Christoph Guttentag holds in his hands the fate, the future and the aspirations of 14,000 of the nation's brightest, most diligent students each year.
Now in his third year as Director of Undergraduate Admissions for the University, Guttentag's job seems a strange one for a man whose educational background is in musicology.
Eating a Garden Burger at the Oak Room and wearing his gray tweed sport coat, Guttentag is the stereotypical picture of an academic. But it was after five long years of graduate work in musicology at the University of Pennsylvania that Guttentag realized the life of a professor was not for him. Unsure of where he was headed and already 30, the only job Guttentag could find was in the admissions office at U. Penn as an entry-level admissions officer.
Nine years and several promotions later, Guttentag found himself the Associate Dean of Admissions and Director of Planning at U. Penn. It was in this position that a search committee from Duke found Guttentag to fill the post of new director of admissions.
Guttentag has now overseen the admission of two Duke freshman classes and is currently evaluating early admission applications for his third. As the most visible representative of the University to prospective students, Guttentag is fortunately genuinely happy here.
Not all of Guttentag's job, however, is as pleasant as the Sarah P. Duke Gardens which border the admissions office. Guttentag says he does not particularly enjoy making decisions that could be disappointing or even devastating to applicants. The University receives approximately 14,000 applications each year, but less than 1,700 enroll. Just about all of those students who are turned down are still among the most intelligent and talented in the nation, Guttentag says. "This is often the first time for a lot of students that they will have done everything right and not get the desired result," he says.
Telling students they will not be able to attend the University can have a profound effect on their future.
"When you're in a position of being at one of those critical junctures in people's lives, you have to deal with the issue of control," Guttentag says. "In the big picture, we don't have as much influence as people think we do--the student gets to choose where they apply."
Guttentag is also quick to point out that control or influence is not what admissions is all about. "The true dynamic of the admissions office is not the power to affect students lives. It is the responsibility of doing what is best for the University," Guttentag says.
Aside from reading applications and reviewing them, a large portion of Guttentag's time is spent selling the University to prospective applicants across the nation.
Strangely enough, Guttentag credits a high school student for helping him develop his current sales technique. While speaking at a high school as a representative for U. Penn, Guttentag was told by a student that, while his talk was nice, about 90 percent of what Guttentag had told them was a reiteration of a Princeton University sales pitch they had heard a week ago.
"He was absolutely right," Guttentag said, "I had spent most of the time talking about things that we had in common with other schoolsÉ From that day on, every time I talk about a school, I try to talk about those things that make it distinctive."
According to Guttentag, part of selling Duke is shaping high school students' perceptions of the University. "What the admissions office does affects Duke's image as it is perceived outside of the institution. It is my responsibility to create an image that is both positive and honest."
Guttentag emphasizes, however, that this does not mean that he sets out to conceal negative aspects of the University. "If I were to create an image of the University that was positive but not honest," Guttentag said, "it would, first of all, be unethical and, second of all, be counterproductive."
It would clearly be misleading, for example, to try and convince someone who is looking for big city life that he or she would be happy here, Guttentag says.
After learning that he would be the next director of admissions at Duke, Guttentag said that he looked forward to finding out what special qualities made the University one of the finest in the nation.
After two years, he has learned what those qualities are all about. "I didn't know the extent to which the fact that Duke is a young schoolÉ would affect the character of the institution," Guttentag says. "It really makes a difference when an institution feels that it is not compelled to do things the way they've been done before."
In addition, as a tremendous college basketball fan himself -- he had season tickets for almost nine years at U. Penn -- Guttentag has discovered the tremendous school spirit that accompanies athletics at Duke. "You can count on the fingers of one hand, with a couple of fingers missing, the number of schools that have extremely successful division one athletic programs and have extremely talented student bodies," Guttentag says.
Guttentag is clearly impressed with the excellence at Duke. In this kind of setting, one might think it is easy to lose touch with the real world. But Guttentag believes that universities like Duke should remain separate from the world outside.
"I don't believe that the purpose of universities like Duke is to reflect or directly prepare students for the real world," Guttentag says, " Part of the real purpose of Duke, and schools like Duke, is to give people what I believe is truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do things that you don't have the opportunity to do in the real world, but that are important for having a rich and a meaningful and a successful life."
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