Every spring, Duke is eager to announce admissions decisions. And every year, administrators say the incoming freshman class is the best, brightest and most diverse class in the University’s history.
These are not just insincere, ego-boosting compliments intended to make the University look more desirable—the statistics back the superlatives, especially when looking at the last few years. For the class of 2014, the University received a record 26,731 applications, and its acceptance rate dipped from about 17 percent in 2009 to below 15 percent in 2010. In the last two years, Duke has received an additional 6,000 applications per year, a 30 percent jump.
To an outsider, these numbers reflect favorably upon the University—as Duke’s selectivity increases, so does its prestige. But what is typically omitted in discussions about admissions is the process itself and the effect a large number of applications has on the system and on those involved in making admissions decisions. The current admissions model the University employs was designed almost two decades ago when it received about 12,000 applications annually. With more than double that number this year, the admissions processes was stressed every step of the way. Among other consequences, readers took longer to finish reviewing applications, less than half of all applicants were openly discussed in committee sessions and 3,383 students were left hanging on the waitlist.
“Given the size of the applicant pool… given the way the system was stretched, I had to prioritize what we were doing, “ said Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Christoph Guttentag. “Making sure admissions decisions were right took precedence over denying students admission who had initially been placed on the waitlist.”
This year, Duke’s waitlist was so extensive that it caught the attention of the New York Times and became the focus of a front-page story on lengthy waitlists at elite universities. Even though many selective universities commonly postpone admissions decisions for hundreds of students, none that make their data public rival the number of students Duke put on hold.
A sizeable waitlist does allow the University more flexibility in selecting students. Because admissions officers do not know the makeup of the incoming class when they send out acceptances, Guttentag said waitlisting students allows the University to select those who fit best into a given class. Still, after the New York Times article appeared, administrators said they were not pleased that Duke ended up postponing the admissions decisions for so many applicants. Out of the few thousand students the University has placed on its wait-list, Guttentag told the Times that 60 at most will be admitted, or less than two percent.
To cut down the waitlist, and to better cope with the inundation of applications in general, Guttentag said Duke will be hiring more application readers, who will be responsible for the first read. Additionally, Guttentag hopes that part of the discussion at the Consortium on Financing Higher Education for admissions deans at selective colleges and universities conference this summer will focus on how other admissions officials are managing the growing applicant pools at elite institutions. He’s hoping to hear some hints.
STILL PLAYING CATCHUP
hile the University’s acceptance rate has plummeted by about a third in the last five years, another prestige indicator has remained constant. Duke’s yield rate, which represents the percentage of accepted applicants that choose to enroll, has fluctuated between 41 and 42 percent since 2005, Guttentag said.
This number pales in comparison to many of the other universities Duke considers to be its peers. For the class of 2014, Harvard University, Yale University and Stanford University had yield rates of 76, 67 and 72 percent, respectively. Brown University and Princeton University had yield rates in the mid-fifties, and the University of Pennsylvania’s was 63 percent. At Cornell, 49 percent of those accepted to the entering class chose to enroll.
Administrators are not concerned that Duke’s yield rate has remained at 42 percent. When looking at quantifiable measures such as the reader ratings admissions officers use to evaluate students, Provost Peter Lange said the quality of students enrolling at Duke has risen faster than it has at its peer institutions. Thus, even though administrators ultimately want the yield rate to increase, they know the competition is stiff for the top students.
“As we attract applicants who are also being admitted to the most selective universities in the country… I don’t want to kid ourselves that getting them to enroll is the same kind of decision as having them apply,” Guttentag said.
Inevitably, it seems that Duke’s next class to be its best and brightest. Finding those applications among the tens of thousands they receive, though, might be the biggest challenge.
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