Christoph Guttentag has led Duke's office of undergraduate admissions since 1992, when he took over as the director of undergraduate admissions.
Guttentag has just been re-appointed to another five-year term as dean—meaning he will extend his time at the office's helm until 2023, the University announced Tuesday morning. He became dean of the office in 2006.
“Christoph has not only been an effective, creative, energetic leader of our admissions efforts, but is also highly respected in the university admissions community more broadly,” Provost Sally Kornbluth said in the news release.
The decision to reappoint Guttentag to the role came after a customary faculty committee review that focused on the past five years. During that time, his office saw nearly a 10 percent increase in the undergraduate application pool and "an increasingly talented and diverse pool of students," according to the release.
Guttentag, who grew up in California, came to Duke from the University of Pennsylvania. With the Class of 2022, Duke's acceptance rate dropped below that of Penn. In February, he told The Chronicle that he was chairing the Admissions Committee at Penn when he learned that he was being offered the job at Duke.
"I remember telling [people in Penn's Admissions Office] that I had hit the jackpot. I was very, very excited about coming here, very excited about the next step," Guttentag said earlier this year. "I did not know how long I would be here. If you had told them then that I would be here now—it’s my 26th year—and that I would have met my wife, had a child, and our daughter is in college now, that all of that would have happened—I’m not sure I would have expected that."
Aside from leading Duke's admissions efforts, he has also helped advise Duke Kunshan University's officials in recruiting and admitting DKU's first class, the news release said.
“We are fortunate to have him, and the entire university benefits from his intelligence, integrity, and the fine work he and his staff do to recruit and select our outstanding undergraduate students," Kornbluth said in the release.
Guttentag announced in July that Duke would no longer require SAT essay or ACT writing scores in its admissions process. Brown University, Princeton University and Stanford University had all done the same during the summer.
Duke has become even more selective—it accepted just 8.3 percent of applicants for the Class of 2022. Duke admitted 9.2 percent of applicants for the Class of 2021.
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