A Geographic Breakdown of Regular Decision Applications

14 Jan 2009, Posted by Julia Love in Academics, Breaking News, News, 0 Comments

Democrats made inroads in a number of Republican strongholds this election, but Duke too may be turning states blue.

California is the second-most represented state in the Class of 2012, calling the old cliche that Duke is overrun with displaced Yankees and Floridians into question. No official word yet on which states will come out on top in the Class of 2013, but preliminary regular decision figures could provide some clues.

The number of regular decision applications from the West Coast soared this year, with significant increases from California, Washington and Oregon. The University also saw a jump in applications from the Midwest, with Ohio and Illinois posting considerable gains.

In the early decision pool, Connecticut joined North Carolina as the top-represented state, and Massachusetts and Pennsylania also flooded the Office of Undergraduate Admissions with applications.

But the new question may not be which state is best-represented on East Campus, but which national flag. Just 1.5 percent of the student body came from overseas in 1992, but international students comprised almost 10 percent of the Class of 2012 and may constitute an even greater portion of the Class of 2013. Applications from international students jumped by 38 percent in the early decision pool and 24 percent in the regular decision pool.

Then again, applications from the usual suspects—New York, Florida and North Carolina—also increased considerably from last year for both early and regular decision. So perhaps the old cliche will hold true to some extent for the Class of 2013, too.

Crunching the Application Numbers

14 Jan 2009, Posted by Julia Love in Academics, Breaking News, News, 0 Comments

Duke’s regular decision applications swelled by a whopping 17 percent this year. But statistics are sometimes noted for their dishonesty, and the admissions numbers can be an especially complicated calculus. How is an English major supposed to make sense of it all?! With help from Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Christoph Guttentag, of course.

The regular decision pool saw impressive increases in the number of international students and the overall volume of applicants. But at first glance, these jumps pale in comparison to increases reported in the early pool several months ago. Though regular decision applications increased by 17 percent, a school record, that figure is seemingly dwarfed by the 23-percentage-point jump in the early pool. Moreover, the number of international regular decision applicants was up 24 percent, while the proportion of international applicants in the early decision pool increased by 38 percent.

But Guttentag cited a simple statistical principle to make sense of these disparities: percentage fluctuations are always more dramatic in a smaller pool. Thus, the early decision pool saw greater proportional increases, but it was the size of the applicant pool that made all the difference. For example, a 24-percent increase in the number of early applications translates to about 300 more students, while a 17-percent increase in the regular pool translates to about 3,400 more students.

“I would hate for people to think our regular decision increase didn’t match our early decision increase,” Guttentag said.

It seems the trick of the pool size could also explain an apparent victory for Pratt over Trinity in the applications tally. The number of high school seniors applying to the Trinity School of Arts and Sciences this year increased by 15 percent, while the number of students applying to the Pratt School of Engineering increased by 23 percent. Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Christoph Guttentag noted that Pratt’s prestige has risen in recent years, but he did not take the statistics as an indication that the school has bested Trinity, noting that the divergent percentages probably resulted from the fact that Pratt has a smaller pool of applicants to begin with.

“We’ve been focusing on Pratt for about the last seven or eight years,” he said. “I’m very pleased with the increase in Pratt—I think it’s a reflection of the greater appreciation of what an exceptional education it is…. But it doesn’t surprise me that we’d see a larger change [than in Trinity] one way or the other simply because is’ a smaller pool, with a smaller pool we’re going to see greater variability.”

In any case, this number-illiterate English major is hopeful that this means more number-savvy Pratt students will be on campus next year to break down the statistics when Guttentag is booked.

Moustapha on media bias

14 Jan 2009, Posted by Shuchi Parikh in News, 0 Comments

Imad Moustapha, who spoke at Duke yesterday, at one point denounced American media, accusing prominent publications like The New York Times and the New Yorker of having a pro-Israeli bias and censoring journalists.

Moustapha seems to be speaking of this alleged bias for at least a couple years now. At a talk in December 2007, he said the Washington Post and The New York Times “try to give the appearance of being objective” although they ran a series of articles about Syria’s plans to create a nuclear weapons cache with North Korea, which Mustapha denied. (see video below, circa 4:00) A few months afterward, however, the Times and the Post reported that a video of a Syrian facility had convinced the U.S. and Israel that Syria and North Korea were indeed working together to produce dangerous weapons.

In other news, check out Moustapha’s personal blog, containing posts about everything from Syrian artwork to Atonement’s tragic plot.

“The Duke Lacrosse Scandal: New Insights, Many Perspectives”

13 Jan 2009, Posted by Shuchi Parikh in Duke Lacrosse, News, 0 Comments

The Chronicle of Higher Education had an interesting Q&A with Michael Siegel, professor of law at the University of Florida, who edited a recent compilation of essays with varied perspectives on the Duke lacrosse case, called Race to Injustice: Lessons Learned From the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case. Siegel notes that each contributer to the compilation agrees that the case was a “tragedy of immense proportions” and that the lacrosse players are innocent.

Roy Cooper for U.S. Senate?

13 Jan 2009, Posted by Will Robinson in News, North Carolina Politics, election 2008, 0 Comments

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper would be a strong candidate to face Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) in the 2010 U.S. Senate election, according to a poll conducted by Research 2000. Cooper, a Democrat who was recently reelected to his third term, is best known on campus for dismissing the charges against the three indicted members of the 2005-2006 men’s lacrosse team. He declared the players innocent at an April 2007 press conference. Cooper touted his dismissal of the lacrosse charges in a television advertisement during his most recent campaign.

The Research 2000 poll, which was published on the liberal blog Daily Kos, predicts that Burr could be in for a close race. He leads against Cooper 45% to 43%. The poll also predicts a tight contest if former state treasurer Richard Moore is nominated by the Democrats.