While browsing our school’s pass college admissions data, I noticed that there seems to be a much stronger correlation between test scores/GPA and acceptance to Duke compared to other elite schools, especially the Ivy League. Also, there seemed to be a pretty hard cutoff at our school, with no one below a 32 ACT ever accepted. On the flip side, 9/13 people with 36 ACTs and 10/34 people with a 35 ACT have been accepted. Did any of y’all notice this unusually strong correlation between test scores and acceptance to Duke at any of your schools? The full data I have is below:
While usually at elite schools, scores and grades above a certain level are all pretty much the same in the eyes of the college, it is possible that for your particular school they are stats oriented. For example, Vanderbilt is that way for my school. I cannot see the exact scatter plots for your school, but if you were to draw an imaginary box in the top right where most of the acceptances are (Disregard unusually low GPAs and scores) and there are 75% accepted in the box and their area outside has a significantly lower acceptance rate, then the college most likely favors your school or is stats oriented. However, if you draw the imaginary box where most of the acceptances are, again not including outliers, and the acceptances are very scattered within it or it is not a defined green zone, then it is probably not stats oriented.
Just going off of logic, for the people with 36 ACT only 2/9 matriculated. This probably means they were extremely strong applicants overall; their ACT probably granted an edge but nothing major. The same goes for 35 ACT (1/10 matriculating).
This is also just for your school so Duke may have statistical evidence that people from your school with a 36 ACT do better or have a bigger impact.
Based on the data you presented, it’s interesting that only 2/9 with 36 ACT and 1/10 with 35 ACT are matriculating to Duke, which suggests they were probably strong applicants overall that got accepted to other elite schools as well. At top schools like Duke, once you pass a threshold for stats like GPA and test scores, they are virtually treated the same. Admissions officers won’t scrutinize for like 1 point difference in ACT composite score. At that point, the essays and EC’s make the difference between acceptance, waitlist, and rejection.
I’d say the opposite. Duke tends to care about much more than stats. Fuqua has relatively low GMAT scores because they care about recruiting students who buy into the “Team Fuqua” culture, Duke med has lower MCAT scores than its peers and more involved secondary essays. I don’t expect Trinity/Pratt to be any different.
Vanderbilt, WUSTL, Caltech, Chicago, and Northwestern are schools that seem to place an emphasis on test scores.
It is possible that your school has close ties to Duke.
@JenniferClint
Northwestern doesn’t place more emphasis on test scores, especially for specialty schools like music, journalism and theater. There used to be ACT reports showing schools with the most applicants from each state and their score breakdown. Turns out Northwestern had stronger applicant pool than a lot of peers including, believe it or not, UChicago, at least in Illinois. Their rise in test scores has been much more gradual than certain peers if you look at the history. They have also put a lot of effort to build a more diverse class in recent years - more URM and Pell Grant recipients (just hit 20% for the class of 2022). A school with strong emphasis on test scores should see a relatively disproportionate percentage of Asian Americans, considering the geography and NU doesn’t has that many even it’s in a fairly urban setting.
Duke’s admission site shows the test scores of the accepted students and they are pretty high. Somehow those scores drop quite a bit for the enrolled class.
Agree with @IWannaHelp: Northwestern University places a great deal of emphasis on bright, hardworking students who want to be at Northwestern rather than on stats, in my opinion. The reality, however, is that NU receives lots of applications from high stats kids targeting Stanford & Harvard and strongly prefers those for whom Northwestern is their first choice school.
@JenniferClint: I think that your lumping Chicago & Northwestern together with WashUStL & Vanderbilt regarding stats shows a misunderstanding of both Chicago area universities.
Both Chicago & Northwestern focus on whether this is one’s first choice school. You might be surprised at the number of high stats applicants each of these schools reject.
Northwestern has a much larger endowment than does Duke, Vanderbilt, Chicago or WashUStL. In fact, NU has recently surpassed the $500,000 per student (including both undergraduate & graduate students = 20,500 total) threshold for endowment tax purposes. Northwestern needs to spend money. While grant aid has been increased over the past several years, Northwestern should consider instituting a large scale merit scholarship program to avoid paying the federal endowment tax.
Northwestern University’s endowment ranks as the 8th largest endowment among all colleges and universities ( approximately $10.5 billion)
Also interesting to note is that Northwestern has more graduate students than it does undergraduates although the law & medical students are on a separate stunning Chicago campus rather than in Evanston.
I analyzed more data from our school, and interestingly enough, NU doesn’t seem to have a really strong correlation with test scores while UChicago does based on anecdotal evidence.