Two Dukes, divided

Over the past month, prospective freshmen invaded and inspected the Duke campus to decide where they want to spend the next four years. But a select group of them were separated from the rest because of their intelligence. While their peers intermingled and witnessed the diversity of Duke University in all its vibrancy, really really smart prospective freshmen attended recruitment invitationals like scholarship finalists' weekends.

Scholarship finalists' weekends invite a small segment of the applicant pool, cloistering prospective University Scholars with other University Scholars, Robertson Scholars with other Robertson Scholars and so on.

Although I'm sure the admissions office had nothing but the best of intentions when it first decided to create the likes of scholarship weekends, it has nonetheless implicitly and explicitly conveyed to these students that Duke classifies people along intellectual lines. Therefore, those students who come to scholarship finalists' weekends are inbued with a sense that they, too, should identify themselves based on their intelligence. Now we are in an age where an intelligent person is president, and such blunt tools are not necessary to entice really really smart students to our University. Instead of showcasing the overarching diversity of our University, these weekends reify intellectual divisions.

When prospective really really smart students come for recruitment weekends, the first people they meet at Duke are also really really smart. Hence, when the first day of classes arrives in August, these students flock to this handful of people they already know. After all, the first relationships students build here are often the strongest. Thus, recruitment weekends entrench the intellectual self-segregation that mars our hallowed institution.

This is not the sort of mindset our admissions office should be promoting. When the first way Duke tells you to self-identify is based on how smart you are, you tend to view your social and academic relationships through that framework. Multiple statistical studies-all conducted by yours truly-show that students who participate in scholarship finalists' weekends often sequester themselves into higher-level classes with other really really smart students, to the exclusion of students of other intellects. These studies have also found that those same students often end up in organizations that rarely accept non-really really smart students, such as Phi Beta Kappa, and Rhodes Scholars. Moreover, such social circles as the Angier B. Duke Scholars, Benjamin N. Duke Scholars and University Scholars rarely, if ever, include students who did not attend the scholarship weekends.

This is contrary to many of the University's institutional goals. For one, intelligence-based recruitment contradicts the University's stated commitment to diversity. Additionally, scholarship finalists' weekends do not accurately portray the Duke experience. These recruitment weekends suggest a prominence of intellect that simply does not reflect the true nature of Duke.

There are some who say that really really smart student weekends are necessary to attract really really smart students. This could not be farther from the truth. Just as there are some students who come to Duke because of these weekends, there are also many who opt not to come because they believe Duke is overly intelligence-conscious. They end up at schools like UNC.

Others point to the fact that really really smart students tend to continue being really really smarter than other students, thereby constituting an academic self-segregation into the upper echelons of class rank. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy initiated entirely from that one weekend when they were p-froshes.