Early decision to the Pratt school

bluedog
Mon, 19 Aug 2013 15:50:29 +0000

I don’t think you should apply based on where you think it will be easier necessarily as adcoms can frequently see through that. Just apply where you think you’d be happiest - I understand that you’re unsure, though, which is understandable. It’s easier to transfer Pratt -> Trinity, so perhaps it makes sense to take a couple engineering courses freshman year and then assess how you like it.

As far as chances, can’t really say, but your objective stats put you in the bottom unfortunately. I don’t know what a 4.02 weighted GPA translates to on an unweighted 4.0 scale, so can’t comment on that. However, you’ll see that your 560 SAT reading is well below the 700-780 50% range of accepted students, the 790 math is very solid, obviously, and in the 750-800 range, whereas the 650 writing again is quite below the 720-790 range for accepted students. It is clearly a good thing that your math score stands out as solid for someone looking to get into engineering, but Duke engineers are still typically very well-rounded.

This is not meant to discourage you, but rather encourage you to emphasize what you would bring to the Duke community in your application. You certainly have a chance - you need to aptly demonstrate something that sets you apart, though, to make up for the “well below the average Duke accepted applicant” test scores. Good luck!