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Call and Response

Alumni yield success with an initiative to phone every admitted student from underrepresented groups.

This past spring, Cyan DeVeaux was on her way home from a college visit to Harvard when she received a call from Danielle Squires ’02 that steered her in a different direction.

Then a senior at Ramapo High School in Spring Valley, New York, DeVeaux had been accepted to twelve top universities.

And while Duke was high on her list, DeVeaux worried about whether it was the right fit.

Squires, a bank executive in Charlotte, could relate. She was the last person from Ramapo to enroll at Duke. She talked with DeVeaux for more than an hour, speaking candidly—a conversation that ultimately pointed DeVeaux to Durham. A few weeks after, she accepted a Reginaldo Howard scholarship, and she plans to study neuroscience.

The conversation was part of a new effort to reach out to students from underrepresented groups to give them a clearer picture of life at Duke. Dubbed “Raise the Yield,” the campaign began three years ago when members of the Duke University Hispanic and Latino Alumni Association (DUHLAA) called admitted Latino students to help answer questions and share their own experiences.  This year, Duke Black Alumni volunteers did the same for admitted African-American students.

“We called everybody—every single accepted student,” says Squires, who is president of DBA. “We found a level of connectivity that they hadn’t had before.”

And those efforts appear to be paying off.

Students of color composed more than 50 percent of Duke’s Class of 2019, and admissions officers say they are hearing anecdotally that the opportunity to interact with alumni has been a factor in many students’ decisions.

“The best resource we will continue to have is alumni—especially when we are talking to parents,” says Christopher Briggs, a Duke admissions officer.

For DeVeaux, it was important to hear Squires talk about Duke’s commitment to inclusion. “It’s about education equality and making sure schools are inclusive and culturally responsive,” DeVeaux says. “It hits home for me.”

“At the end of the day...she accepted us over everybody else,” Squires says. “To me, that’s heartwarming.”