Sep 02, 2014 02:23 PM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

While several U.S. colleges and universities are allowing for more ambiguity in the gender identity section of their application forms, Duke University has gone a bit further.

According to Inside Higher Ed, Duke's applicants can now write a short essay on their sexual orientation and gender identity. This allows for prospective students to express whatever identity they may have while the school comes off as accepting and inclusive.

As it appears in the application process, here is the question Duke posses:

Duke University seeks a talented, engaged student body that embodies the wide range of human experience; we believe that the diversity of our students makes our community stronger. If you'd like to share a perspective you bring or experiences you've had to help us understand you better - perhaps related to a community you belong to, your sexual orientation or gender identity, or your family or cultural background - we encourage you to do so. Real people are reading your application, and we want to do our best to understand and appreciate the real people applying to Duke.

Other schools that have altered their applications have added more choices to accompany the traditional two check boxes for either male or female. The Common Application had not previously allowed any of its member schools to add such optional answers for gender identity, rejecting the idea in 2011. Duke is the first Common Application school to do so.

"I decided that a more open-ended question would be better. In general I prefer to think of diversity within the context of values, interests, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, rather than discrete attributes, and asking the question in this way moves us in that direction," Christoph Guttentag, dean of undergraduate admissions at Duke, told Inside Higher Ed. "I wanted people to understand that our asking questions like this was to further our goal of understanding the applicant better.

"Giving the applicant space to talk about themselves in that context rather than just check a box better helps us understand the applicant as an individual and as a potential member of the Duke community."

Daniel Kort, a senior at Duke and president of Blue Devils United, the school's LGBTQ student group, said he would have rather seen more check boxes than an short essay question.

He told Inside Higher Ed the new change to Duke's application is "a significant step in the right direction."

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