Duke is a top American research university with amazing academics, stellar resources, and a fabulous campus life and community. They received over 54,000 first-year applications in the 2023-2024 cycle, for a class of 1,739. The acceptance rate was only 5.4%. Getting into Duke is hard for anyone, and every year we support international students in doing just that.
A key piece of how we get international students into Duke is strategy, and a strong strategy requires an understanding of the playing field. For example, the early decision acceptance rate at Duke is much higher (13%), nearly 3 times, the regular decision acceptance rate (4.4%). So, if you’re an international student who wants to get into Duke, you might want to consider applying Early Decision.
There is also the fact that only 13% of the enrolled first-years for the Class of 2028 were international. While we can’t know the total number of international applicants that year (because Duke hasn’t released that data), we know from experience that international demand for Duke increased dramatically in recent years. This means that the acceptance rates for international students, regardless of application type, was certainly below the Early Decision acceptance rate of 13% and the overall acceptance rate of 4.4%.
All of this further underlines that getting into Duke as an international student is really hard. At The Koppelman Group, we help students beat the odds and actually get in. In this post, we’ll give you a peek at our playbook. Below we share three key steps that any prospective international applicant needs to be taking to set yourself up in advance.
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If an international student is planning to apply to Duke, there are three things that they absolutely must be doing to get into Duke, but also into any other top college or university in the United States. We aren’t calling these “steps” because they aren’t something a student should address sequentially. They must be tackled concurrently, or at the same time, for a student to accomplish their goals.
Plan in Advance
Applying to college in the United States requires planning and strategy. We’ve seen prospective international students try to pull it off in a rush, and it rarely works out well. So, we work with our students to start the college process well in advance — and every student should, too (or, even better, contact us).
For the past few years, submitting SAT or ACT scores has been optional for most, if not all, Duke applicants. However, prospective international students should not treat it as optional. As an international student, strong SAT or ACT scores underline an impressive academic record and play an important part in making the case for admission. And what constitutes an impressive score? A strong SAT is for Duke is over 1550, and a strong ACT is at or above a 34.
Hopeful international students need to plan for college admissions well in advance to avoid rushing to take tests that truly benefit from time, preparation, and even repeated attempts. Students also benefit from that much higher acceptance rate we mentioned earlier in this post when applying Early Decision, and planning early empowers you to apply early.
Select Programs Strategically
Picking the right academic program at Duke to highlight as the first choice on the application is crucial as an international student, even though students are not required to pursue it if accepted by Duke. This is because Duke needs to accept students that represent a wide range of interests. If they were to accept mostly math and science students, that would actually pose a huge problem. Every department needs students, so they look for a distribution.
This can help us direct the students we work with towards their ideal program.
Next, we look at these three questions.
First — what is a student interested in?
Second — what is the student really good at academically?
Third — what are programs at Duke that match their interests but that are also likely to not be the most competitive because they are large and/or are looking to grow?
The top five most popular majors at Duke are Computer Science, Economics, Biology, Public Policy, and Psychology. This tells us two things that are sort of contradictory. On one hand, these major departments are large and so can accommodate a lot of students. On the other hand, a lot of students who apply are interested in these majors, so there’s competition.
At the same time, Duke has reported a decline in applications from students interested in the humanities. But they don’t want their humanities programs to be shrinking. As a result, they are looking for potential humanities majors in the application pool, and emphasizing an interest in the humanities could strengthen your application.
However, simply saying that you want to major in a humanities subject, but not doing anything to back up that interest, won’t work. It’s imperative that you either:
a) Select a major that already aligns with a students academics, activities, and demonstrated interests.
or
b) Select a major with enough time before the submission deadline to build a resume of activities and experiences that back up a student’s interest in it. If this is the case, the student still needs to already be excelling in the subject academically.
Whether you select route A or B, the next step is building an application that bolsters the profile and dream you want to present to Duke.
Pursue Connected Extracurriculars
Once a student has identified a prospective major, you need to work backwards and assess how the other pieces of the application supports that major selection.
One of the major weak points we see in applications from international students before they begin working with us is that they don’t have focus nor depth in what they do outside of school. Often this has happened as a result, to some extent, of the school system they are in. Their school doesn’t have a substantial number of clubs or student organizations, if any, or they have responsibilities outside of the classroom that have limited them in some way in pursuing extracurriculars.
We completely understand that limited opportunities and family expectations can complicate building an ‘activities list’ for your application, but we also don’t see either as an excuse. Rather, they are opportunities. You can start clubs or initiatives where they already don’t exist, or pursue after-school activities or jobs that also fulfill family commitments. For example, a student who is a potential economics major could work at a grocery store and also independently study the economics of groceries. A student who wants to study anthropology, history, or politics, could start a school or community paper or blog, and recruit peers to work alongside them.
We don’t want our students to live as if every moment of their life needs to be aimed towards a college application, but it is important to set a vision for a future at Duke, plan a strategy for getting there, and then execute on that plan. This is exactly what we do for our students, and it’s a must if an international student wants to get into any highly competitive college or university. Students should also keep an eye on what Duke says to prospective international applicants directly, as they will announce if things shift or change as regards international applicants. Duke is going to want to learn a lot about you, and so you should be learning as much as you can about them.
Every year, we help international students get into top-tier colleges, including Duke. Contact us to learn how.