Duke University Reports Huge Rise in Student Applicants Who Decline to Identify Their Race

This year there was a record 23,843 applicants to Duke University. Slightly more than 4,000 students were offered admission.

This year 19 percent of all students offered places in the Class of 2013 did not disclose their race on their application forms. This is more than double the rate from a year ago.

Christopher Guttentag, dean of undergraduate admissions at Duke, stated, “A change of this magnitude shows that at the very least more students are feeling differently about how they want to respond to questions of this kind, or whether they want to respond at all.”

Research has shown that most students who do not identify their race on college applications are white. Many of these students believe that having white skin works against them in the admissions process.

Copyright © 2009. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.