number to us. Thus, the estimated possible wait list acceptances would be more like 40-50, at least under the yield assumption above. I guess that some of those waitlisted kids could turn Duke down in May, so a few more could be offered in that event. We will see what happens.

And, because the size of the Pratt Engineering class is so small, I am guessing that most, if not all, of the wait list offers would be for Trinity students. But, I hope I am proven wrong, as my son is on the wait list for Engineering.

Thanks for the info. above. Does anyone have any info./ perspective on how many applicants are on the (Trinity) waitlist?

Do we think that they are going to start pulling kids off the waitlist next week?

I do think they will start pulling kids off the waitlist next week, although no one has said that specifically. I have no wait list numbers for this year - Anyone else? But, in the past, they seem to offer the wait list to a total of number of students almost the size of the full class freshman class, and then about 1,000 kids decide to stay on the wait list. Those are very general, estimated numbers and not specific to Trinity or Pratt. It seems hard to get info on those exact wait list numbers, especially broken down by school. Please correct me if someone has more concrete numbers from the past or from this year.

Just to clear the confusion. I mentioned above that 20 less students were deferred ED but accepted later than last year, not that only 20 were accepted. So the estimation remains that around 70 are to be take from the waitlist, considering that the yield for waitlist-admitted students is around 70-75% each year.

Thanks for clarifying. Sorry I misread earlier. Today is May 1, so they should know their exact yield by tomorrow.
Does your calculation mean that they would have to offer spots to about 90 - 100 students on the waitlist to get the 70, because 70-75% would accept the wait list spot? Or would they offer just 70 to get the number they need? Sorry to be dense. I understand that it doesn’t matter that much as the odds are still low. Just curious.