Duke Mails Admissions Decisions to More Than 18,000 Applicants for the Class of 2009
North Carolina remains the top state for admitted students, with almost 500 applicants offered admission
Thursday, March 31, 2005
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Durham, N.C. -- Duke University mailed decision letters Thursday to 18,062 high
school seniors who vied for admission to the Class of 2009 from
every state and dozens of nations.
As it has done for the past three years, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions allowed applicants to view their admissions decisions online through a secure, password-protected portion of the website. Beginning at 7 p.m. Wednesday, thousands of anxious applicants who couldn’t wait for the mail were able to check the decisions from their home computers.
Thursday’s mailing brings the university’s total offers of admission to 3,949 students, including 470 early decision applicants accepted in December. The university expects 1,660 of the accepted students to enroll this fall. The admissions rate of less than 22 percent is the lowest in more than a decade.
“This was an incredibly challenging year for applicants to Duke — and for the admissions office staff,” said Christoph Guttentag, director of undergraduate admissions. “We have seen a steady increase in applications during each of the past six years, but this year’s applications surpassed last year’s number by 1,300 and that of four years ago by more than 3,200. I am extremely pleased with the growing number of students who have expressed an interest in attending Duke.”
The applicant pool was also exceptionally strong, Guttentag said.
Duke admitted only 41 percent of the nearly 1,500 valedictorians who applied for admission this year. More than 3,100 of this year’s applicants had SAT scores of 1,500 or above; Duke admitted about half of these students.
“The overall strength 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 couple of years ago,” Guttentag said.
“Although we won’t know until May exactly who will be enrolling at Duke in the fall, I can tell from the students we’ve admitted that this year’s entering class will very much exemplify the qualities we seek — students who are multi-talented and multi-faceted, who are strongly committed to their communities and who are eager to take advantage of all that Duke can offer them.”
Records broken this year include the number of applicants to TrinityCollege (14,974) and the Pratt School of Engineering (3,088), as well as the number of African Americans (1,858), Asians/Asian Americans (4,021) and Latinos (1,078).
The number of international applicants has risen steadily during the past five years, Guttentag added, noting that Duke had 1,825 this year. This is a 27 percent increase over the 1,438 international applicants last year and a 52 percent increase over the 1,200 applicants Duke received three years ago.
“We continue to recruit actively overseas, and we’re pleased that Duke’s reputation for a high-caliber education is spreading,” he said.
North Carolina remains the top state for admitted students, with almost 500 applicants offered admission. Other top states include Florida, California, New York and Texas.
As in previous years, many of the applicants applied for
financial aid. Duke will spend nearly $55 million in undergraduate
financial aid next year to support students.
More than 40 percent of Duke undergraduates receive financial assistance from the university. The annual average grant to a financial aid recipient for the 2004-05 academic year was $22,876; average grants in 2005-06 are expected to be at least as high.
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.
