Duke is a popular school and we always work with a ton of students who hope to get in. This popularity usually drives down their acceptance rates. In recent years, Duke has had a lower acceptance rate than schools like Dartmouth, Cornell, and UPenn. So what do we tell students who are dreaming of Duke? Well, one is to demonstrate interest and the other is often to apply early. Fun fact: all of our students who applied to Duke ED last year got in.
Duke usually has a much higher acceptance rate during early decision. Their overall acceptance rate is about 8%. The overall acceptance rate is a combination of rates from the early round and from regular decision. While regular decision for the Class of 2026 was 4.6%, the early acceptance rate was 21%. Similarly, for the Class of 2025, the regular rate was 4.3% and the early was 17%. Because of this, if a student is dreaming of Duke, we highly suggest they consider applying early. However, if you didn’t that doesn’t mean you can’t apply to Duke, it just means you need to make sure you are a highly competitive candidate.
We work with students every day to ensure that they are competitive applicants. At a school like Duke, most applicants have great grades and test scores. To be a truly competitive candidate, students have to do more. We help our students stand out in a crowded field. We do this by crafting a Common App essay as well as a strategic approach to submitting test scores and the activities section. On top of that, we work with our students to have an outstanding supplement. We help our students deliver well-written, fully thought-out, and most importantly engaging and creative supplements.
We have a full blog post on how to tackle the Duke supplement, but during RD, students have to push themselves to do more. The Duke supplement has one required essay and then two optional essays from a list of 4 prompts. We don’t believe these essays are truly optional. We push our students to write them. With such a low acceptance rate, we don’t think serious candidates should ignore opportunities to show themselves off. If you want to stand out, you need to take the opportunity to do so.
While the first essay is fairly standard, the optional essays actually leave a lot more room for creativity. We highly encourage our students to be dynamic and creative. The first step with these essays is to choose the right prompts for you. While not everyone is going to be able to speak about LGBTQ diversity, everyone can share a story about learning from someone different than you. We strategize with our students to make sure they choose the right prompts for them.
Once we have the prompts, we push our students to write creative stories. We brainstorm with our students and then work on outlines. We think it’s important to choose stories that show off interesting and new sides of the applicant. We then make sure those stories are told in eye-catching ways. While a simple story can work, in the RD round we push our students to employ more advanced writing skills. Playing with form can make an application turn heads for all the right reasons. Using vignettes or time jumps or poetics is a lot to ask from most 17-year-olds, but that's why we work with our students at every step of the process and come up with strategic and bespoke plans for each individual student.
The Duke supplement is not an easy one and this is complicated by the highly competitive RD pool at the university. Writing highly competitive applications is a skill. One that we work on every day. Crafting an outstanding application is a difficult task. But we can help. If you or your student is dreaming of Duke, we would love to help ensure they are the most competitive candidate they can be.
Need help applying to Duke? Reach out here.