Vanderbilt vs DukeAnswered
I’m trying to decide if I should apply to Duke or Vanderbilt ED and I’m trying to weigh the pros and cons. I have a 13% chance at Duke and a 26% chance at Vanderbilt but I like them equally
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4 answers
If you apply to Duke ED you will most likely be deferred into the RD pool because 13% is not a compelling high chancing rate.
Unless you are an ALDC, Duke Legacy, recruited athlete, child of a faculty member, or a child of a wealthy donor, you don't get any sort of bump at Duke. Plus you stated you are not low-income nor first-generation status either.
For the Class of 2025, the ED rate at Duke was 17% and for the Class of 2026, the ED rate was 21%. Within the ED pool at Duke are a lot of ALDC applicants as well as hooked applicants from community service organizations like Questbridge which accounts for 42 of the 855 admits. The ALDC admit rate is about 30% at Duke which means that for everyone else it's more like 10% if you figure that 1/2 of the incoming ED class are both ALDCs and hooked applicants like low-income, first-gen, Black, LatinA, Indigenous or marginalized applicants.
Since your 13% is 8% less than the overall 21% ED rate at Duke, I don't think that makes you a compelling Duke applicant.
Personally, I don't know what's going on with the CV calculator. I know that Duke seems to be a harder % chancing school than Cornell, NorthWestern, JHU, Rice, UPenn, Dartmouth, and even Columbia. Maybe the CV programmers know something the rest of us don't or maybe this is just a bug.
I would try to pick an ED school you really want to go to in the 20%-30% range to be safe otherwise it's more like a lottery ticket.
Good luck
You should try and go in person to tour them. I find the online tours just aren’t the same as going in person. You get to feel the vibe of the school’s campus and the surrounding area. Both are in two completely different states and the student life might be different too. If they both provide you with the same resources for your major and similar aid, then you should base it off the people and community there. Talk to current students, look at what clubs are offered, etc. good luck!!
I recommend applying ED to Duke because Duke defers around 18% of ED applicants to the RD round. Vanderbilt, however, does not defer any ED applicants and advises rejected ED applicants to not apply regular decision. This shows that Duke gives more weight to ED.
I also believe that your ED pick should be "going for the gold," since ED comes at the cost of having to potentially turn down other great offers. Since Duke has a higher overall ranking than Vanderbilt, it would be the best ED choice. Hope this helps!
The way you should go about this is looking at the differences between the two. You should also look for things such as which one has a better program for your major, which gives out the best financial aid, which is closer to home, and anything else that would make a college more favorable.
Your chance of acceptance
Your chancing factors
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I have multiple family members who have gone to Duke (not my parents/grand parents though) and I’m black but even with that my chances are still 13 lol. I think vandy will be a better chance + they have good aid for upper middle class