Pretty weird case. Chance me RD

Colleges and Universities A-Z Duke University
1

Race: White
Sex: Male
State: SC

GPA: 3.6 UW, 4.2 W
ACT: 35, 36E, 31M, 36R, 36S, 8 Writing
Rank: Top 15%
Subject Tests: None

EC’s:
Baseball (JV/Varsity) for 4 years. Captain Freshman year (only year captains were selected). Coach’s Award (9th)
Co-caretaker of disabled mother
Work a home renovation job to pay for personal expenses and larger bills as of lately. My hours are roughly 20-30 per week as of November, but only 4 per week on average before then.
Self-taught pianist. Performances at church.
Choir member. Leader of youth choir.
4-H club (vice president one year)
Volunteering: 72 hours total from 10th to 12th grade. (Bad, I know)
Club archery. Team captain this year.
Recs: Two generic teacher recs because I do online school. One (presumably) good rec from baseball coach.

Awards: QuestBridge Finalist. Honor Roll lmao

Essays: Fairly strong. Duke supplement should be very good.

Extras: Looks good right? Well, I’ve only taken roughly half of the available AP’s, with 5 this year. I made a 5 on the only one I took Junior year (Micro). I have a 4.0 right now. My GPA is only bad because of Freshman year. Also, my EC’s aren’t huge-ass time commitments. 4 are only an hour per week for a fraction of the year. Baseball, caretaking, piano, and my job take up most of my time. Knowing this, how do I look?

2

I think you have a pretty compelling story (helping to take care of your mother, working a significant home renovation job, low income) with solid stats (very high ACT, upward trend on GPA), so I certainly think adcoms would understand the small deficiencies in your application. Obviously, we can only tell so much from what you provided above, but I’d think your “weird case” actually is a decent hook that should help you. Good luck!