<p>I know there are separate admission stats for each school,
but do the admission officers really read them separately?
If there are two students from the same school, one applying to trinity and other applying to pratt, are they not compared at all?
Is it possible to withdraw an applicant in trinity because there was a better applicant in pratt?</p>
<p>Applicants to Trinity and Pratt are evaluated by the same committee using the same standards. Adcoms do not sort by college and review them separately. It is not until the final decisions are made that the college is considered, at which point it circumstances might be such that it is easier to be admitted to Pratt than Trinity. As an example, if you are waitlisted, you are more likely to be admitted if you applied to Pratt based on recent history.</p>
<p>Applicants do not compete against other applicants from their school. Everyone competes against the same national pool (with a slight possible exception if you are from Montana or North Dakota). The consideration of your application will be the same whether or you are the only applicant from your high school. I have heard of cases (not specifically at Duke) where a student was moved from the reject pile to the waitlist to ease the sting of a “less desirable/lower ranked” student from the same high school was accepted. However, i have never heard of a maximum quota from any high school, or one applicant being rejected in order to make room for another student from the same school.</p>
<p>"…circumstances might be such that it is easier to be admitted to Pratt than Trinity."</p>
<p>Can you elaborate on this statement? Because while Pratt may have a higher acceptance rate than Trinity, the median SAT scores and HS GPA of admitted students are also higher. Therefore, Pratt technically isn’t easier to get into, just more self-selective.</p>
<p>One example that I cited is for applicants who are waitlisted. If an applicant makes it this far, you are more likely to be admitted (based on recent historical data) if you applied to Pratt rather than Trinity. Of course, earning a spot on the waitlist is probably easier for Trinity applicants than those who self-select for Pratt.</p>
<p>Another situation, although this is entirely conjecture on my part, would result if an applicant offered a unique quality. For example, Duke always stuggles to admit students from Montana - if an applicant lives in Montana and is near the cut-line for admission, he is far more likely to be admitted than an identical applicant from New Jersey. Based purely on the fact that Trinity has roughly four or five times as many applicants at Pratt, it would seem reasonable that an applicant from Montana would have a slightly better chance in the smaller pool of applicants at Pratt. The smaller pool would mean both that he would stand out more and that the “cut zone” would be less clearly defined.</p>
<p>Admittely, both of these are special cases that probably affect less than one percent of applicants.</p>