Duke University

In brief

Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. By our measure of academic influence, it ranks #16 in the United States and #39 in the world. It admitted 5.7% of applicants for fall 2024, and admitted students had a median SAT score of 1535.

Duke grew out of a small school in Randolph County that became Trinity College. In 1890 the tobacco entrepreneur Washington Duke offered $85,000 to bring the college to Durham, where it moved in 1892. In 1924 his son, James B. Duke, created The Duke Endowment, and the school took the family’s name.

Where Duke’s influence is strongest

Duke’s influence is broad, with its strongest showing in nursing and the humanities and social sciences. Its leading broad fields, by US rank in our data, are:

• Nursing: #10 in the US
• Religious studies: #11
• Psychology and political science: #16 each
• Law, philosophy, literature, education, and sociology: #17 each

Duke ranks #1 in the US in parapsychology, a legacy of the Parapsychology Laboratory that J.B. and Louisa Rhine started at Duke in the 1930s, and #1 in internet security. It is #2 in virtue ethics (behind only Notre Dame) and in sociobiology (behind only Harvard). By comparison, Duke sits further back in chemistry (#30), physics (#31), and mathematics (#32).

How we measure influence: these ranks come from the citations and recognition earned by a school’s faculty and alumni in each discipline, not from surveys or admissions statistics. See our methodology.

Notable people

Duke reports 16 Nobel laureates among its students and faculty, including the physicist Charles Townes, the biochemist Robert Lefkowitz, the cancer researcher William Kaelin Jr., and the playwright Wole Soyinka. Turing Award winners Frederick Brooks, Edmund Clarke, and John Cocke all studied there. Its faculty has included the historian John Hope Franklin, the literary theorist Stanley Fish, and the psychologist Dan Ariely; its alumni include the novelists William Styron and Reynolds Price and the journalist Judy Woodruff. Our full lists of Duke’s most influential alumni and faculty appear below.

Frequently asked questions

Is Duke hard to get into? Yes. It admitted 5.7% of applicants for fall 2024, and the middle half of admitted students scored 740–770 on the SAT reading section and 760–800 on math.

What does Duke cost? Tuition is $72,795 for 2025–26. What families pay after grants depends on income; Duke’s net price calculator gives a personal estimate.

How do Duke graduates do? 96.1% of students who started in 2019 graduated within six years, and 98% of first-year students return for a second year. Ten years after starting college, former students had median earnings of $113,937.

What is Duke best known for academically? By our influence data: nursing, religious studies, psychology, and political science, plus specialties such as parapsychology and internet security, where it ranks first in the country.