School of Medicine welcomes largest class in two decades

The School of Medicine recently welcomed a class of 113 students to campus—the largest the school has seen in two decades.

Only one out of the accepted 114 students refused Duke's offer to attend, said Brenda Armstrong, associate dean of medical education and director of admissions at the School of Medicine. The new class represents 32 states, with the majority of students coming from North Carolina and California. Further, 52 students were from minority backgrounds. The class had a mean age of 24—indicating that nearly all students took a gap year—and 98 percent of the class had research experience.

The extremely high retention rate of accepted students this year reflected Duke’s innovative plans for medical education, said Dr. Victor Dzau, chancellor for health affairs and president and CEO of the Duke University Health System. He cited increased participation in programs such as the Primary Care Leadership track and the newly opened education center as major attractions for students, among other factors.

Although the class is much larger than the 101 students who accepted Duke’s offer last year, administrators are confident that the quality of education will not be affected because of the newly opened Trent Semans Health Education Center.

“It’s still totally manageable,” said Dzau. “With a new learning center, we’re able to accommodate more educational activities.”

Located in the heart of the medical campus, the center has six floors, each designed to provide a unique educational experience ranging from group-based problem solving rooms to simulation labs, where paid actors from Durham enact typical medical situations for students.

Although the 12 person increase in class size from last year was unexpected, Dzau explained that its timing coincided perfectly with plans to eventually increase the class size to 125 over the next few years.

"Duke has always had a relatively small class, we like it that way,” Dzau said. “We don’t want to massively expand it because it gives the students a lot of attention and the kind of experience that they want."

Drake Edwards, a new student in the Medical Scientist Training Program, said that the faculty and students at Duke were the most passionate and caring people out of all the schools he applied to.

“I have phenomenal classmates who I’ll be spending the next several years with,” Edwards said. “The Trent Semans Center is also by far the best medical school building I was at."