With the Nov. 1 early admissions deadline nearing, Duke admissions officers hope to see a socially, economically and culturally balanced applicant pool for next year's incoming freshman class-a goal the University has been striving toward in recent years.
With the Nov. 1 early admissions deadline nearing, Duke admissions officers hope to see a socially, economically and culturally balanced applicant pool for next year’s incoming freshman class—a goal the University has been striving toward in recent years.
Four leading universities—Duke, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University and Harvard University—have banded together with the common goal of reaching out to all regions, domestic and international, to create socioeconomic diversity within their student bodies. Under the program “Exploring College Options,” representatives from these universities work cooperatively to spark interest among students from many different backgrounds to consider applying to these schools.
“We encourage any high school junior or senior to apply to Duke,” said Christoph Guttentag, director of undergraduate admissions. “Admissions changes a little bit from year to year, but for the last five to six years I think we have pushed a little harder to strive for social, cultural and economic diversity.”
Representatives hit the road each year, visiting about 125 cities worldwide, to hold informational programs for prospective students, parents and guidance counselors.
Guttentag, who has worked with the program since his arrival at Duke, noted its importance in attracting a diverse student body. “It’s an effort that has really increased in volume and intensity starting about eight years ago,” he said.
Marlyn McGrath-Lewis, Harvard director of undergraduate admissions, said the program has helped encourage students from poorly served schools to apply to private, selective colleges they thought they could not afford.
“Since [the colleges in the program] are relatively small colleges, we have been working hard for some time to reach out to these students,” she said, noting that approximately 1,000 students at Harvard come from families whose income levels are below $60,000 per year. “Without the outreach program, students won’t look to us.”
Duke must also look close to home to recruit future applicants, as 14 percent of the student body comes from North Carolina. Each fall, Duke hosts three on-campus programs designed for North Carolina high school students. The first of these programs took place in September and attracted about 700 in-state students. The University held a second program in late October to reach out to prospective engineers.
“Sometimes it’s tempting to think of diversity, in part socioeconomic diversity, as something you have to look far and wide for, and I think we are pretty careful to look close to home as well,” Guttentag said. “We make sure to visit every high school in the Triangle each fall.”
Increasingly, however, Duke is looking overseas for prospective students, too.
“We do a lot of traveling internationally as well as nationally,” Guttentag said. “One of the very positive developments at Duke is the fact that we are able to offer need-based financial aid to international students. Until this development, international students had to pay the entire cost to enroll at Duke. We are now able to see more of the diversity among international students as we do among domestic students.”
With the increased attention to diversity recruitment, the University hopes to foster a more socially accepting student body.
“We all need to be entirely comfortable with people that are not like us—that ultimately the experience of going to a school like Duke is an environment where some people are like us and some people aren’t. It’s really going to pay great dividends to our students throughout their entire future,” Guttentag said, noting that the recruitment of Latino students at Duke has increased substantially over the last half-decade, and the representation of black students ranks above many leading universities.
Guttentag also noted that admissions officers are interested mostly in what current undergraduates have to say about their experience at Duke.
“I think one of the things that we pay most attention to is not the number, or where our students are from or what their background is, but how a student body that’s diverse in many ways affects and improves the educational, social and cultural experience of this campus,” Guttentag said. “We have a good base to grow on, but we never want to become complacent. There is always more work to do when it comes to diversity. I think it’s hard to say that some number is a goal. We want at very least to show the same sort of diversity as the schools that we commonly compare ourselves to.”
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