Duke University

In the 2008 U.S. News & World Report ranking of undergraduate programs at doctoral granting institutions, Duke ranked eighth. In the past decade, U.S. News has placed Duke as high as third and as low as eighth. Duke was ranked the 13th-best university in the world in 2007 by the THES-OS World University Rankings. Duke was ranked 32nd globally and 24th nationally by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2005 in terms of quality of scientific research and number of Nobel Prizes. The Wall Street Journal ranked Duke sixth (fifth among universities) in its “feeder” rankings in 2006, analyzing the percentage of undergraduates that enroll in what it considers the top five medical, law, and business schools. Carnegie Communications ranked Duke fifth among U.S. universities in regard to students’ perceptions of quality and third for popularity in 2004.

In U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Graduate Schools 2009,” Duke’s medical school ranked 6th for research and tied for 41st for primary care, while the law school ranked 10th. Among business schools in the United States, the Fuqua The graduate program for the Pratt School of Engineering was ranked 30th by U.S. News and 2nd by The Princeton Review in 2006 among national engineering schools. In the rankings of doctoral programs by U.S. News & World Report in its 2008 edition, Duke ranked 1st in literacy and theory, 5th in ecology and evolutionary biology and 5th in biomedical engineering, tied for 12th for doctoral programs in the sciences, tied for 21st in mathematics, tied for 25th in computer science, tied for 29th in physics, and ranked 38th in chemistry, Political science, sociology, history, economics, and cultural anthropology departments also frequently rank in the top 20 of their respective disciplines among U.S. universities.

Notable Graduates
Richard Nixon 37th President of the United States, Elizabeth Dole United States Senator from North Carolina and former President of the American Red Cross, and Ricardo Lagos, 33rd President of Chile from 2000 to 2006, .

Duke graduates who have won the Nobel Prize in Physics are Robert Richardson and Charles Townes.

Several alumni hold top positions at large companies. The current or former Chairman, President, Vice president, or CEO of each of the following Fortune 500 companies is a Duke alumnus:, Bear Stearns (Alan Schwartz), Exxon Mobile (Rex Adams), General Motors Corp. (Rick Wagoner), Morgan Stanley (John J Mack), Northwest Airlines (Gary L. Wilson)), PepsiCo, Inc. (Karl von der Hayden. Melinda Gates, is the co-founder of the $31.9 billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the nation’s wealthiest charitable foundation.

Information sessions are hosted by the Office of Undergraduate Admissions