There are days on campus when the Chapel is framed by a blue worthy of the California sky and Silicon Valley native Jenni Brandon feels right at home.
But then it dawns on her that many of her fellow Blue Devils are soaking up the sun in pearls and polos rather than board shorts and flip flops-and the sophomore finds herself California dreaming all over again.
"There are things that I've done my whole life that aren't really proper here," said Brandon. "The first time I wore tie-dye some of my friends just couldn't believe it. People are still very aware that I'm not from the South, and I still feel that this is a very Southern campus."
But with California boasting the second-highest number of students in the Class of 2012-following North Carolina's 466 matriculants-Brandon's culture shock may be subsiding. Although Duke and the Golden State are separated by more than 3,000 miles, a record-breaking number of Californians on East Campus has begun to shrink the distance between the coasts.
149 members of the freshman class hail from California-nearly double the number of students in the Class of 2007 and up from 106 students in the current sophomore class. Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Christoph Guttentag said the state's representation is to be expected given that California graduates more high school seniors than any other state. But this year's figures may come as a surprise to students who had written off the Gothic Wonderland as a way station for displaced New Yorkers and Floridians.
"It's just not true that we're overwhelmed by students from the Northeast," Guttentag said. "The reality is that there's a significant representation from Florida, Texas, California and North Carolina.... I think the geographic distribution at Duke is better than at a lot of other colleges."
Luring Californians away from their famed coastline, however, poses special challenges for admissions officers. Parents are almost always wary of sending their children away from home for the first time to a school on the other side of the country, Guttentag said. But he noted that many of the states in which Duke's recruiting efforts are most successful lack a famed state school-a problem California, the home of the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at Los Angeles, does not share.
Although increased information sessions and a savvy Southern California admissions counselor may have helped the admissions office overcome these obstacles, Guttentag said he is not entirely sure what the difference was with the Class of 2012.
"It's hard to know," he said. "Understanding why 17-year-olds make the decisions they do is not always easy."
Freshman John Mekjian, a native of Orange, Calif., said he can sense the heightened presence of Californians on East Campus-and it has eased his transition to the Southern way of life.
"It's been nice to reminisce about the California weather and In-N-Out [Burger]," he said.
Brandon said most of her friends back home, and even many of her friends on campus, are perplexed by her decision to switch coasts.
"Every single tour I give [as an Admissions Ambassador] I get asked, 'Why didn't you just go to Stanford?'" she said. "But I think a lot of us come out because we want the different experience and to see the other side of things."
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