<p>Neither. The main difference is that ED is a serious pledge to a school, which schools are likely to appreciate. The same effect can be achieved in RD, but it’s harder to be taken as seriously.</p>
<p>I’m just hoping there isn’t a 33% increase in RD applications as well!</p>
<p>I don’t think there will be an association between the 32% ED increase and the RD application numbers. The sort of marketing and the sort of decisions a student makes when choosing a binding first-choice option are distinctly different from the sort of decision he/she has to make in adding one extra school to a list of RD schools.</p>
<p>Yeah, that makes sense. Will our acceptance rate be significantly lower?</p>
<p>Personally, I don’t think so. Admissions rates don’t change significantly even when there are massive increases in numbers of applicants. This year’s Chicago EA will go down as a strong evidence for that.</p>
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<p>Well, Chicago’s EA acceptance rate is high because the admissions office is trying to increase yield. Overall acceptance rate will go down 8-9% at least.</p>
<p>Admissions rates don’t change significantly even when there are massive increases in numbers of applicants.
don’t agree with this…Duke’s acceptance number is going to be going down this year with its unusual surge of applicants for the ED round and it remains to be seen how the RD round will go in numbers. Vanderbilt’s Arts and Sciences school admission rate was only 18% this past year and they also enjoyed a large increase in ED applicants this fall…not as large as Duke’s though. When my Duke 09 son applied to colleges in 05, Vandy had been accepting in the high 30%, but Vanderbilt’s demographics have altered greatly in a short span of time. Duke’s rates do still have room to drop further. Students are interested in universities with a need blind admission plus no loan package plan in this economy.</p>
<p>The fact that they admitted 9% more ED students (54 more to be exact) than last year means that the admit rate for RD will almost certainly drop, assuming a similar overall number of RD applications. There are only ~1700 spots in the incoming class, so by admitting more early, there just aren’t as many spots available…</p>
<p>[Duke</a> Accepts 602 Early Decision Applicants](<a href=“http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2009/12/early_decision.html]Duke”>http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2009/12/early_decision.html)</p>
<p>"Guttentag added that while the overwhelming majority of places would continue to be filled by Regular Decision applicants, this year would likely be at least as selective as last year. Last year we received more than 22,350 Regular Decision applications. This year, those Regular Decision applicants will be vying for just 1,100 spaces in the class.</p>
<p>^Not necessary, in my view it just means that they’ll admit more HYPMS-caliber applicants because they can afford to decrease their yield with the hope of seeing a net increase in the standard of their incoming class. And even if the admissions rate does drop appreciably (let’s not talk about tiny fluctuations here), I am skeptical that it will greatly affect a qualified applicant’s shot at Duke. At most, it’ll decrease the marginal applicant’s shot of getting lucky/</p>
<p>Um…out of curiosity…on both the Princeton Review and College board it says that GPA and class rank are only considered and not weighted nearly as heavily as SAT/ACT’s and application essays are. Please…someone tell me this is true!</p>
<p>I think you might enjoy seeing the recent interview on video with Guttentag to get perspective…it is on the Duke website and other places online.<br>
My son was something like 16th in his class and got in above someone at a higher rank with better test scores. I think the whole student is evaluated and there are no fast and hard rules. Perfectly wonderful students are not admitted at Duke and many peer institutions in arbitrary ways and it is hard to predict outcomes. Most students will be in the top 5-10% but they are pros and recognize schools where ranking is not meaningful or where As are hard to come by. </p>
<p>hang in there, there is no one road for entry to Duke or any other college.</p>
<p>I second the suggestion to watch the interview with Dean Guttentag.</p>
<p>For some reason ustream is blocked in China and normal proxies don’t support flash for videos!</p>
<p>Darn the “great firewall of China”</p>
<p>Another RDer… hello to all :)</p>
<p>Me too!
I was coldly deferred not too long ago and now await the decisions as I type out my other college essays. Procrastination sucks.</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>indeed it does. 7 supplemental essays to go XD</p>
<p>Whoever was complaining about Duke girls in that other thread needs to watch that interview lol.</p>
<p>Can anyone repost the link? I only saw parts of it before, but I can’t find the link right now >_>. And also, hi srrinath…hopefully we have better luck with Duke than we did with uchicago eh?</p>
<p>Here’s the interview…
[Ask</a> Admissions with Christoph Guttentag, a discussion of Duke University admissions policies dukeuniversity on USTREAM. Educational](<a href=“http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2579871]Ask”>http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2579871)</p>
<p>And hi guys, I’ve seen y’all around the Chicago forums as well 
Hope we have some good luck with Duke!</p>
<p>that interview was so insightful, thanks for posting!</p>