Do I have to decide Duke ED in advance?

[bluedog]

@socaldad2002

Remember that the higher Early Decision acceptance rate of 18% (7.3% Regular Decision) or 882 accepted includes the following “hooked” applicants:

100+ recruited athletes
400 “people of color” (URM)
32 Questbridge students
52 International students

584/882 = 66% of ED acceptances had a “hook”. A good guess is that if you are an “unhooked” applicant, your chances of getting into Duke ED is around 9%, only slightly better than RD.

It’s not the great benefit that the college tries to sell you or any other applicant.

While I agree with your conclusion, the numbers are of course imprecise, particularly because I expect the majority of the 400 minority ED acceptances are for Asian applicants, not URMs. And don’t forget legacy/development admits, which are often ED. (Development admits have gone down dramatically, but still exist to an extent. And Legacy applicants are often more qualified on average anyways.)