Duke’s Acceptance Rate Completely Plummeted This Year - What Happened?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Duke ED last year was ~20% while this year it was ~15% acceptance rate. No other school experienced a drop like this, does anyone know why this might have happened?

Lots of schools have had record numbers of apps this year, I think Vandy saw a very similar drop in ED acceptance rate. Look at Clemson as well, its acceptance rate has dropped by 10 plus points each of the past two years.

this is one of the main problems with this site - people just throw garbage out - Vanderbilt has provided zero guidance on ED numbers, and this poster putting the misinformation out with no basis

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Too many URMs, athletes, legacies and donors' kids to accept.

This would cause the numbers to go up; not down.

+1. Also this isn’t unique to Duke. Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, UPenn, and Dartmouth accept many legacy/donor types in the early round too. The key driver is that ED apps to Duke went up by 20%, while peer schools saw nowhere near that type of increase

And the year before, Duke saw a drop in ED apps of 25%. This year's total ED apps for Duke are still less than the record.

It seems to me that Duke choosing to accept fewer students than in any of the past five years is a pretty important factor in the "record low" acceptance rate. It's a record low because Duke chose to make it so. Even with the app increase, they could easily have accepted a number similar to past years (880-ish) and ended up somewhere in the high teens.

[Anonymous]

4 kids in my daughter's high school were accepted ED to Duke. Public school in NC. Duke loves our school/district. I know we sent 5-6 kids there a few years ago. Class size of 172.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Duke ED last year was ~20% while this year it was ~15% acceptance rate. No other school experienced a drop like this, does anyone know why this might have happened?

How do you know all this?

The drop is mostly due to high anxiety, full pay striver kids using ED as the new RD to gain an edge.

But no other similar school experienced this type of rise. Columbia even had fewer ED applicants, and UPenn only had a ~3% increase. Out of nowhere Duke applications shot up by 20%, which sharply dropped its acceptance rate

When you compare it to the other southern schools, it is just an average increase.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Duke ED last year was ~20% while this year it was ~15% acceptance rate. No other school experienced a drop like this, does anyone know why this might have happened?

Lots of schools have had record numbers of apps this year, I think Vandy saw a very similar drop in ED acceptance rate. Look at Clemson as well, its acceptance rate has dropped by 10 plus points each of the past two years.

this is one of the main problems with this site - people just throw garbage out - Vanderbilt has provided zero guidance on ED numbers, and this poster putting the misinformation out with no basis

Zero public guidance. Wait and see, their numbers will be up 15 to 20 percent like every other southern school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Duke ED last year was ~20% while this year it was ~15% acceptance rate. No other school experienced a drop like this, does anyone know why this might have happened?

How do you know all this?

The drop is mostly due to high anxiety, full pay striver kids using ED as the new RD to gain an edge.

But no other similar school experienced this type of rise. Columbia even had fewer ED applicants, and UPenn only had a ~3% increase. Out of nowhere Duke applications shot up by 20%, which sharply dropped its acceptance rate

When you compare it to the other southern schools, it is just an average increase.

Why do you think southern schools in particular are getting more apps? Duke is more of a Northeast school by student body and vibe anyways

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Duke ED last year was ~20% while this year it was ~15% acceptance rate. No other school experienced a drop like this, does anyone know why this might have happened?

How do you know all this?

The drop is mostly due to high anxiety, full pay striver kids using ED as the new RD to gain an edge.

But no other similar school experienced this type of rise. Columbia even had fewer ED applicants, and UPenn only had a ~3% increase. Out of nowhere Duke applications shot up by 20%, which sharply dropped its acceptance rate

When you compare it to the other southern schools, it is just an average increase.

Why do you think southern schools in particular are getting more apps? Duke is more of a Northeast school by student body and vibe anyways

Didn’t we just have a 50 page thread about the increased popularity of schools in the south, particularly among kids from Northeast?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:4 kids in my daughter's high school were accepted ED to Duke. Public school in NC. Duke loves our school/district. I know we sent 5-6 kids there a few years ago. Class size of 172.

Wow that’s incredible. How strong is your daughter’s school and will she be applying Duke RD?

[Anonymous]

I haven’t heard of a school that didn’t have a 15% increase in early apps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:4 kids in my daughter's high school were accepted ED to Duke. Public school in NC. Duke loves our school/district. I know we sent 5-6 kids there a few years ago. Class size of 172.

Wow that’s incredible. How strong is your daughter’s school and will she be applying Duke RD?

I don't think the school itself is that impressive. About 3/4 of the student body, however, are children of college professors, doctors, etc. A lot of very, very smart kids. And Duke must know that. About 1/4 of student body are low income. We lived in Fairfax County before and the school is not ranked as highly as Marshall/Madison/Oakton in US News. My daughter has nowhere near the stats to apply to Duke. She applied to big state schools like Penn State, Maryland, NC State, etc.

[Anonymous]

Duke may make it an institutional priority to accept a certain number of students from NC. This is not uncommon although only a few private colleges, like Bowdoin, clearly state it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I haven’t heard of a school that didn’t have a 15% increase in early apps.

Most of Duke’s peer schools did not, only Dartmouth was close to having that level of increase.

Harvard - 2% increase

UPenn - 3% increase

Columbia - 9% decrease (shocking)

Dartmouth - 14% increase (they went need-blind for internationals)

Yale - 6% increase

Duke - 20% increase

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Duke may make it an institutional priority to accept a certain number of students from NC. This is not uncommon although only a few private colleges, like Bowdoin, clearly state it.

+1 Duke actually has a quota of students it tries to enroll from NC each year I believe. But NC has been pushing out strong students, plus the top magnet school (right up there with TJ) NCSSM is a Duke feeder, so the NC mandate probably isn’t holding back the student quality of Duke much anymore

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven’t heard of a school that didn’t have a 15% increase in early apps.

Most of Duke’s peer schools did not, only Dartmouth was close to having that level of increase.

Harvard - 2% increase

UPenn - 3% increase

Columbia - 9% decrease (shocking)

Dartmouth - 14% increase (they went need-blind for internationals)

Yale - 6% increase

Duke - 20% increase

This is your proof that you are not correctly classifying it’s peer schools. Most of these schools already had an ED/REA acceptance rate lower than Duke’s this year. Vanderbilt, Emory, Rice are way closer to a peer schools.

Also, Duke chose to take fewer kids ED this year, so that’s part of the reason for the decline.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Duke may make it an institutional priority to accept a certain number of students from NC. This is not uncommon although only a few private colleges, like Bowdoin, clearly state it.

That's possible. I also think they probably have a good experience with students from our school (and others in our district). I'm guessing a lot of legacies apply and probably some children of Duke staff. And as I said, a lot of smart kids in our school.