High schoolers attending future admissions office presentations and perusing next year's glossy brochures may find an image of Duke very different from the one today's prospective undergraduates see.
At the request of President Nan Keohane, Provost Peter Lange is convening a high-level task force to examine undergraduate admissions, particularly exploring how the University presents itself to potential students. With an eye toward improving the percentage and quality of the admissions yield, as well as the very nature of future student bodies, the committee will look at increasing the amount of attention paid to academics in admissions' message.
With the University's long-range academic plan Building on Excellence nearly a year old, administrators have decided it is time to better incorporate into admissions literature, presentations and applications some of the document's changes, as well as initiatives like Curriculum 2000 and the new upperclass residential life plan. In addition, the committee may consider increasing emphasis on the East Campus experience, the FOCUS Program and cultural diversity.
"The question is whether a lot of our educational innovations over the last six or eight years have fully penetrated into our admissions strategy," Lange said.
The task force is just beginning to meet so it is unclear how drastically the changes will affect the image presented by admissions. Administrators note, however, the nature of that image has a powerful effect on which students ultimately apply and attend the University, and so changing the message will likely have a large impact on the personality of the student body.
"Duke is a place whose image is not fixed in people's minds. It's probably more open to changing its image than other schools," said Christoph Guttentag, director of undergraduate admissions. "Part of our responsibility is to make sure that the academic opportunities that are available to students don't get inadvertently overlooked."
Currently, prospective undergraduates may be hard-pressed to find much information on various academic and residential programs, Guttentag said, but can easily find information on Krzyzewskiville. The goal, he said, is not to de-emphasize non-academic activities like the tent city, but rather to increase information on unique academic opportunities.
"Duke is not going to become the University of Chicago. That's not part of its essential nature. We have a different history, a different tradition," Guttentag said. "But there's nothing wrong with giving students the opportunity to have an incredibly intense intellectual experience if that's what they choose."
The committee is composed of several other senior-level administrators, including Dean of Trinity College Robert Thompson, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education William Chafe and Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta.
The task force will also examine how various financial aid policies, set to take effect in fall 2003, affect the quality of the student body. Many of those policies were developed last summer in an agreement among Keohane and the presidents of 27 other universities to make need-based financial aid more efficient and equitable.
"There are a number of things we will change in need analysis, like different ways of analyzing information and a whole series of things that on average will tend to lower family contributions," said Jim Belvin, director of financial aid.
In addition, the task force will consider the success of other new financial aid policies, including aid for international students, which just began this year.
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