Duke to accept 200 from waitlist

wjb · 06-05-2008, 06:32 PM

This was announced today. Here comes the domino effect from H, P, and Penn's acceptance of hundreds from their waitlists. It's going to be a long summer for many kids. Duke to accept 200 students from waitlist - News

chintzy · 06-05-2008, 10:08 PM

How far down hill will this roll? And for how long? I picture a family in their loaded SUV headed to the College of Charleston when suddenly Chip checks his Blackberry and announces "turn the car around, I got into William and Mary!" (substitute whatever schools you think appropriate) How many May 1st deposits will be forfeited?

Greta · 06-05-2008, 10:26 PM

^^^ And for how long?

I find myself wondering if there will be even more late summer melt this year. There seems to be a lot kids looking for help identifying private loan sources without cosigners on the financial aid and college admission forums (more desperation voiced than past years, maybe?). Will college waitlists all over the country reactivate when these families find they can't make that first tuition payment in July? It could be a long, hot summer.

xiggi · 06-05-2008, 11:27 PM

Does anyone really believe that the delayed admissions at Harvard and Princeton had such an impact at Duke? Fwiw, was the impact on the admitted students from the waitlist at Stanford, a school that is known to have a much larger overlap with HYP than Duke?

The reality is that Duke desperately wanted to announce the typical sub 20% admissions of highly selective schools. For this reason, they under-admitted fully knowing they would need more than 200 students from the waitlist and probably a substantial number of transfers just to keep up with their historical admissions' statistics.

sanjenferrer · 06-06-2008, 02:11 AM

If this is the case, I bet Northwestern will be affected as well. There are a lot of cross-applicants between NU and Duke.

jrpar · 06-06-2008, 06:35 AM

Maybe I'm misreading this article, but I think Duke went to their waitlist several weeks ago for a large number - I think those acceptances are the 200 referred to in this article.

rodney · 06-06-2008, 07:07 AM

jrpar: Yes, that was my thought when I read this article yesterday....this was apparently printed after the fact IMO.....

NJ_mother · 06-06-2008, 07:19 AM

Well a kid from D's HS said she was accepted off Duke's waitlist last week. Was she prescient, or prevaricating? For the record, she's the val but had not gotten into any school she applied to; apparently she applied to all-reaches- H, P, Y, S and Duke.

soozievt · 06-06-2008, 07:21 AM

Some of the wait list seems to be a trickle down effect as I know someone admitted to Duke this week off the wait list (also a val). I believe that originally, Duke anticipated taking about 90 off their wait list. And yes, sanjenferrer, it does open a spot at NU.

rodney · 06-06-2008, 07:22 AM

NJ_: not sure exactly when all of the waitlisters accepted were called (it could have been gradually)....totally uninvolved with Duke admissions; just observing.....

1sokkermom · 06-06-2008, 07:25 AM

xiggi,
I don't think Duke is as desperate as you claim. They get all the applications they want and then some! Contrary to many false assumptions here on cc, Duke really doesn't care that much about the HYP "competition". Some kids would actually prefer Duke.

wjb · 06-06-2008, 07:45 AM

Our family has no personal stake in Duke either, but certainly SOME of the hundreds of kids admitted to H and P and Penn from the waitlist initially committed to Duke -- just take a look at the individual schools' boards on CC for confirmation of that. You may be correct, Xiggi, that Duke's decision to underadmit was in part a conscious effort to manipulate the numbers, to keep the percentage admitted artificially low. But when the biggest boy boys take nearly 400 from their waitlists, the entire food chain is affected, and Duke is one of the schools next in line down that chain. Surely they lost a large number of initially committed students to these schools.

Also, if you're attributing statistics-manipulation to Duke, why not attribute it to Harvard as well -- 200 taken off the waitlist there, too. I understand that the elimination of its early program created some uncertainty for Harvard's admissions office this year, but couldn't they have done a little better job of predicting yield, especially as it became clear that for the most part, Yale and Princeton were going to match Harvard's new financial aid initiative. Was Harvard also motivated to announce a "gussied-up" admissions rate of 7.1%? I don't know the answer to that question, but why attribute cynical motives to Duke and not to any other school? Even the biggest boys have close competitors. H wants to beat Y in the selectivity race and Y wants to beat S, etc.

1sokkermom · 06-06-2008, 07:56 AM

You are correct wjb.

None of these admission "statistics" take in to account the number of rejected applicants at any of these schools that had a particular school as their first choice!

Duke had over 20,000 applicants. I am sure that a portion of the Duke applicants applied to HYP. We don't know how many students applied to Duke as their first choice, and how many rejected Duke applicants didn't apply to HYP. That is the problem with the comparison (or "preferred" choice) studies. It only looks as students who applied to Duke and HYP. It doesn't consider all the rejected students who could care less about HYP, or any other school.

There are also cases where a student may be rejected at Duke and accepted at one of the other "comparison" schools.

rodney · 06-06-2008, 08:02 AM

isokkermom: I mentioned exactly that on another thread....that logic goes all the way down the food chain, probably all the way to the 2nd or 3rd tier of school......

NJ_mother · 06-06-2008, 08:05 AM

True, Rodney. Funny that she hasn't accepted Duke back though.