they will not be sued if they don’t accept 50/50. for comparison, 24% of penn ED accepted students were test optional. it’s going to hinge on the 60/40 number as well as overall strength of test optional applications
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Do international students that do not request financial aid have an advantage?
Over those that don’t? Probably. Duke is need aware for international applicants so it will likely be a factor in y’alls admissions decisions
I think yes! Duke is need-aware, not need-blind. Which means that finances can actually influence the decision. Especially this year because of covid, they probably want to admit as many students that will pay full tuition as they can. Covid was really expensive…
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Perhaps, there is also a large chance that more international applicants will apply for aid due to COVID.
From the Duke website “ Since admission at Duke is need -blind for U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and undocumented students, we never consider a student’s ability to pay when making an admission decision.” Domestic students ability to pay is not considered. International students are a different story but the website is not very clear on that because they want as many people as possible to apply.
I also believe that the rise in applications is because of the test optional route this year. I fell that some of the people who applied test optional just done it as a “Hail Mary” to a very selective school. I think it would be very unfair to select students 50/50 when the applications weren’t 50/50. Neither option should give an “advantage” but a different route for students who genuinely struggled to take tests during the spring. I feel some students are using this to try and “play the system”. But I have huge amounts of respect for the ones that did not submit a score and get admitted this afternoon. They were able to show their academics without a two or four digit test score. Good luck to everyone tonight!
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Do you guys think, that applying as a citizen of “underrepresented” in this university country gives you an advantage over some other international student?
I don’t think that they compare domestic students to international students. It wouldn’t be fair to either party. I imagine they have a set number of international students that they take.
That makes sense
i think when we talk about a “test optional disadvantage” it’s really difficult to tell whether or not going test optional itself is bad (fyi, as a 36 ACT applicant, i don’t think test optional is a disadvantage)
it’s more about the average quality of a TO application that we would have to examine. a lot of y’all in this thread have expressed worries about whether your lack of a score will be bad for your app, and i honestly think you all will be fine.
when they say TO disadvantage, i think they’re referring to people who would never apply to duke in a normal year, but think they have a chance because their <28 ACT or <1350 SAT will not appear on their application. these candidates often have other weaknesses in their applications which means an AO can’t in good conscience say they’ll admit 50/50 when they don’t know what the applications will look like.
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If all other factors are the same? Probably.
I fully agree with this. Realistically they cant predict the ratio of TO : Test reported bc they havent seen the apps yet. They aren’t going to admit an obviously unqualified applicant to keep ratios up, or at least that is what I would think
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Do you think an above average GPA compensates and gives a good enough indication of academic ability?
But I do believe that, in terms of domestic students, that people from underrepresented states can be a “tipping” factor in terms of admission. These schools love having the tag “students from all 50 states” and when maybe only 50-100 kids apply from underrepresented states, they will have better chances than students from states like California and New York where there are thousands of applications every year.
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From what I’ve heard, it depends on your school. I think demonstrating academics through AP and Dual Enrollment classes will allow the AO to make a better guess on your academic ability.
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I definitely agree and I touched on it earlier in this thread (though I don’t feel like digging up what exactly I said) that the statement that they would “shoot for 50/50” could only properly be said under the assumption that 50% of applicants applied TO and that the TO peeps on average had the same quality applications as the non-TO peeps.
But Duke knows this, they’re not dumb. They’ll pick a great pool of aplicants to accept and we’ll all end up where we should be, we’ll be fine!
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I will say yes, if it is accompanied with stellar letters of recommendations and good activities. If not, I think only great GPA without anything else that is “above average” won’t give anyone admission.
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from what i’ve heard, and take this with a grain of salt, many people believe that standardized tests this year will be used as a “confirmation” of sorts of your GPA. to make sure your GPA wasn’t weirdly inflated or something like that. in the absence of test scores, if you still have a strong GPA, good course rigor, and good teacher LORs, i personally don’t think you’ll be at a disadvantage.
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Best of luck with the decisions everyone!
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