Duke University

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892.In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James Buchanan Duke established Duke University, at which time the institution changed its name to honor his deceased father, Washington Duke.

The university's campus spans over 8,600 acres (35 km2) on three contiguous campuses in Durham as well as a marine lab in Beaufort. Duke's main campus—designed largely by architect Julian Abele—incorporates Gothic architecture with the 210-foot (64 m) Duke Chapel at the campus' center and highest point of elevation. The first-year-populated East Campus contains Georgian-style architecture, while the main Gothic-style West Campus 1.5 miles away is adjacent to the Medical Center. Duke is also the 7th wealthiest private university in America with $11.4 billion in cash and investments in fiscal year 2014.

Duke's research expenditures in the 2013 fiscal year were $993 million, the eighth largest in the nation. In 2014, Thomson Reuters named 32 Duke professors to its list of Highly Cited Researchers, making it fourth globally in terms of primary affiliations. Duke also ranks 5th among national universities to have produced Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, Goldwater, and Udall Scholars. 8 Nobel laureates, 3 Turing Award winners and 25 Churchill scholars are also affiliated with the university. In 2015, NPR ranked Duke first on its list of "schools that make financial sense". Duke's sports teams compete in the Atlantic Coast Conference and the basketball team is renowned for having won five NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championships, the most recent in 2015.

Duke students often refer to the campus as "the Gothic Wonderland," a nickname referring to the Collegiate Gothic architecture of West Campus. Much of the campus was designed by Julian Abele, one of the first prominent African-American architects and the chief designer in the offices of architect Horace Trumbauer. The residential quadrangles are of an early and somewhat unadorned design, while the buildings in the academic quadrangles show influences of the more elaborate late French and Italian styles. The freshmen campus (East Campus) is composed of buildings in the Georgian architecture style. In 2011, Travel+Leisure listed Duke among the most beautiful college campuses in the United States.
Admission to Duke is highly selective; Duke received over 31,150 applications for the Class of 2019, and admitted 9.4% of applicants. According to The Huffington Post, Duke was the tenth toughest university in the United States to get into based on admissions data from 2010. The yield rate (the percentage of accepted students who choose to attend the university) is approximately 50%. For the class of 2015, 90% of enrolled students ranked in the top 10% of their high school classes; 97% ranked in the top quarter. The middle 50% range of SAT scores for the prospective students accepted to Trinity College of Arts and Sciences in Fall 2014 is 680–790 for verbal/critical reading, 700–800 for math, and 700–790 for writing, while the ACT Composite range is 31–35 For those accepted to the Pratt School of Engineering, the middle 50% range for the SAT is 700-780 for verbal/critical reading, 760-800 for math, and 720-800 for writing, while the ACT Composite range is 33-35. The average SAT score is 2240.

From 2001 to 2011, Duke has had the sixth highest number of Fulbright, Rhodes, Truman, and Goldwater scholarships in the nation among private universities. The University practices need-blind admissions and meets 100% of admitted students' demonstrated need. About 50 percent of all Duke students receive some form of financial aid, which includes need-based aid, athletic aid, and merit aid. The average need-based grant for the 2013–2014 academic year was nearly $39,275. Roughly 60 merit-based scholarships are also offered, including the Angier B. Duke Memorial Scholarship, awarded for academic exc