It seems altogether fitting that admissions numbers for the Class of 2011 have come out at a time when Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong's handling of the lacrosse case is again making headlines.
After all, the incoming group of freshmen was the first to fill out applications after the lacrosse scandal broke. These stats are, in short, the ones everyone's been waiting for.
And they weren't too shabby after all. Although the statistics were not as jaw-dropping as Duke News may make them out to be, the numbers do indicate that the "Duke lacrosse scandal" did not deter prospective students from applying and probably hasn't struck as big a blow to the University as some had anticipated.
Perhaps, in short, Bloomberg News didn't tell the whole story when an article it ran May 2 asserted that according to students and parents, the so-called "Harvard of the South" was "not the magnet it used to be."
To the contrary, a total of 21 percent of the 19,206 high school seniors who applied to Duke were accepted this spring-the lowest "admit percentage" and second-highest number of applicants in Duke's history. Add to this the fact that yield has improved and the diversity of the Class of '11 is better than ever before, and all signs seem to point to the fact that Duke may actually grow back stronger from this whole ordeal, to steal the (translated) motto adopted by the 2006-2007 men's lacrosse team when they returned to the field this year.
Of course, there is still little doubt that admissions and the "Duke reputation" question will continue to loom large in the minds of administrators, students and alums. Admissions stats this year show that whereas Duke appeared to be on a meteoric rise two Junes ago, the University has now hit a plateau of sorts. Duke's Class of 2011 admit percentage trails all the "peer" Ivies, such as Cornell, Penn and Dartmouth.
In light of the challenges this school faced when it was put under a microscope in the media this past year, however, the newly released stats even have Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Christoph Guttentag a bit surprised.
Indeed, Guttentag should feel pretty darn good about the job he and his team in the admissions building did last spring and fall.
Few admissions directors have had to deal with a situation like this, and Duke stepped up to the plate this year with its recruitment efforts that emphasized one-on-one interaction, new-and-improved website and revamped accepted-student Blue Devil Days. In the admissions game, the little things matter, and Duke got the little things right at a time when it would have been all too easy to overlook them.
And they got some big things right, too. Although it's hard to say whether or not we can tip our hats to DukeEngage as a major contributing factor in this year's improved yield, the $30-million initiative and continued evaluation of the Campus Culture Initiative's spring report indicate that Duke is truly making the "good of this place" known in a-for the most part-effective way.
To be clear, though, this is no time for Duke to rest on its self-advertised laurels. The University has suffered a major blow at a time when admissions to elite universities is more keen than ever before.
Moving forward, the admissions department and Duke in general needs to keep its current underdog mentality and competitive edge if it's to get off the current plateau and continue on its once-meteoric path.
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