They're All In
Myles Dunn 23C was among the record pool of 30,372 applicants to Emory College for admission this past fall.
When he learned he got in, his reaction—captured on video—was epic. “Oh. Oh. Oh,” he stammered, on a phone call to his mother. “I … I got into Emory …” while his friends cheered around him.
Dunn joins the class of 4,512 first-year Emory College students as a Woodruff Scholar, a Gates Scholar, and a QuestBridge scholar. “Growing up in Atlanta, you know how amazing Emory is,” he says. “It was always on my radar.”
Without financial support, Emory wouldn’t have been an option. “When I was seven, my mom and dad got a divorce—she had to raise my siblings and me by herself,” Dunn says. “I knew we received food stamps, but I didn’t know how much we struggled until I was older, because she hid it so well.”
His mother worked for the Atlanta Public Schools system, first as an elementary school secretary, then a budget analyst, and now a school business manager. Education, she demonstrated, could change lives.
Dunn attended high school at Carver Early College, where he was student government president, participated in the Esquires Inc. (a big brother/little brother program), was in multiple honors societies, played football, and performed in the band. “I plan to do the same thing at Emory, to get involved,” he says. “I don’t like to box myself in, I prefer to try as many things as possible.”
Emory College offered admission to 4,512 students, a 15 percent admission rate. Oxford College admitted 3,432 students, a 19 percent admission rate. The median SAT score for students admitted to Emory College was 1500, meaning half of them were above a score considered in the 99th percentile nationally. The median unweighted high school GPA of admitted students was 3.92.
“That represents a tremendous amount of talent,” says John Latting, associate vice provost for enrollment and Emory dean of admission. “It’s a very diverse group with a definite sense of purpose, which is characteristic of the students who are drawn to Emory. And they bring with them a stunning breadth of experiences and backgrounds.”
Joining classmates from forty-eight US states, international students make up 18 percent of the first-year class at Emory College and 19.4 percent of the first-year class at Oxford College. At Emory College, 11 percent are first-generation college students; at Oxford College, 6.5 percent are first-generation. Currently 58 percent of Emory undergraduates receive financial aid. Packages include grants, loans, and work-study opportunities. Additionally, 21 percent of current first-year students are eligible for federal Pell grants
