Of all the colleges that I have toured, Duke and Georgetown are my favorites. I am having trouble deciding whether or not to apply ED to Duke or apply EA to Georgetown and keep my options open (GU doesn’t have ED). However, I think my strongest chance of getting into Duke may be through early decision. I want to major in biology on the pre-med track, which is supposed to be a strong program at both schools even though GU is known for more politics/IR. I really like the campus cultures and feel of both schools, but for me the location of GU definitely trumps that of Duke, especially as a NC native. Does anyone have any insight into the differences between the schools or advice??
The only reason why most ED acceptance rates are high is because recruited athletes and legacies make up a good portion of the pool and most get accepted. The acceptance rate for normal applicants without hooks is around the same as RD.
I say you should apply Early to Georgetown 
^ Are you characterizing the ED distributions at Georgetown and Duke in particular based on detailed data you can share? The Common Data Sets don’t break down the ED numbers to account for these “hooks”. I’ve haven’t seen much good data that does.
This is something frequently repeated on CC, but I’ve yet to see anyone back it up with evidence – and for good reason. A Harvard study found that ED applicants actually have lower stats than their RD counterparts.
ED has two main advantages:
(1) Many schools blatantly favor ED applicants. Because they are required to matriculate if admitted, they produce a near 100% yield, which allows the school to admit fewer students in the RD round and be more selective overall. Most of the top schools carefully manipulate these figures and admit almost exactly half of their freshman class through ED or SCEA. Duke admits this bump on its website:
I collected such quotes in a comprehensive post a few years ago (including Cornell, Northwestern, Penn, etc.), so do a search.
(2) You get a shot when the pool is still wide open. At the most selective colleges, admissions officers do not judge each application on its own merits in a sort of vacuum. Rather, they are carefully crafting a class. The orchestra needs good musicians, and the debate team needs champion debaters. You’ll need a few artists, and the soccer team needs people too. All of these factors are considered while reading each application. If you’re the first oboist in the application pool with a 2340 SAT and 4.0 GPA, you may very well luck out. If you’re the tenth or eleventh…not so much. One of the greatest advantages of ED is the opportunity to submit your application while all of these slots in the freshman class are still open. By the time RD rolls around, 33-50% of the freshman class has already been filled, and you have about 5 times as many applicants fighting for the remaining spots.
Duke has noticeably broader and deeper offerings in the biological sciences; it’s unusually strong in animal behavior, marine science, botany, primatology, ecology, etc. in addition to the typical molecular biology and biochemistry offerings that have become the focus of most biology programs these days. That said, you are absolutely correct that either is a perfectly good option as a pre-med.
Much of Durham has been gentrified, and it’s rapidly becoming hipster central with lots of fair trade coffee shops, ethnic restaurants, boutiques, arts (DPAC, Arts Annex, Coffeehouse, etc.), etc. It has done extremely well in various rankings of quality of life and the best places to live:
http://www.dcvb-nc.com/cr/durham_accolades.pdf
That said, I think graduate students and young professionals appreciate Durham much more than college students do, and Durham still has rough patches. In any case, Durham is NOT a major metropolis and certainly doesn’t have DC’s amazing wealth of museums and culture. If you’re a big city type of person, Georgetown may very well be for you.