Duke accepts 11 percent of regular decision applicants for the Class of 2016

More than 3,100 students will be invited to join Duke’s Class of 2016 this afternoon, the University announced today.

At an 11 percent acceptance rate, 3,105 of the 28,909 who applied for admission this year in the regular decision applicant pool will be notified of their acceptance online at 6 p.m, according to a Duke news release. Additionally, 648 students from the binding early decision applicant pool were admitted in December. In total, 3,789 high school seniors have been accepted to the Class of 2016 out of a record 31,600 applicants.

"This was clearly the most challenging year Duke has seen, both for the applicants and for the staff of the admissions office," said Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Christoph Guttentag in the release.

Despite the 6 percent increase in applicants from last year’s admission cycle, the acceptance rate for the regular decision pool rose from 10.8 percent to 11 percent. This year, the acceptance rate for early decision applicants was 24 percent—a decrease from last year’s 29 percent.

"We’ve been careful not to take the dramatic increase in applications of the last several years for granted, and the admissions officers worked hard to make sure each applicant received a thorough and complete review,” Guttentag said. “Many applicants received multiple evaluations, including some that were reviewed as many as seven or eight times.”

In this year’s early and regular admissions cycles, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions began a new application review process in which regional admissions officers have the ability to recommend a prospective student be rejected beyond the first read, The Chronicle previously reported. This replaces a system designed for 12,000 applicants in which no applications were rejected before they were read twice and considered by either a senior officer or an admissions committee. Under the new system, approximately one-third of the applicants were denied after the first read.

Blue Devil Days, an opportunity for accepted students to visit the campus, will be held April 9-10, April 12-13 and April 15-16.