It seems Duke not taking very many applicants from northeastern region. Southern bias?

If my kid school’s Naviance holds any truth that is.

Duke does consider state residency in their application process, but so do most elite private universities.

For Duke’s class of 2021 enrollees, approximately 24% of students were from from Mid-Atlantic + New England states. For comparison, 34% of enrollees at UChicago were from those regions. Does that imply bias against the NE? I’d want to see more comparisons before making a judgement.

Sources:
http://admissions.duke.edu/images/uploads/process/DukeClass2021Profile.pdf
https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/page/profile-class-2021

Anecdotal evidence from one HS does not constitute reliable data.

That’s the thing-- one school’s results from one year implies absolutely nothing.

But I understand your point. My kid’s HS shows almost no acceptances, whilst H, P, Y etc admit a few each year. Who knows?

Each senior class tends to have a different personality from the one before. Some are more studious, some more athletic, some more spirited. It’s certainly possible that the results you’re seeing on Naviance reflect that phenomena. Likewise, since Naviance is self reported, you probably aren’t getting the whole picture.

I think the number of data points should suffice from my perspective to draw the conclusion I did. A very well known private school, which sends double-digit students every year to HYPSM etc, Consistently Duke is a missing-in-action, and sadly, my kid likes one of its programs currently among the top of the country.

Then maybe it’s something about your school that Duke has an issue with. I’m on Long Island. Between my school and my husband’s, a number of kids go to Duke.

Harvard takes more from Mass, Princeton takes more from NJ. I expect Duke takes more from NC too.

One cannot assume they take “more” students from a particular state without looking at the aggregate number of students that applied from that state. Isn’t the perception actually to the contrary with elite school admissions? Isn’t it understood that applying to Duke from Alaska or South Dakota would help more (albeit marginally) than applying from NC?

At yesterdays info session the Duke admissions officer stated their largest applicant pools, and student representation, were NC, NY,CA, FL and TX, which makes sense.

There’s a map showing the geographic profile of Duke’s class of 2021 online. Glad Duke (and other schools) share that type of information

No one from my kid’s school got accepted into Duke…Therefore Duke may be biased against an entire geographical section of the United States… :))