ED decisions were released tonight. The Chronicle published some details. A total of 861 were accepted today to fill approx 50% of the incoming class. Of those accepted, 691 were to Trinity and 170 to Pratt. The ED acceptance rate nudged up a little to 24.5%
The ED acceptance rate has held steady over the past few years, but the number of applicants in the ED round has been slowly increasing. Looks like approx 50 more students were admitted in the ED round this year, and the Chronicle article this is due to the Questbridge program which Duke recently joined.
If trends hold for the RD round, this means Duke can expect to receive an additional 29000 applications for approximately 800 spots.
@wstrav yes I think you’re right. Duke usually likes to keep the incoming class to approx 1700 students. I think by 2018 they will be opening up new dorms, so the class size should go up, but it may take another 1-2 years for this to happen.
@sgopal2: the new dorm is scheduled to replace Epworth, Jarvis and East Residence Hall (formerly Aycock), so I don’t expect Duke to increase the class size. The housing on West and Central is also remaining stagnant (although they could give more leeway on the must be on campus for three years requirement). Schools typically don’t like to increase the student body size as it can have an impact on perceived prestige/selectivity, although it does happen if the need arises. For example, Duke increased the Pratt class size by about 50 students when they wanted continued investment in engineering and built new facilities. This year’s freshman Duke class is about 1750, the largest in history. They target 1705. There is some flexibility in the dorms when making a double a triple, converting common rooms to dorm rooms, etc.
Says that the new dorm will house 250 students. If you add up the # of students in Jarvis, Epworth and East, it is only 210. So this means there would be space for 40 new freshman. Other peer schools are increasing their class sizes: Yale, Columbia, Stanford and others. So it only makes sense that they would use these new beds for a bigger class size.
Duke has not announced an increase in the class size, its just something I’m thinking will happen.