FertMigMort

Not to freak anyone out, but we actually rescinded an offer 2 years ago because someone was such a jerk. He was a truly exceptional jerk and I am sure none of you lovely people would behave as he did. Older grad students will also take you aside and tell you horror stories to make you not want to come to the program if you are a jerk. The only rule of visit weekend: Don't be a jerk. Edited one more time: You are allowed to be a jerk about where else you applied. You don't have to tell people that. Don't tell people that unless you really, really want to. I will respect you for being a jerk about that.

I know of two transfers into our department. One person came with their advisor from their below 60 school to our top 20 school (lucky them!) The other left Northwestern for unknown reasons and came here instead after their masters, but before their comprehensive exam. I know the latter did not come in with someone, they just switched programs. As far as I know, with the exception of an advisor transfer, you just apply like everyone else. I don't think it's very common, although anecdotally through friends in other programs, I know of at least one transfer student at every school. One of our attritors was considering applying to another program before they left; that application was not going to be disclosed to our department unless they had decided to take the offer. @Those already attending: Are there transfer students at your school?

I'm trying to stay somewhat anonymous, but I checked our internal statistics and they don't match the ones posted by Chuck at all. (ETA: Not that those numbers weren't interesting and useful, Chuck!) I think it's because the size of our cohorts was increasing from 2002-2006, so if a program is growing these numbers won't match up well either. The information is still useful though, because if a program won't release attrition statistics, they might still be willing to tell you if the cohort size is increasing or if completion time has been increasing. Combined with the NRC information, you can make an educated guess about the program you're interested in. Also, we have a former Northwestern student who transferred to our program who isn't reflected in the original statistics reported, but should be. Take everything reported by a school with a grain of salt. My program loves to trumpet the time to matriculation, but the real story is much more complicated.

I've heard anectdotally from friends at Wisconsin that they are thinking about changing their admissions style. Instead of large cohorts they are going for smaller mostly funded cohorts. I know from working on the recruitment committee in my program last year that this was echoed by the recruits accepted into both departments. As to the larger topic at hand, my friend who was on the applications committee this year said our program had 1.2 times the number of applicants that we did last year. That's about double the number of students that applied when I was admitted, back in 2008.