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Duke University Case Study

Challenge

Duke University enjoys a reputation as one of the world’s leading universities. While Duke could fill its entering class many times over with outstanding applicants each year, the Admissions Office is determined to fill the class with the best and brightest students imaginable – and to do so, it must compete against the likes of Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton.

Duke was seeking a compelling way to differentiate itself from other elite institutions in the eyes of its prospects and applicants. Bottom-line admissions objectives included:

• Increasing student quality (from already-stratospheric levels)
• Increasing ethnic diversity
• Increasing enrollment in the Pratt School of Engineering

Solution

Duke looked to the AdmissionsGenie service as the way to create a strong “human connection” between the university and its prospective students by personalizing the admissions process to each prospect’s individual interests and needs. As one of the initial institutions in the country to employ AdmissionsGenie, Duke first used the service in 2001 during the yield and assimilation phases of recruiting the Class of 2005. Duke also expressed interest in modernizing and expediting the way in which applicants found out about their admissions decisions.

Results

AdmissionsGenie helped Duke to achieve outstanding recruiting results, including:

• The largest yield rate increase in a decade
• The highest average SAT scores for an incoming class in Duke history
• Increased ethnic diversity among enrolling students
• Increased enrollment in the Pratt School of Engineering

Duke continues to employ AdmissionsGenie today, with even greater success.For example, in its second year, Duke’s application figures broke a record that had stood for 15 years, and the average SAT scores and ethnic diversity of its entering students have continued to increase during the past three years to the point that Duke’s most recent entering class had an average SAT score of over 1400, with ethnic minority students making up 35% of the class.

Duke also implemented a Web-based online decision notification system as a component of its AdmissionsGenie service in December 2002, and has used it successfully for each early decision and regular decision applicant pool for the past two years, eliciting very favorable reactions from its applicants.

One small portion of Duke’s AdmissionsGenie program -- the publicly-accessible portion of its Prospective Students Web site -- can be seen at http://www.admissions.duke.edu/.

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"AdmissionsGenie has allowed us to focus our attention on our primary responsibility – to recruit and admit the highest caliber students for Duke University."

Christoph Guttentag
Director of Undergraduate Admissions
Duke University 

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