What is Duet, and does it matter?

Duet is Acuity Insights’ value-alignment assessment. You rank the characteristics you most want in a program; the program separately builds a profile by having faculty, administrators and current students rank the same characteristics; the two rankings are compared and the program receives alignment scores. Acuity states the fee to reserve Casper already covers Duet where a program requires it. It takes a fraction of the time Casper does, there is no quartile, and there is nothing to argue or justify. Whether it matters depends entirely on whether one of your schools asks for it.

What does Duet actually produce?

An alignment score, not a judgment of you. The program’s profile ranks what it values across the categories Acuity defines for the assessment. Your ranking is compared against it, and the result expresses how closely the two orderings agree. A low alignment score does not mean you answered badly. It means you want something different from what that program says it offers.

This is the part applicants get wrong, and the error is understandable: everything else in an application is a performance scored against a standard. Duet is not. It is closer to a preference survey with a comparison attached.

Does Duet matter for my application?

Three honest answers, in order of usefulness.

If no school on your list requires it, it does not matter at all. Check each program’s own instructions. Acuity frames Duet as something Casper users get access to, and its Casper Updates page speaks of programs that require it, which implies plenty that do not.

If a school requires it, it matters less than Casper, on the evidence available. Acuity publishes no weighting, and schools rarely publish one either. Nobody outside an admissions committee can tell you what a Duet alignment score is worth in its process, and you should distrust any source that claims a number.

It may matter most to you. The genuinely useful thing about ranking what you want from a program is doing it before you interview anywhere. Applicants who have never articulated what they want from a school walk into interviews with nothing to say when asked why this program, and take offers for reasons they cannot name.

What is Duet’s current status?

Worth stating plainly, because it changes between cycles. Checked on 17 September 2026: Duet is still named on the Acuity Insights Casper product page, which says that when a program uses Casper it “also get[s] access to Duet, our value-alignment assessment”, and on the Casper Updates page, which says the fee to reserve Casper already covers Duet if the programs require it. It does not have a product page of its own, and it is not listed on the homepage product menu or on the admissions products page, both of which name Casper and Video Interviews.

Snapshot went the same way and then disappeared entirely. I am not predicting that for Duet, because there is no statement to base it on. Re-check Acuity’s page before your own cycle and treat your school’s instructions as the authority. For the Snapshot situation, see what is Snapshot and how to prepare.

A question, and two answers

Duet does not take open answers, so the exercise here is different: this is the interview question that Duet should have made easier for you. It is original, not a real item from any school.

Prompt. “Two programs have offered you a place. Both are strong. How would you choose?”

A weak answer. “I would choose the program that is the best fit for me. I would look at the curriculum, the research opportunities, the clinical exposure and the location, and weigh up which one aligns most closely with my goals and values. Ultimately I would choose the school where I felt I could grow the most as a future physician.”

A strong answer. “I would start from what I already know I need rather than from a list of features, because every school’s website can answer every item on a generic list. The thing I need most is early and sustained patient contact, because the two years I spent as a care aide are the reason I am doing this and I know how quickly I lose interest in material with no person attached to it. So the first question I would ask of each program is when students first take a history unsupervised, and I would ask students there rather than reading the curriculum page. Second, I would want to know what happens to a student who struggles, since I would rather be at a school that is honest about its remediation process than one that never mentions failure. Those two would probably decide it. If they came out level, I would choose on location, and I would say that without embarrassment: I would be there for four years and I have a family I do not want to see twice a year.”

What separates them. The weak answer lists the four criteria everyone lists and commits to none of them. It could be given by any applicant to any school, which is exactly why it scores like every applicant. The strong answer names one thing it needs and says where that need came from, turns it into a question that could actually distinguish two programs, adds a second criterion most applicants would not think to raise, says who it would ask and why not the website, and then admits an ordinary human reason it would use as a tiebreaker rather than pretending everything is about growth. Specific, testable, and honest about a non-academic factor. That last part is what people are most afraid to say and it is usually what makes the answer land.

Key numbers

• Duet is Acuity Insights’ value-alignment assessment, comparing your ranking against a program’s own profile.
• Acuity states the fee to reserve Casper already covers Duet if the programs require it.
• Only some programs require it. Your school’s instructions decide whether it applies to you.
• No quartile, no correct answer, and no published weighting from Acuity or from most schools.
• As of 17 September 2026 Duet has no product page of its own and does not appear on the Acuity homepage product menu.

If you want the reasoning skills that all of this actually tests, that is the CASPer programs and interview coaching.

Related: what is the CASPer test and what is Snapshot and how to prepare.

Last reviewed 17 September 2026. Written by Arvin Ardakani, final-year medical student, 4th quartile on CASPer four times.