Christoph Guttentag Named Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Duke
Provost Peter Lange notes that since Guttentag's arrival in 1992, Duke has "seen a steady improvement in the quality of our matriculating undergraduates"
Christoph Guttentag, the director of undergraduate of admissions at Duke University for the past 13 years, has been promoted to dean for undergraduate admissions, Duke Provost Peter Lange announced Tuesday.
In a memo to deans and senior leadership, Lange noted that since Guttentag's arrival in 1992, Duke has "seen a steady improvement in the quality of our matriculating undergraduates, improvements that have accelerated in the last several years. One of the striking contributions of Christoph to this progress has been his unwavering commitment to the evaluation of the whole student and what he or she can contribute to the Duke community.
"In addition, his leadership has coincided with a dramatic increase in the diversity of our student body and with the growth in the number and quality of international students attending Duke," Lange said in the memo.
Duke has seen a steady increase in the number and quality of applicants during each of the past six years. In 2005, the number of applications rose by 1,300 from the previous year, and Duke admitted only 41 percent of the nearly 1,500 valedictorians who applied for admission. More than 3,100 of the 2005 applicants had SAT scores of 1,500 or above; Duke admitted about half of these students.
Records broken in 2005 included number of applicants to the TrinityCollege of Arts & Sciences (14,974) and the Pratt School of Engineering (3,088), as well as the number of African Americans (1,858), Asians/Asian Americans (4,021) and Latinos (1,078).
The number of international applicants also has risen steadily during the past five years. The 1,825 international applicants in 2005 represented a 27 percent increase over 2004.
Prior to coming to Duke, Guttentag served as associate dean/director of recruitment planning for the admissions office at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1976 and earned a master's degree is musicology from Penn in 1990.