<p>any of you fullerton kids go to orangethorpe elementary school...?</p>
<p>lol....</p>
<p>haha no. sorry.</p>
<p>nope I went to school in La Habra bfore hs.</p>
<p>Anyway, I applied to duke regular decision.</p>
<p>um i sent my Part I on november 21st and I still haven't been contacted for an interview... should I call up or something and find out?</p>
<p>well, i was contacted for probably a good month after i submitted my part one (october 1st.) i believe my interview on november 5th or 6th. </p>
<p>for all you ed so cal applicants: sadly, we are all competing against one another so i was thinking maybe we could post our stats and see what happens, yes? if you guys agree i will start. :-)</p>
<p>How do you figure that you're competing against one another? Different states have different acceptance rates. Florida, for example, has a rather high acceptance rate; there's no reason they wouldn't take a large number of Californians if a large number of them are qualified. There are no regional quotas.</p>
<p>thats just what the regional officer told us when she came to our school. she looks at a specific region, which in our case consists of so cal and a few southern states (alabama, misssouri (i think), etc.) all the applications in our region are looked at and judged by her before getting to the final admissions committee.</p>
<p>Yes, one person will go through them first, but I always thought that that was more to make the preliminary cuts of the clearly unqualified people which would not have made it in any circumstance, not to really compare specific applications and make judgement calls as much. I'm sure that you're right though, there is some level of direct competition between people in each region, I just think it's probably not a lot.</p>
<p>I had nothing better to do so i read the Admissions Confidential book by Rachel Toor, a former duke admissions officer. It was really interesting. She was very cynical, and for good reason. Anyways, in part of her book she talks about how they don't have regional quotas persay, but they do have like "goals" that they want to meet. And also what i found interesting is that they really do look at students from the same high schools as a group, they evaluate them singularly and then when they go to committee they put the bunch together. There were a lot of interesting things in the book. Really makes you question the weight people tend to put on the admissions process.</p>
<p>interesting...does she say anything about quarter grades and duke specific essays (and any other duke specifc things.)?</p>
<p>the thing i remember her saying about quarter grades is that they're supposed to look at them for every applicant, but they really only do when they think they might help; either to help get the applicant in, or use to help keep the applicant out...</p>
<p>it's kind of very cynical</p>
<p>TxT I screwed up my Duke app. First off, my "Why Duke?" essay was pretty crappy. Then I was trying to send it at 11:40 pm on December 1, except my computer lagged and crashed. So I ended up sending it in at about 12:05 am. T___T I think the fates are telling me to give up on Duke. Tear.</p>
<p>wow fizz, so is she basically denouncing the whole duke admissions process or what?</p>
<p>I lost interest in Duke after reading Admissions Confidential. Would've consideredit if they admitted the smelly geek kid.</p>
<p>I lost interest in Duke after reading Admissions Confidential. Would've considered it if they admitted the smelly geek kid.</p>
<p>wow, they straight up say they dont want people like that? sounds harsh</p>
<p>Yeah I didn't really like the woman honestly. She was from upstate NY, went to Yale, and there's a quotation in the book that goes something like "I thought southern culture was an oxymoron." I don't think she really ever lost that bias, she seemed to want Duke to be more like the Northeastern schools, even while complaining that many people overlooked Duke in favor of those schools, it was kind of strange. I ignored many of her criticism because it seemed like many of the things she was criticising were things that I wouldn't want changed about Duke and why I'm attracted to it in the first place. People have different viewpoints.</p>
<p>And the smelly geek kid was below their standards. She wanted him admitted because she thought he was a "smelly geek", even though his level of achievement was way below many they had rejected. They waitlisted him.</p>
<p>Plus the book isn't her denouncing the Duke admissions process, it's her denouncing the admissions process in general, because Duke shares many of the same aspects with other schools. Not saying that these things aren't necessary, but that the process is much more arbitrary than many own up to, and she is trying to make people aware so they don't drive themselves nuts like honestly many people do on CC.</p>
<p>Jen!! I bump into another one of your posts, what a co-ink-e-dink!</p>
<p>hi tym! co-ink-e-dink, i think not haha.</p>