<p>Can I call and cancel my Early Decision Application to Duke if they haven’t started reviewing my application yet/ if they haven’t released acceptances yet?
Will there be any penalties if I do call and asked for them to be canceled even if decisions haven’t been released?</p>
<p>You can try and convince Duke to cancel your ED. From my knowledge, you, your counselor, and your parents made an ED agreement with the school that you WILL not cancel or defer acceptance unless financial is a problem. Duke along with other schools with EA and ED have probably rejected most of the applicants through their computerized cutoff system. Unless your scores are above average for Duke applicants, I wouldn’t cancel ED because you probably will be rejected and it will possibly hurt you when applying to other top schools through RD.</p>
<p>Also, would it be at all possible to request my application be moved to the RD pool?</p>
<p>Well I was wondering if there wouldn’t be any sort of penalty because I would be cancelling before decisions were released?
And I don’t plan to apply ED to other schools, so that’s not really a concern.</p>
<p>Call them tomorrow and ask for your application to RD. I would think they would.</p>
<p>Yes, you can do using g your online account. You can change ED to RD or RD to ED till nov 20th, 2013. It should not any negative impact except that you will be competing with RD once you convert.</p>
<p>mpgh000 wrote:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I am curious about where you obtained information about Duke’s “computerized cutoff system”. I have never heard of any such system at Duke. In fact, I have heard adcoms repeat ad naseum that every application is reveiwed by at least two readers.</p>
<p>I also don’t understand the second part of the quote. Applying ED gives a boost to applicants whose objective data might be slightly lower than Duke’s average. Even if this was not the case, making a blanket statement about rejection of anyone whose numbers are lower than average flies in the face of Duke’s published holistic review process.</p>
<p>Mnomno’s comment seems much more in line with comments I have heard from Duke adcoms. Check your portal for instructions about changing from ED to RD and call the office if you have questions. It sounds like the deadline is tomorrow.</p>
<p>rmldad: Beginning with last year’s undergarduate admissions cycle, a VERY FEW applications that fell far below Duke norms (standardized test scores, GPA, and perhaps other quantitative metrics) have been denied without Admissions Officer review. This change was made only due to the huge increase in application numbers throughout the last several years . . . and the concomitant staff workload implications (specifically including, too little aggregate staff time to evaluate thoroughly approximately 32K candidates, in only a few months). In addition, it is my understanding that most candidates receive a single AO appraisal; only a few are dual read and assessed.</p>
<p>TopTier - Duke’s new Admissions web site has moved information around and I cannot now find a description of their application evaluation process. However, on the Alumni Admissions site ([Admissions</a> for alumni families | Duke Alumni Association](<a href=“Duke”>Duke)) it explicitly states:</p>
<p>“The Admissions Office reads each student’s application twice. But for alumni-affiliated applications, the office provides an additional review to ensure no detail is missed.”</p>
<p>I did find this statement on the main Admissions site (<a href=“Apply - Duke Undergraduate Admissions):%5B/url%5D”>Apply - Duke Undergraduate Admissions):</a></p>
<p>“We do NOT require minimum scores on the SAT or ACT, GPA, or class rank for consideration or admission.”</p>
<p>Regardless, it sounds like you agree with me that mpgh000 is way off-base on his assertions about Duke’s ED evaluation process. They do not have a computerized system that auto-rejects “most of the applicants”.</p>
<p>Okay, not “most of the applicants” but a lot of the applicants are reviewed automatically. I know and have talked to a lot of former admission officers who say that many of the applicants will be cut off based on primarily their SAT and GPA through a computerized system then the admission officers would look at the people who have passed the initial cutoff.</p>
<p>I did some more searching and found this article in The Chronicle, Duke’s student newspaper, dated March 2012:</p>
<p>[University</a> streamlines admissions | The Chronicle](<a href=“http://www.dukechronicle.com/articles/2012/03/28/university-streamlines-admissions]University”>http://www.dukechronicle.com/articles/2012/03/28/university-streamlines-admissions)</p>
<p>TopTier was correct about Duke’s new process:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>There is no mention of a computerized system - quite the opposite as it specifies that every application is read in its entirity by a regional rep. Duke prefers to have two, or even better with three, readers of every application but it is simply no longer feasible given the system constraints.</p>
<p>rmldad: I will reply to your latest input (#9 and, now, #11) by PM, due to the sensitive nature of some information.</p>