Crunching the Application Numbers

Duke's regular decision applications swelled by a whopping 17 percent this year. But statistics are sometimes noted for their dishonesty, and the admissions numbers can be an especially complicated calculus. How is an English major supposed to make sense of it all?! With help from Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Christoph Guttentag, of course.

The regular decision pool saw impressive increases in the number of international students and the overall volume of applicants. But at first glance, these jumps pale in comparison to increases reported in the early pool several months ago. Though regular decision applications increased by 17 percent, a school record, that figure is seemingly dwarfed by the 23-percentage-point jump in the early pool. Moreover, the number of international regular decision applicants was up 24 percent, while the proportion of international applicants in the early decision pool increased by 38 percent.

But Guttentag cited a simple statistical principle to make sense of these disparities: percentage fluctuations are always more dramatic in a smaller pool. Thus, the early decision pool saw greater proportional increases, but it was the size of the applicant pool that made all the difference. For example, a 24-percent increase in the number of early applications translates to about 300 more students, while a 17-percent increase in the regular pool translates to about 3,400 more students.

"I would hate for people to think our regular decision increase didn't match our early decision increase," Guttentag said.

It seems the trick of the pool size could also explain an apparent victory for Pratt over Trinity in the applications tally. The number of high school seniors applying to the Trinity School of Arts and Sciences this year increased by 15 percent, while the number of students applying to the Pratt School of Engineering increased by 23 percent. Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Christoph Guttentag noted that Pratt's prestige has risen in recent years, but he did not take the statistics as an indication that the school has bested Trinity, noting that the divergent percentages probably resulted from the fact that Pratt has a smaller pool of applicants to begin with.

"We've been focusing on Pratt for about the last seven or eight years," he said. "I'm very pleased with the increase in Pratt—I think it's a reflection of the greater appreciation of what an exceptional education it is…. But it doesn't surprise me that we'd see a larger change [than in Trinity] one way or the other simply because is' a smaller pool, with a smaller pool we're going to see greater variability."

In any case, this number-illiterate English major is hopeful that this means more number-savvy Pratt students will be on campus next year to break down the statistics when Guttentag is booked.