In his welcome remarks on Tuesday August 20, Noor said: “You are learners, yes, but you’re also instructors, you’re going to be researchers, and you push the frontiers of knowledge forward.”

Graduate and professional student enrollment at Duke have both steadily increased over the past 20 years. Advanced degree students now make up nearly two-thirds of Duke’s 16,000-plus students.

“We’re incredibly proud of what our graduate students have accomplished,” Noor added.

Take Duke alum Julia Gaffield, who was working toward her Ph.D. in history when she found the only known printed copy of Haiti's Declaration of Independence, tucked away in Britain’s National Archives.

Or Patrick Bowen who, while pursuing his Ph.D. in electrical engineering, worked as a computational physicist for industry and went on to co-found a company that raised more than $7 million in seed funding for metamaterials and optical computing chips.

The physical sciences and engineering attracted the largest number of students in the fall 2024 incoming class at 45%, followed by the social sciences (27%), basic medical sciences (17%) and the humanities (11%).

International students make up more than half -- 57% -- of the 2024 cohort, which ranges in age from 19 to 71.