<p>I know that Duke is a very difficult school and I really want to go there. The problem is that i dont know if my SAT’s will hurt my admission chances (2020- 610 CR 700 M 710 W). Should I apply early or should I raise my SAT scores and apply regular decision? I have a 3.6 UW GPA, Top 10% in my class, very involved with clubs and hold numerous leadership positions. I am also a National Hispanic Scholar and have good recs and pretty solid essays ready.</p>
<p>Your score definitely won’t help. If you can bump that score up to over 2200, you would be a much, much stronger applicant in my opinion. If you think you can study hard and achieve that, then I would say go for the November or December SAT and apply with RD. It’s gonna take a lot of work but I think it would be worth it. Good luck!</p>
<p>Idk, it sounds like you may be URM, which can only help you.</p>
<p>Take the SAT again and apply RD. If you are a NHS you may get some really great merit aid offers from other schools and ED will take away those opportunities. Check out the hispanic student forum for some tips on schools that give scholarships to national hispanic scholars. Also, there is good advice there about how to think about being a URM applicant. Frankly, there are plenty of well qualified URMs applying to selective schools so unless you have some barriers to higher education that you have overcome (poverty, first to college, etc.) URM status does not generally confer some magical bump in admissions. Also, some URMs are more underrepresented than others–central american, mexican american, puerto rican, etc.–are woefully underrepresented in higher education and schools would like to help turn that around. Students of cuban and south american backgrounds are far more likely to have parents who are well educated and well off so they have had the same advantages growing up as non-URMs and tend to have similar acceptance rates.</p>