<p>Duke Mails Admissions Decisions to More than 19,000 Applicants for the Class Of 2010</p>
<p>Thursday, March 30, 2006</p>
<p>Durham, N.C. -- Duke University will mail decision letters Friday to 19,358 high school seniors who vied for admission to the Class of 2010 from every state and dozens of nations.
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<p>As it has done for the past four years, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions will allow applicants to view their admissions decisions online through a secure, password-protected portion of the website. Beginning at 6 p.m. Thursday, thousands of anxious applicants who cant wait for the mail will be able to check their decisions from their home or other computers.</p>
<p>Fridays mailing brings the universitys total offers of admission to 3,778 students, including 470 early decision applicants accepted in December. The university expects 1,665 of the accepted students to enroll this fall. The admissions rate of 19 percent is the lowest on record since the university began keeping track of data in the late 1950s.</p>
<p>This was an especially challenging year for applicants to Duke and for the admissions office staff, said Christoph Guttentag, dean of undergraduate admissions. We have seen a steady increase in applications for much of the last 10 years, but this years applications surpassed last years number by more than 1,200 and that of five years ago by more than 4,500. I continue to be pleased with the growing number of students who have expressed an interest in attending Duke.</p>
<p>The applicant pool was also exceptionally strong and diverse, Guttentag said.</p>
<p>One in six applicants with a class rank was ranked first in his or her class. Duke admitted only 42 percent of the 1,548 valedictorians who applied for admission. More than 1,300 of this years applicants had SAT scores of 1,550 or above on the math and verbal sections of the test; Duke admitted 59 percent of these students.</p>
<p>While its easy to focus on academic qualifications when discussing our applicant pool, the selection process focuses very much on each applicant as a whole and as an individual, Guttentag said. Academics matter deeply to us, of course, but were also aware that we are building a community here. There is much more to being a member of a community than good grades and test scores.</p>
<p>During the last several years, the admissions committee has paid particular attention to applicants who have a strong background in the arts, he said. Correspondingly, the number of students weve admitted where accomplishment in the arts was a significant factor in our decision continues to increase. The admissions process is only one of the ways the university takes seriously its commitment to a richly diverse arts program on campus.</p>
<p>Other records broken this year include the number of applicants to TrinityCollege, the undergraduate liberal arts college (15,959), and to the Pratt School of Engineering (3,399), as well as the number of African Americans (2,122), Asians/Asian Americans (4,735) and Latinos (1,234).</p>
<p>The number of international applicants has risen steadily during the past few years, Guttentag added, noting that Duke had 2,029 this year, representing a 185 percent increase in the number of international applicants in the last five years.</p>
<p>We continue to recruit actively overseas, and were pleased that Dukes reputation for a high-caliber education is spreading worldwide, he said. Since the university expanded the financial aid program several years ago to include a number of international students, weve seen a steady increase in the number of students from foreign countries who are interested in Duke.</p>
<p>North Carolina remains the top state for admitted students, with 502 applicants offered admission. Other top states include Florida, New York, California and Texas.</p>
<p>The overall academic strength, diversity, and interests of our applicant pool makes our job more challenging in many ways, because we find ourselves turning down many exceptional applicants who we would have admitted just a few years ago, Guttentag said.</p>
<p>Although we wont know until May exactly who will be enrolling at Duke in the fall, I can tell from the students weve admitted that this years entering class will very much exemplify the qualities we seek students who are multi-talented and multi-faceted, who are strongly committed to their home communities and who are eager to take advantage of all that Duke can offer them.</p>
<p>As in previous years, many of the applicants applied for financial aid. Duke will invest $55 million in undergraduate financial aid next year and is in the midst of a $300 million financial aid initiative to benefit undergraduate, graduate and professional education at Duke.</p>
<p>More than 40 percent of Duke undergraduates receive financial assistance from the university in the form of grants, loans and work-study jobs. The annual average grant to a financial aid recipient for the 2005-06 academic year was more than $22,000. The cost to attend Duke, including room and board, was $44,005 in 2005-06.</p>
<p>Duke admits U.S. citizens and permanent residents without regard to their ability to pay, and the university meets the demonstrated financial need for all admitted students requiring aid.</p>